Herat: The most progressive city in Taliban ‘Afghanistan’ has issued new rules for the driving instructors in which they banned issuing driving licenses to women.
While Afghanistan is a deeply traditional, patriarchal country, they are not so open-minded to allowing women to drive in larger cities– particularly Heart in the northwest, which has long been considered liberal by Afghan standards.
According to Jan Agha Achakzai, the head of Herat’s Traffic Management Institute that oversees driving schools, “We got verbal instructions to stop issuing licenses to women drivers, but not directed to stop women from driving in the city.
According to ‘Adila Adeel, one of 29 years old women who is also a driving instructor who owns a training institute, the Taliban want to give assurity that the next generation will not be going to face all these problems like their mothers.
She stated, “we were told not to offer driving lessons to women and not to issue them a license.”
The insurgents-turned-rulers seized back control of the country in August 2021, promising a more lenient rule than their last time in power between 1996 and 2001, defeated by human rights abuses.
However, they have increasingly banned the rights of Afghans, particularly girls and women who have been saved from returning to secondary school and many government jobs.
As per Shaima Wafa, “I told Taliban guard that it is more comfortable me to travel in my car rather than to sit beside a taxi driver as she was travelling to a local market in order to purchase Eid al-Fitr gifts for her family.
“Sometimes I have to carry my family to a doctor in my car without waiting for anyone like my brother or husband to come home,” she said.
Naim al-Haq Haqqani, who heads the regional information and culture department, said no official order had been given.
The Taliban have primarily refrained from issuing national, written rules instead of allowing local authorities to publish their mandates, sometimes verbally.
According to Fereshtah Yaqoobi, it is not written on any car that it is made for men; women have also been driving cars for years.
“It is safer if a woman drives her own car.”
Zainab Mohseni, 26, who recently applied for a licence because she believes women feel safer in their own cars rather than in taxis driven by male drivers.
