In a new act limiting individual liberties, the Taliban ordered merchants in Herat, western Afghanistan, to cut off the heads of the mannequins in their stores.
A video showing the decapitation process has been circulating on social media. In the image, a man is shown using a saw to remove the heads of at least a dozen mannequins.
“We asked traders to cut off the heads of the mannequins because it is against sharia [lei islâmica estrita]”, Aziz Rahman, head of the Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice — a kind of political police — told the AFP news agency.
“If they just cover their heads or cover the mannequin, the angel of Allah will not enter the store or their home to bless them,” continued Rahman, adding that merchants pledged obedience to the determination.
The order is limited to Herat, the country’s third-largest city, which was once considered the cultural capital of Afghanistan. Since the Taliban regained power, however, Herat has also been the chosen city for displaying the bodies of alleged executed criminals to “set an example”.
Islamic law prohibits human representations, so on a more radical interpretation, mannequins constitute a violation. During the first regime at the head of Afghanistan in the 1990s, the fundamentalist group destroyed, for example, several historic statues of Buddha.
Still in the field of customs, another video, which shows members of the regime pouring several barrels of alcoholic beverages into a channel, also had repercussions on social media. In a statement, the Taliban Directorate of General Intelligence said that 3,000 liters of beverages were seized and destroyed in one district of Kabul.
The sale and consumption of alcohol were already prohibited by the government before the Taliban, but the fundamentalist group also applies, in this case, the strictest view of sharia, intensifying the repression.
When Western troops left the country for good in August, the Taliban reassumed power and promised more moderation — a promise less out of conviction than out of attempts to improve its international image and receive foreign aid.
In practice, however, what is seen is a new wave of rights being taken away, especially for women and girls. Last month, for example, the regime banned women from traveling long distances across the country without the company of a man.
Women were also prohibited from playing sports in which they have their bodies exposed, they can only study if they are in spaces separate from men, and actresses and journalists are required to wear veils in TV broadcasts.
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