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Telegraph
29-07-2025
- Politics
- Telegraph
‘This isn't living': Afghan girls beaten in Taliban hijab crackdown
Nafiseh's only mistake was showing her wrist. The 17-year-old was shopping for clothes with her friends in Kabul when Taliban officers grabbed her, pulling her hair as they threw her into the back of a waiting van. The men with long beards and American rifles slung across their shoulders beat her all the way to the police station west of Afghanistan's capital, her uncle said. By the time they reached the police station, Nafiseh's complete black hijab – the covering that should have protected her according to the Taliban's laws – was stained with her own blood. 'She did nothing wrong,' her uncle said, his voice carrying the weight of a generation's helplessness. 'She was wearing a complete black hijab from the Arabs. They arrested her anyway.' When Nafiseh's father arrived at the police station, the Taliban officers turned their rage toward him, their fists finding a new target in his desperate flesh. 'As soon as he arrived, they started beating and insulting him,' the uncle explained. 'They told him why first he let his daughter go out without a man, then why her wrist was visible.' To secure Nafiseh's release, her father was forced to sign a pledge – a document promising to restrict her movements even further than before. Dozens of women and girls, aged 16 to 27, were arrested across at least six neighbourhoods this week alone, with the Taliban claiming they were not wearing the hijab properly. But witnesses told The Telegraph that girls were being arrested even when they did follow the strict dress code – like Nafiseh. The systematic round-up of women in Kabul represents an escalation in the Taliban's crackdown, with the victims' families threatened into silence. It's also a far cry from the image Taliban officials are trying to present to the West when encouraging tourists to visit the nation. In the labyrinthine alleys of Kabul, terror now wears the uniform of virtue police – an equivalent of the notorious morality police across the border in Iran. Witnesses describe scenes of armed jihadists chasing girls through narrow streets, with their victims running terrified and crying, seeking refuge in doorways that offer no protection. 'It was Saturday, and a group of women were walking,' one witness told The Telegraph. 'Of course, their male guardians were not always around to accompany them, but they needed to go and buy groceries. 'Then I saw girls running through the alleys, terrified and in tears, with Taliban fighters chasing after them. 'I asked what was happening, and people said the Taliban were arresting any girl they found on the street. 'The girls were scrambling in all directions. I watched as the Taliban beat them and forced them into a van. It was heartbreaking. 'One of my relatives was even wearing a mask, but they arrested her too. Because Afghanistan is such a traditional society, my uncle's family refuses to talk about her detention. She was held for two days. Now she's deeply depressed.' Some of the girls were also arrested simply for being outside after dark. In western Kabul, authorities have begun issuing public warnings via loudspeakers, instructing residents to comply with hijab regulations. At checkpoints near busy commercial areas, officials from the Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice have been seen monitoring women's clothing and detaining those they deem non-compliant. The Orwellian body has employed women to monitor Instagram pages and report instances where other women dare show their faces online. 'They are needed to handle other women,' an official from the ministry said. Girls wearing hijabs with decorations, bright colours – banned by the Taliban – or with strands of their hair showing are frequently targeted Vehicles with tinted windows have been stationed near alleyways and shops and restaurants, ready to bundle women and girls away to be questioned. Many are taken to the Intelligence Directorate, where they can be held for up to three months – regardless of whether any formal charges are brought. One woman, beaten and detained for hours, returned home to a family too scared to speak of her arrest. 'She doesn't speak and stays in bed all the time. We're really worried about her,' her brother said. 'We're afraid she might harm herself – there's so much pressure on women here.' He added: 'They arrested her just for wearing a small plastic flower on her headscarf. The Taliban called us in. She wanted to become a doctor, then they closed universities and when she hung out with her friend, they arrested her. 'They humiliated me and my father, filmed us, and forced us to say on camera that we wouldn't let my sister go out alone again.' In Afghanistan's traditional society, a woman's violation becomes the family's 'dishonour', creating a conspiracy of quiet that serves the Taliban's purposes. 'We are like caged birds' A former university student described life for women in Afghanistan as being 'like a caged bird, just waiting for men to decide when to feed us'. She said one of her friends took her own life a few months ago but her family refused to call it suicide as they saw it as a humiliation. 'This isn't living – we're just breathing inside our homes, with no access to anything. 'The Taliban want us all dead. Their problem is with our gender. The entire government is focused on controlling women – so men don't go to hell by looking at us.' Women have been ordered not to speak loudly inside their homes, lest their voices escape and 'tempt' men outside. Zahra Haqparast, a dentist and women's rights activist who was imprisoned by the Taliban in 2022 and now speaks from exile in Germany, said: 'No woman goes out in Afghanistan without a hijab. 'The Taliban's problem is women themselves. As a woman, you do not need to commit a crime. In the Taliban's view, you're a criminal by being a woman.' The temperature in Kabul can reach 45C in summer. But the Taliban requires women to wear long black coverings in this heat, turning the simple act of existing outdoors into physical torture.
