Taliban Fire on Women's Protest in Herat as Hijab Enforcement Intensifies

Afghan security forces opened fire on protesters in the western city of Herat on Tuesday, forcibly breaking up a demonstration that erupted after Taliban morality police arrested women for allegedly breaching the country’s strict dress code. Eyewitnesses described chaotic scenes, with one person killed, several wounded and dozens more detained, including women and girls. The Taliban’s police spokesperson in Herat, Sayed Masoud Hosseini, told the state-run Bakhtar News Agency that the gathering had “created tensions” and disturbed public order “under the pretext of opposing the Islamic hijab”, which he termed a religious obligation. Officials did not immediately confirm any casualties or arrests.

The protest was triggered by the detention of approximately 30 women by the Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice, according to Georgette Gagnon, acting head of the United Nations mission in Afghanistan. She told the Security Council that a pregnant woman was among those held in Herat. A Radio Farda eyewitness recounted that Taliban forces “opened fire on the protesters” at a central intersection and later chased demonstrators into adjoining streets. Yet the head of the morality police in Herat, Aziz-ur-Rehman Muhajir, dismissed reports of the arrests as false, illustrating the regime’s tight control over information.

The crackdown is being analysed through starkly different lenses in capitals around the world. Western governments and human-rights bodies see the violence as further evidence of the Taliban’s entrenchment of gender apartheid, with the United Nations expressing grave concern. Moscow, in contrast, has adopted a pragmatic tone: a Russian business centre in Afghanistan issued an advisory warning female travellers that arrests for non-compliance with dress regulations were being recorded in major cities. The notice detailed extreme stipulations — clothing must be thick, loose and non-bright, the face entirely veiled with only mesh permitted, and socks dense — and noted that women are forbidden from speaking loudly in the presence of unrelated men. The advisory signals that the enforcement sweep is not limited to Afghan citizens.

The violent repression of the protest underscores a hardening of the Taliban’s internal order, say analysts in London. While the regime has periodically tolerated small demonstrations, the resort to live ammunition in Herat points to an emboldened hardline faction unwilling to countenance any public challenge to its interpretation of Sharia law. The denial of arrests, contradicted by multiple eyewitness and UN accounts, will further erode trust with international interlocutors. For Afghan women, the episode confirms that the de facto authorities are intensifying, not relaxing, their moral policing — a trajectory that, despite deepening diplomatic isolation, shows no sign of reversal.