“We Were Wearing Hijab, Yet We Were Still Targeted With Violence”: Herat Protesters Recount Taliban Crackdown

Photo: AI

“A Taliban fighter struck me on the head with the butt of his rifle. I lost consciousness and do not know what happened after that.”

This is part of the account of Nazia, one of the female protesters in Herat. She says she went to the streets to demand the right to work, education and freedom, but was met with violence by Taliban forces and returned home injured and covered in blood.

On Tuesday morning (9 June), a number of women and men gathered in the Jebrael area of Herat to protest the detention of women and what they described as the violent treatment of women by Taliban morality police.

The protesters say they were not demanding special privileges and did not chant political slogans. They shouted only three words: “Work, Education and Freedom.” However, they say the Taliban could not tolerate even these simple demands and responded with gunfire and beatings.

According to witnesses, the Taliban’s response to these demands was not dialogue, but repression.

Nazia, who took part in the gathering, told Zan News that she had learned about the protest through social media the night before.

She left early in the morning with one of her friends to join the protest. According to her, the Taliban had already blocked roads and were trying to prevent people from gathering.

Nazia says:

“When the crowd grew larger and the chants of work, education and freedom became louder, the Taliban began beating people. One Taliban fighter said to me, ‘You are a girl and you do not want hijab?’ Then he struck me on the head with the butt of his rifle. When I opened my eyes, I was inside a house and several girls were splashing water on my face. My head was covered in blood and I could not walk. Then someone knocked on the door and the girls started running away. We escaped through another door of the same house. My friend and another girl helped me and I got into a three wheeler. By the time I reached home, I had lost a lot of blood from my head.”

Nazia’s account is only one of dozens of similar stories, stories of women who say they faced violence while demanding the most basic human rights.

Soria, another participant in the protest, told Zan News that Taliban forces charged at the crowd moments after the slogans began.

She says:

“We came only for our rights. But instead of listening to our voices, the Taliban responded with gunfire. I saw women being injured with my own eyes. People were running and no one felt safe.”

According to her, as the number of protesters increased, more vehicles carrying Taliban security and intelligence personnel arrived at the scene and arrests began.

Aisha, another woman who attended the gathering, describes the Taliban’s behaviour as “brutal”. She says Taliban forces initially beat people with sticks, whips and rifle butts in an attempt to disperse the crowd. However, when they failed to stop the protest, they resorted to using firearms.

She says:

“We were wearing hijab, yet we were still targeted with violence. That day, it did not matter to the Taliban what women were wearing. What mattered was why they had raised their voices in protest.”

The accounts of these women paint a picture of a reality that many Afghan women have experienced over the past five years, a reality in which the right to education, the right to work and even the right to be present in public spaces have become contested issues despite women wearing Islamic dress and hijab.

Tuesday’s protest in Herat was part of a civil resistance against Taliban policies, policies that critics describe as a clear example of discrimination and institutionalised misogyny.

The women who took to the streets in Jebrael say that their demands are nothing more than basic human rights, rights that, in their view, the Taliban continue to refuse to recognise.