In Herat, when a woman wants to ask the price of a pair of shoes, silence falls between her and the shopkeeper. She can no longer simply say: “How much is this?” The Taliban have recently issued a decree: women’s voices must not be heard in shops or public spaces.
At first glance, it may look like a minor restriction. But for Afghan women, it means the erasure of the last traces of their presence in society.
A Voice That Must Not Be Heard
Maryam, a 29-year-old woman from Herat, recalls:
“I always went to the bazaar myself. I bought clothes for my children, bargained with sellers, sometimes even laughed and joked while shopping. But now, when I go, my teenage son has to talk to the shopkeeper. It feels like I don’t exist. I’m just a shadow moving behind the burqa.”
This new ban has changed her life, and the lives of thousands of others, in strange and painful ways. Denied education, denied work, denied leisure, women are now denied even the simple act of using their own voices to buy bread.
Silent Bazaars
Herat’s once-bustling marketplace now feels heavy with silence. The chatter and laughter of women have been replaced with an oppressive quiet. Shopkeepers admit that business has changed. One vendor explains:
“Women were our main customers. They asked about prices, they bought things. Now they either don’t come, or if they come, they say nothing. The market feels lifeless.”
Gender Apartheid in Practice
Step by step, the Taliban have walled women out of public life: banning them from schools and universities, barring them from government offices and NGOs, closing parks and gyms. Now comes the erasure of the voice itself.
This is not a mere regulation—it is part of a system of gender apartheid. In this system, a woman is not considered a citizen, not even a full human being. She is a being confined to four walls, whose very voice in public is labeled “impure.”
Living in Forced Silence
A person’s voice is part of their identity. To strip it away is to amputate part of the self. Maryam says:
“I feel imprisoned. Even at home I speak less. If my voice is a crime outside, then inside I lose my confidence too. Sometimes I tell myself, maybe I really don’t have any rights at all.”
This silence spreads like a disease. It does not only harm women—it poisons families. Children grow up watching their mothers silenced, learning that to be a woman means to be mute, invisible, erased.
he Cost Women Pay
In Kandahar, the birthplace of the Taliban, the restrictions bite even harder. Zainab, a local woman, recounts:
“I spoke a few words in a shop while buying vegetables. A Taliban member threatened me: ‘Be quiet! A woman’s voice is forbidden.’ My heart trembled. For a moment I believed it—that my voice was somehow sinful. But then I asked myself: How can the voice of a human being be a sin?”
A World That Doesn’t Listen
Women’s rights activists warn that this ban should sound a global alarm. Yet, history suggests the world prefers watching to acting. One exiled activist put it bluntly:
“We Afghan women are being buried alive in a silent grave. If the world stays quiet, the Taliban will succeed in erasing us.”
Silence or Resistance?
And yet, Afghan women have shown again and again that they will not be silenced forever. If they cannot speak in markets, they will shout online. If they cannot be heard inside Afghanistan, they will tell their stories in exile.
Maryam insists:
“The Taliban may silence our voices in the bazaar, but they cannot silence our dreams. We speak for justice and freedom, even if the world refuses to listen.”
An Open Ending
The ban on women’s voices in Herat and Kandahar is not a local order—it is a symbol of the Taliban’s wider project to erase women. It seeks to turn them into beings without voice, without name, without face.
But history offers a warning to tyrants: no power has ever managed to silence women’s voices forever. If they are muted in the markets of Afghanistan, they will echo in the streets of the world.
