In western Afghanistan’s Herat city, a rare public demonstration against the Taliban’s recent mass detention of women accused of violating hardline Islamic dress rules has ended in chaos, with conflicting accounts of violence that have drawn international condemnation.
The protest unfolded earlier this month, days after local Taliban authorities launched a new crackdown on women perceived to be failing to comply with mandatory hijab regulations. The enforcement push, announced publicly on Friday, saw morality police from the Ministry for Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice begin stopping vehicles and patrolling public spaces from Saturday onward, checking women’s compliance with the dress code. Multiple eyewitnesses confirmed to the BBC that they had directly observed women being taken into custody for non-compliance, though local Herat government officials have dismissed reports of dozens of arrests as false rumor.
Both men and women joined the street demonstration to oppose the detentions, in one of the most high-profile public challenges to Taliban rule since the group retook full control of Afghanistan in August 2021. Witnesses and participating protesters allege that Taliban security forces responded with excessive force, deploying batons, whips, and live ammunition to break up the gathering. One protester told AFP that officers fired shots into the air to scare crowds, while a press photographer on the scene confirmed seeing security forces strike demonstrators and fire weapons toward the assembled crowd. “A significant number of people were injured” based on his direct observation, the photographer stated, adding that the incident left local residents “extremely frightened.”
Videos circulated widely on social media in the aftermath of the crackdown, with audio that clearly captures the sound of gunfire and women screaming in distress as they plead for security forces to stop beating demonstrators. In one viral clip, protesters can be heard chanting three core demands: “education, work, freedom.”
Conflicting accounts of casualties have since emerged. Local medics told the BBC that two people were killed in the incident, though they did not confirm the cause of death, and multiple others were left wounded. Taliban authorities have pushed back on these claims: Herat Police spokesperson Sayed Masoud Hosseini denied any fatalities occurred, while acknowledging that officers had intervened in the protest to “ensure security and maintain public order.” Hosseini argued that the demonstration had “disturbed public order” and claimed protesters were “creating tension under the pretext of protesting issues related to the observance of hijab, which is considered a divine obligation.” The BBC has not been able to independently verify the conflicting claims of violence and casualties.
The incident has drawn immediate pushback from the international human rights community. Richard Bennett, the United Nations special rapporteur tasked with monitoring human rights conditions in Afghanistan, posted on social platform X that he was “alarmed by excessive use of force against seemingly peaceful protesters in Herat,” calling for all those responsible for the violence to be “held accountable.”
Public opposition to Taliban policy, particularly demonstrations led by women, has been extremely rare over the three years since the group returned to power. Early, small-scale attempts by women to protest the sweeping restrictions imposed on their access to education, employment, and public life gradually died out after harsh crackdowns: multiple women told the BBC they were intimidated into silence after experiencing beatings, arbitrary detention, verbal abuse, and even death threats including threats of execution by stoning. The mandatory hijab rule, imposed on all women across Afghanistan in May 2022, is one of dozens of restrictive policies that have rolled back decades of progress on Afghan women’s rights and access to public life. Local residents report that since the new crackdown began in Herat, public markets that once drew large numbers of female shoppers have been left largely empty, as women fear leaving their homes to avoid arbitrary arrest.