Taliban: Women who travel without hijab will no longer be allowed to travel alone.

In Afghanistan, the Taliban have said that women who travel medium and long distances will no longer be allowed to travel alone. It will now be mandatory to have a close male relative during the journey with him except for short distance journeys.
On Sunday, Taliban officials said women who want to make long journeys without close male relatives with them would not get transport facilities for the journey.
The Taliban’s Ministry of Virtue and Prevention of Evil has issued necessary instructions in this regard.
Ministry spokesman Sadiq Akif Muhajir told AFP news agency that now women who have covered distances of more than 72 kilometers will no longer have the facility to travel without any of their male relatives.
Apart from this, it has been told that the vehicle owners have been told not to allow any woman to sit in their vehicles without wearing a hijab.
However, human rights activists are opposing these decisions of the Taliban. They argue that the Taliban’s interpretation of the hijab is still unclear.
It is also forbidden to play music in vehicles.
Human rights activists say the interpretation of the hijab can vary from covering the hair to covering the face or the whole body. He also argues that since most Afghan women have already tied scarves on their heads, there was no need for these instructions.
In addition to all this, the Taliban have also taken important decisions regarding music and television serials.
He has said that from now on people should not play music in their vehicles. Earlier, the Taliban had issued instructions to TV channels to stop showing serials and dramas in which women acted on their channels.
Apart from this, women TV journalists associated with the news were told that they cannot present programs on TV without wearing a hijab.
It is worth noting that the Taliban recaptured Afghanistan on 15 August this year. However, after the capture, he had promised that he would not follow strict policies regarding women as in his earlier reign.
‘Taliban has not kept its promises’
The situation in the Taliban has been closely watched by BBC World Service editor for South Asia Affairs Ethirajan Anbarasan.
He says, since mid-August, when the Taliban came to power in Afghanistan, it has been gradually increasing restrictions on Afghan women.
Secondary schools for girls are still closed in most of the provinces since the fall of the old Afghan government. About a month after the Taliban took over the country, the girls were allowed to study, but imposed many conditions. In this, instructions were given to make arrangements for girls in the class to sit separately from the boys and on the other side of the screen.
Although local Taliban officials have agreed to reopen schools in several provinces of Afghanistan, girls there are still out of school.
After the return of the Taliban, the financial condition of Afghanistan has become very bad at this time due to the closure of financial aid to Western countries. Many media reports said that this country could soon be in the grip of severe hunger and poverty.
To avoid this, the Taliban had appealed to the powerful countries of the world to at least lift the ban on its bank accounts. Apart from this, many organizations have also appealed to the world for the help of Afghanistan.
According to Ethirajan Anbarasan, the donor countries have told the Taliban that they will get financial help only if they respect women’s rights.
In the midst of such circumstances, in early December the Taliban issued a decree in the name of its supreme leader, giving instructions to enforce women’s rights. However, there was no mention of girls’ education anywhere in those instructions.