The Taliban banned women from visiting Band-e-Amir, one of Afghanistan’s most popular national parks. The ban was announced after the acting minister of vice and virtue, Mohammad Khalid Hanafi, complained that women visiting the park had not been adhering to the proper way of wearing the hijab.

“Going sightseeing is not a must for women,” said Hanafi as he asked security forces to begin stopping women from entering into the park.

Heather Barr of Human Rights Watch (HRW) condemned the move, saying “walls are closing in on women in Afghanistan."

She added: “Not content with depriving girls and women of education, employment and free movement, the Taliban also want to take from them parks and sport and now even nature, as we see from this latest ban on women visiting Band-e-Amir.”

Last November, the Taliban-led government barred women from using public spaces, including parks, saying that they were not wearing the hijab correctly or following gender segregation rules.

It has been one year since the Taliban took power again in Afghanistan. In this year of resistance and struggle, many women have been abducted, enslaved and tortured by Taliban gangs. Women and girls have been deprived of all their basic rights. But the women who did not recognise the Taliban regime turned the streets into places of resistance.

The Taliban were in power in Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001 and committed numerous massacres in the country during that time. In 2001, the US launched an operation in Afghanistan because the Taliban regime supported the radical Islamist group Al-Qaeda, which had caused the deaths of thousands of US citizens with its attack on the Twin Towers in New York on 11 September 2001.

The US had troops in Afghanistan from 2001 until August 2021, when it withdrew. On 15 August 2021, the Taliban captured the capital Kabul and took power again.