Boston Globe
26-07-2025
- Climate
- Boston Globe
Dry Taps, empty lakes, shuttered cities: A water crisis batters Iran
The government announced this past week that many reservoirs, particularly those that supply the capital, Tehran, with drinking water, were drying out. Water supplies for Tehran are predicted to run out in just a few weeks, officials said, pleading with the public to reduce water consumption. 'The water crisis is more serious than what is being talked about today, and if we do not make urgent decisions today, we will face a situation in the future that cannot be cured,' President Masoud Pezeshkian said at a Cabinet meeting Monday, adding, 'We cannot continue this way.' Advertisement Already prone to droughts, Iran has exacerbated the problem with poor water management policies, which Pezeshkian acknowledged Monday. Climate change, too, has played a role; the country has weathered five consecutive years of drought. Now, the crisis has grown so extreme that the government shut down all government offices and services in Tehran and more than two dozen other cities across the country Wednesday, creating a three-day weekend in an attempt to lower water and electricity usage. Fatemeh Mohajerani, a government spokesperson, said cities could have similar closures once or twice a week going forward, and suggested people 'go on holiday.' Advertisement The Tehran Province Water and Wastewater Co. announced this past week that it had reduced water pressure to such low levels that in Tehran -- a city of 10 million people, many living and working in high-rise buildings -- water could not flow above the second floor of apartment buildings. Some residents in Tehran said in interviews that water trickled from their faucets, making it difficult to flush the toilet or wash dishes and clothes. In some neighborhoods, water service was disrupted for 48 hours, residents said. Many people and buildings are scrambling to buy water tanks, hoping to stockpile what little water there is to make it through future disruptions. The manager of one high-rise in the upscale neighborhood of Elahiyeh said the building was in its third day without water service. When that building finally secured a water tank, the supply lasted for just two hours. It then procured water from a freelance water truck, the manager said, only to realize it was polluted seawater, not suitable for drinking or bathing. Across town, Nafiseh, a schoolteacher, questioned the water storage strategy. 'My mom has filled half the kitchen with bottles of water, big and small, but I think it's a mistake. In a real crisis, a few containers won't save us,' said Nafiseh, 36, who like all Iranians interviewed for this article asked her last name not be published out of fear of retribution. Advertisement The water shortage comes on top of scheduled daily power cuts across the country. Since December, Iran, which has one of the biggest supplies of natural gas and crude oil in the world, has struggled with a full-blown energy crisis, forcing schools, universities and government offices to close or reduce their hours and power to be rationed at industrial factories. The cumulative effect of crises on top of crises -- from war, to daily explosions suspected to be sabotage, to skyrocketing inflation, to water and power cuts -- has many Iranians reeling. In interviews and social media posts, they say that it feels as if their country is in free fall, and question the government's ability to reverse the situation. 'Addressing just one aspect of the crisis is futile; both electricity and water governance must be reformed,' Hamidreza Khodabakhshi, the head of the union for water engineers in the province of Khuzestan in southern Iran, said in a telephone interview. 'Repeated calls for public conservation -- without action from authorities -- shift blame unfairly to citizens.' Environmental experts say that the water crisis stems from decades of mismanaging water resources and other misguided policies, including the overdevelopment of urban areas, draining of groundwater for farming and excessive construction of dams. Iran has also piped water to the central desert regions to feed water-intensive industries, such as steelmaking, owned by the government. Climate change is also exacerbating the crisis. The Ministry of Energy says that annual rainfall over the past five years has declined from about 11 inches to below 6, creating the worst drought in 50 years. Mohammad Sadegh Motamedian, the governor of Tehran province, told local news media that at four dams supplying drinking water to the capital, water reserves had dropped to about 14% of their capacity. Advertisement Lush wetlands have crusted into beds of sand and dust storms, and wells have gone dry. Crops and livestock are dying. Parts of the country are sinking at alarming rates after water aquifers have been sucked up -- in Tehran, parts of the city are sinking over 12 inches a year, officials said. Lakes and water reservoirs where boating, fishing and swimming were once summer staples have dried or shrunk. 'I remember swimming in these places when I was little, and it was full. Now they are all dry and empty, and we can walk through them from one side to the other,' said Saeed, a 37-year-old owner of a technology firm in Tehran. Negin, a 28-year-old mother of two, lives in the southern city of Bushehr, where temperatures average above 120 degrees in the summer and humidity weighs heavy in the air. Recently, running water has been available for only a few hours a day in her neighborhood, she said in an interview. Running the air conditioning has been difficult and often impossible because of daily power cuts, she said, leaving her home feeling like a sauna and her angry at the government. 'How are we supposed to live like this?' she asked. 'What are we supposed to use to clean our kids? To wash clothes?' Kaveh Madani, the director of the United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment and Health, said that a decade ago, when he served as deputy head of Iran's Department of Environment, the water shortages were mild and confined to remote areas. Now, he said, with Tehran and other major cities at risk of running dry, the situation can best be likened to a bankruptcy, but what is in a fast, apparently irreversible decline is not cash but water. Advertisement 'Responses are chaotic, urgent, confused and reactive,' Madani said in an interview. 'What worries me most is the inequity. Wealthier urban residents can afford water storage, tanker deliveries or other solutions, while the poor will bear the brunt of the suffering.' This article originally appeared in
