The Taliban regime on Monday ordered hundreds of beauty salons across the country to close by the end of July, marking the Islamist regime’s latest offense against the rights and dignity of women in Afghanistan.
The order came via text message from the “Ministry for the Prevention of Vice and Propagation of Virtue,” which said it was acting on a decree from Taliban Supreme Leader Hibatullah Akhundzada.
“The deadline for the closing of beauty parlors for women is one month,” the message said, without elaborating on what would happen to salons that dare to remain open when the deadline passes.
Beauty salon owners noted that since most of their employees are women, the order will leave thousands more women unemployed at a time when Afghanistan is facing a deep economic crisis due to Taliban mismanagement. Women were previously fired from most government jobs and banned from working for humanitarian aid groups, including U.N. projects.
Afghan burqa-clad women sit in front of a beauty salon with images of women defaced using spray paint in Jalalabad on December 13, 2021. (WAKIL KOHSAR/AFP via Getty Images)
“The men are jobless. When men cannot take care of their families, the women are forced to work in a beauty salon to find a loaf of bread. If they are banned there, what can we do?” a woman working as a makeup artist asked Afghanistan’s independent TOLO News.
“We will not get out of the home if men (of the family) have jobs. What can we do? We should starve to death, what should we do? You want us to die,” said another.
“The Taliban are taking away the most basic human rights from Afghan women. They are violating women’s rights. By this decision, they are now depriving women from serving other women. When I heard the news, I was completely shocked,” a woman in Kabul told the BBC on Tuesday.
“It seems the Taliban do not have any political plan other than focusing on women’s bodies. They are trying to eliminate women at every level of public life,” she said.
Another Afghan woman told the BBC that every beauty salon in her area was already closed, only a day after the edict was announced.
The United Nations pointed out that Afghan’s economy is far too weak to support the Taliban unilaterally shutting down entire industries, and also said the beauty salon order contradicts the Taliban’s many promises to respect human rights more reliably than the regime overthrown by the U.S. invasion in 2001.
An Afghan beautician applies makeup to a client at a beauty salon in Mazar-i-Sharif on July 5, 2023. Afghanistan’s Taliban authorities have ordered beauty parlours across the country to shut within a month, the latest curb to squeeze women out of public life. (ATIF ARYAN/AFP via Getty)
The Taliban has kept few of those promises and appears impervious to hectoring from the U.N. about all the commitments they made after seizing Kabul in August 2021. The BBC recalled that beauty salons were shuttered during the 1996-2001 Taliban regime and reopened after the U.S. invasion.
“There is no middle ground on this issue. Afghanistan is the only country in the world which doesn’t allow girls to go to school beyond grade six or to university. There is no discussion about this; it’s not a bargaining chip. It has to be reversed,” demanded Markus Poztel, deputy special representative for the U.N. Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA), after the beauty salon shutdown decree was announced.
“UNAMA calls on the de facto authorities to halt the edict closing beauty salons. This new restriction on women’s rights will impact negatively on the economy and contradicts stated support for women entrepreneurship. UNAMA remains engaged with stakeholders seeking reversal of the bans,” Poztel’s agency said.
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