Taliban forbid women to visit celebrated national park

The Taliban has now banned women from a famous, family-filled national park because they are allegedly ditching their hijab once inside.

The Vice and Virtue Ministry of the regime that seized power in 2021 and is known for its atrocities and its ever-tightening restrictions on women said that failure to wear an Islamic head scarf was the culprit.

The list of things forbidden to women could read like an inverted Dr. Seuss title, “Oh the Places You Can’t Go”: higher education is banned, employment is off the table, beauty salons are closed, working out at a gym is off limits and most public spaces, including parks, are closed to women.

In this photo taken Tuesday, June 16, 2009, visitors enjoy the view of a lake in Band-e-Amir, in the central Afghanistan's province of Bamiyan. (Rahmat Gul/AP)

Now Band-e-Amir national park has been added to the list, in a move that also in effect bars families from the UNESCO site. Taliban security forces have been told to stop allowing women into one of the country’s most famous tourist attractions — an UNESCO World Heritage site known as Afghanistan’s Grand Canyon. It’s a series of mountain lakes connected by natural dams made of mineral deposits of travertine.

When it was established in 2009 in concert with the Wildlife Conservation Society, the park employed the country’s first-ever women park rangers, according to The Guardian.

“Women and our sisters cannot go to Band-e-Amir until we agree on a principle,” Vice and Virtue Minister Mohammad Khalid Hanafi said in remarks last week after visiting central Bamiyan province, where the park is located.

Ministry spokesman Molvi Mohammad Sadiq Akif shared a report of Hanafi’s remarks on Saturday, in which the minister directed not only security forces but also clerics and elders to enforce the ban.

The cascading collection of deep-blue high-mountain lakes became Afghanistan's first provisional national park in 2009. (Anonymous/ASSOCIATED PRESS)

“The security agencies, elders and the inspectors should take action in this regard,” he said, according to Afghan news channel Tolo news. “Going for sightseeing is not obligatory.”

The ban was revealed on Women’s Equality Day, noted Fereshta Abbasi of Human Rights Watch, calling the move a “total disrespect to the women of Afghanistan,” according to BBC News.

The United Nations and numerous human rights groups have already come down on the Taliban for their draconian restrictions on women. For many advocates, this latest ban crossed yet another line.

“Not content with depriving girls and women of education, employment, and free movement, the Taliban also want to take from them parks and sport and now even nature, as we see from this latest ban on women visiting Band-e-Amir,” said Heather Barr, associate women’s rights director of Human Rights Watch.

“Step by step, the walls are closing in on women as every home becomes a prison.”

With News Wire Services