Taliban present veiled policewomen with riot gear

Equipped with helmets and riot shields and covered from head to toe by black veils, a group of women pose in an official video under the banner of the Taliban, who on Tuesday announced the training of about a thousand police officers in Afghanistan. The deputy spokesman for the Taliban government, Qari Yousuf Ahmadi, explained that a hundred agents have been recruited in the capital alone.

An official video released by the fundamentalists shows a dozen women mostly equipped with riot shields, emblazoned with the word Police in yellow, and black helmets, the same color as hijabs that only expose their eyes. “We are ready 24 hours a day to prevent demonstrations,” said Imran, an official with the Public Order Directorate.

Regularly and despite the veto of the fundamentalists, who do not allow demonstrations against them, groups of women have protested in various parts of the country against the loss of their labor and educational rights. Just as consistent has been the repression of the Taliban, accused of torture and mistreatment of Afghan women for participating in demonstrations to demand their rights, the international organization Human Rights Watch (HRW) denounced on October 20.

The last of these demonstrations took place last Monday in a park in Kabul, and according to the organizers it was violently dispersed by the Taliban, arguing that they did not have the required permission to organize it.

Despite promising that they had changed, the Taliban continue to behave as they did between 1996 and 2001, when, based on a rigid interpretation of Islam and its strict social code, known as pastunwali, they prohibited female attendance at schools and imprisoned females. women at home.