Bread or the Whip; When Survival Becomes a Crime for Nimroz Women

Photo: Aref Karimi / AFP

In Nimroz, where poverty has sunk its roots deep into the lives of the people, women and girls are forced to extend their hands to passers-by simply to survive.

What is less visible, however, is that under Taliban rule, even this struggle for survival is treated as a crime for women.

Shocking accounts from women in the city of Zaranj show that the Taliban not only fail to understand poverty, but respond to it with whippings, detention, and summary trials, proceedings in which there is neither law nor any voice for defence.

Shakila, a woman holding her infant child while begging on the streets of Zaranj, told Zan News with eyes red from crying:

“We come out onto the streets because of extreme poverty. I have no breadwinner; my husband was killed years ago. But every night the Taliban take us to the police station and beat us for begging.”

In a trembling voice, Shakila added: “They have even subjected us to immoral treatment many times. It is difficult to even say it. We have no voice, and no one hears our complaints.”

Laili, another girl from Nimroz, says she is forced to beg to provide a piece of bread for her family, but the Taliban respond to this desperation with detention and violence:

“I am detained at least once a week. When the Taliban see us on the street, they arrest us, mock us, and beat us.”

Azra, another woman from Nimroz who is the sole breadwinner for a family of five, says that when she cannot find work in people’s homes, she is forced to beg, but under Taliban rule, begging amounts to a social death sentence for her:

“They put us on trial on the spot. Anyone treats us however they want. They do not understand that we need bread.”

These accounts show that the Taliban’s policies of removing women from public life have entered a new and dangerous phase, one in which women’s “economic deprivation” pushes them into “forced begging”, and that very begging then becomes a pretext for detention, torture, and summary trials. A cycle of repression that has now reached its peak in Nimroz.

The stories of mothers who are humiliated, beaten, and left to suffer in silence for a piece of bread are not merely personal accounts, but clear evidence of a structural crime against women.

Women in Nimroz, with voices that tremble but have not fallen silent, tell the world: “We want bread, not the whip. We want justice, not summary courts. We want safety, not mockery and humiliation.”