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In a case captured by the BBC, an 18-year-old woman identified only as Tuba sought a divorce from her abusive husband before Jawzjan province governor Abdullah Sarhadi, arguing that her honour and dignity had already been ruined. Sarhadi, a former Taliban commander who destroyed the Bamiyan Buddha statues in the 1990s and spent time in Guantanamo, described women as mindless and deficient in intellect according to the report. He offered the couple accommodation in his compound but warned against any beating that could result in jail time, while the husband demanded four times the original marriage sum for the separation. The BBC noted that under the Taliban’s system women often must return marriage gifts and require husband consent for court proceedings.
The BBC gained rare access to influential Taliban figures over two years across locations including Sheberghan, Kabul and Kandahar. The news organisation reported a recent ban on smartphones for officials that has slowed communications and led some administrators to use older devices with tiny screens. Press spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid, whose real name is Tahir Shah Seddiqi, told the BBC that all policies must be seen through a Sharia lens and that women’s work could lead to immorality, while stating that female education remained under discussion for an appropriate Islamic solution. Journalists were sometimes summoned by the intelligence service known as Estikhbaraat during their reporting.
Restrictions have tightened in Kandahar, the Taliban’s traditional heartland, where the BBC observed requirements for men to wear beards and prohibitions on music, radio broadcasts of women’s voices and certain filming. The report described visits to cave networks once used by fighters, now shown by former insurgents who hold official positions, including one former suicide operations planner now serving as a deputy prisons head. Locals interviewed by the BBC spoke of persistent poverty, unemployment and inadequate services such as water and roads despite official claims of addressing these issues.
A woman named Hoda, who participated in protests against the policies and saw friends jailed, told the BBC that the Taliban are scared of educated women because they could raise wise sons who might challenge the group. In a separate tribal gathering covered by the report, a participant named Sultan Mohammad Talaee was silenced after requesting that schools and education be opened to all, citing it as a great work for Afghanistan and an Islamic obligation. The BBC said such encounters revealed how officials avoid discussing past violence including thousands of deaths from suicide attacks during the insurgency.
These on-the-ground observations align with wider international assessments of Taliban rule. UN Women data shows that since August 2021 the de facto authorities have issued more than 100 decrees affecting women and girls, stripping them of rights and institutionalising discrimination that has erased them from much of public life. A March 2026 UN Human Rights report found that the cascade of edicts has had a crushing impact, with women and girls facing criminalisation of their presence in public spaces, barriers to healthcare, civic participation and freedom of movement according to the assessment.
Human Rights Watch has documented further intensification through 2024 and 2025, including a morality law that prohibits women from travelling or using public transport without a male guardian, requires face covering in public and bans them from singing or allowing their voices to be heard outside the home. World Bank data places more than half the population below the poverty line with 23.7 million people in need of humanitarian aid in 2024, a situation compounded by restrictions limiting women’s economic participation and access to services. UN agencies have reported that three in four Afghans struggle to provide basic needs amid the ongoing policies.
