After Education, Restaurants And Salons, Taliban Ban Afghan Women From Visiting Popular National Park

Taliban have now banned the Afghanistan women from visiting a popular national park in the country, saying that women here have not been following the hijab rules properly.

Band-e-Amir National Park in Bamiyan province, Afghanistan.

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In yet another ban, the Taliban have prohibited Afghanistan women from visiting the popular national park in the country. The present Taliban government has asked women to not visit the Band-e-Amir National Park in Bamiyan province, reported BBC. Afghanistan's acting minister of virtue and vice, Mohammad Khaled Hanafi, reasoned that women have not been observing hijab inside the park, the report added. 

Notably, the Taliban earlier banned women from pursuing education and then from visiting outdoor restaurants amid a set of prohibitory orders since it took over the country in 2021. 

Hanafi called on religious clerics and security agencies to not allow women from entering until a solution was found. Band-e-Amir became Afghanistan's first national park in 2009 and is a significant tourist attraction, becoming Afghanistan's first national park in 2009. 

The minister added that going to the park to sightsee "was not obligatory", Afghan agency Tolo News reported, as per BBC. The report further added that religious clerics in the region said the women who were visiting the park and not following the rules were visitors to the area. 

"There are complaints about lack of hijab or bad hijab, these are not Bamiyan residents. They come here from other places," Sayed Nasrullah Waezi, head of the Bamiyan Shia Ulema Council told Tolo news, reported BBC. 

Now, the fresh ban will prevent many women from being able to enjoy the park. According to BBC, UNESCO describes the park as a "naturally created group of lakes with special geological formations and structure, as well as natural and unique beauty". 

Meanwhile, former Afghan MP Mariam Solaimankhil shared a poem on X (formerly Twitter), about the ban and wrote "we'll return, I'm sure of it". 

As per BBC, the UN Special Rapporteur on human rights in Afghanistan, Richard Bennett, asked why stopping women from visiting Band-e-Amir "is necessary to comply with Sharia and Afghan culture?". 

Taliban have a history of implementing bans on women doing certain activities on what it calls a temporary prohibition. Most recently, the Taliban ordered the hair and beauty salons in Afghanistan to shut and also stopped women from sitting the national university entrance exams.