Taliban's Afghanistan: Pictures of women on city walls painted over

While the Taliban have said that they won't discriminate against women, their actions don't seem to concur. Reports of advertisements showeing women with exposed strands of hair being covered in fresh white paint have been emerging. Afghan women are worried about their future

Pic: Twitter/@LNajafizada

Kabul (Afghanistan): The return of the Taliban has evoked painful memories and sharp fear among Afghan women. When they were last ruling Afghanistan, the oppressive regime was even more unbearbale for women who were denied of their basic rights in the country. From girls being not allowed to pursue education to women being not allowed to step out of homes alone and to be covered from head to toe at all times, severe curbs were placed on women by the Talibans. So the news of Taliban overtaking Afghanistan had especially been a terrifying proposition, especially for the nation's women. And in a grim reminder of the past, on the first day of Taliban control in Kabul this time, bridal dress advertisements that showed women with exposed strands of hair were covered in fresh white paint. Taliban fighters commandeered streets and searched the homes and offices of government officials and media outlets, spreading fear and menace across the Afghan capital, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Armed militants erected checkpoints throughout the city of six million people, imposed a 9 p.m. curfew and took over army and police posts. Fighters, many grinning in victory, rode through the streets in captured US and Afghan military vehicles flying the Taliban's white flag. The report said turban-clad insurgents searched the phones of passers-by for evidence of government contacts or compromising material they might deem un-Islamic. Stores were shut across the city.

On video footage shared over social media, chuckling Taliban fighters sauntered around Parliament building on the city's outskirts. Rozina, an Afghan-Canadian woman visiting Kabul with her Afghan husband, said Taliban fighters came to their hotel on Monday morning while she was in a back garden. Frightened, she ran upstairs to their room. Minutes later, Taliban fighters came inside with the hotel manager, who persuaded her to come out of the bathroom where she had hidden.

Meanwhile,  the Taliban announced Tuesday an "amnesty" across Afghanistan and urged women to join its government, trying to calm nerves across a nervous capital city that only the day before saw chaos at its airport as people tried to flee their rule.

(With Agency inuts)