Herat, May 3 (APF): Taliban officials in Afghanistan’s most progressive city have told driving instructors to stop issuing licences to women, professionals from the sector told AFP.
\nWhile Afghanistan is a deeply conservative, patriarchal country, it is not uncommon for women to drive in larger cities — particularly Herat in the northwest, which has long been considered liberal by Afghan standards.<\/p>\n
“We have been verbally instructed to stop issuing licenses to women drivers … but not directed to stop women from driving in the city,” said Jan Agha Achakzai, the head of Herat’s Traffic Management Institute that oversees driving schools.<\/p>\n
Adila Adeel, a 29-year-old woman driving instructor who owns a training institute said the Taliban want to ensure that the next generation will not have the same opportunities as their mothers<\/p>\n
“We were told not to offer driving lessons and not to issue licenses,” she said.<\/p>\n
The insurgents-turned-rulers seized back control of the country in August last year, promising a softer rule than their last stint in power between 1996 and 2001, which was dominated by human rights abuses.<\/p>\n
But they have increasingly restricted the rights of Afghans, particularly girls and women who have been prevented from returning to secondary school and many government jobs.<\/p>\n
“I personally told a Taliban (guard) that it’s more comfortable for me to travel in my car than sit beside a taxi driver,” said Shaima Wafa as she drove to a local market to buy Eid al-Fitr gifts for her family.<\/p>\n
“I need to be able to take my family to a doctor in my car without waiting for my brother or husband to come home,” she said.<\/p>\n
Naim al-Haq Haqqani, who heads the provincial information and culture department, said no official order had been given.<\/p>\n
The Taliban have largely refrained from issuing national, written decrees, instead allowing local authorities to issue their own edicts, sometimes verbally.<\/p>\n
“It is not written on any car that it belongs only to men,” said Fereshteh Yaqoobi, a woman who has been driving for years.<\/p>\n
“In fact it is safer if a woman drives her own vehicle.”<\/p>\n
Zainab Mohseni, 26, has recently applied for a licence because she says women feel safer in their own cars than in taxis driven by male drivers.<\/p>\n
To Mohseni, the latest decision is just a fresh sign that the new regime will stop at nothing to prevent Afghan women from enjoying the few rights they have left.<\/p>\n
“Slowly, slowly the Taliban want to increase the restrictions on women,” she said.<\/p>\n
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Herat, May 3 (APF): Taliban officials in Afghanistan’s most progressive city have told driving instructors to stop issuing licences to women, professionals from the sector told AFP. While Afghanistan is a deeply conservative, patriarchal country, it is not uncommon for women to drive in larger cities — particularly Herat in the northwest, which has long […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-190197","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190197","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=190197"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190197\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=190197"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=190197"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=190197"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}