But she cannot take them out of the country to finish their education because she is a divorced single mother and women are prohibited from traveling long distances without a male “guardian” accompanying them. Wazhma* lies awake worrying about what she will do if her sick, elderly mother needs emergency medical attention at night. Her father is dead, she is single and her teenage sister is disabled. She is terrified that as women go out alone at night, even on the way to a hospital, they would be stopped and harassed by the Taliban. Most Afghan women have had to learn to endure new restrictions and controls over the past year, but there is one group whose lives have been particularly restricted. Women who live in households without a close male relative, whether through tragedy, circumstance or choice, are now in a legal limbo because they have no close male relative to act as a mahram or “guardian”. In the Taliban’s extremist reimagining of Afghanistan, women are not fully autonomous citizens of their own country. Instead, a man is held responsible for their public presence, including how they dress and where they travel. Officially, any woman traveling more than 75 kilometers (46 miles) or leaving the country needs a mahram. If a woman is found to have violated Taliban dress codes, their male relatives face punishment. The rules are enforced sporadically, with some officials turning a blind eye to individual trips. Raihana* was barred from boarding a plane earlier this year for a work trip, but says the women have since been allowed back into the air on their own. “It was in March, they had just released the new announcement that no woman can travel to another city without a mahram. I was not allowed to board the plane and had to wait at the airport for two to three hours, with 20 or 30 other women,” she said. “That went on for a few weeks and then they took it down [the rule]. Now we can travel again.” But many others across Afghanistan have reported restrictions on women’s movements that go far beyond official regulations. They told the Guardian that Taliban fighters have banned them from even short journeys, including commuting to work, sometimes using indirect tactics such as threatening drivers who pick up single female passengers. A man walks past a vandalized mural depicting a group of women in Kabul. Photo: Nava Jamshidi/Getty Images Health workers said they had personal experience of women not accessing medical care without a mahram in at least two districts, one in central Afghanistan’s Bamiyan province and one in southern Helmand. These extreme checks fuel the fears of women like Wazhma, even for trips that should be legal, such as taking her mother to the hospital in Kabul. He once held a senior government job, traveling abroad and extensively throughout Afghanistan. Since the Taliban ordered most female civil servants to stay away from work and then advised women not to leave the house except in emergencies, she can count on her hands the number of times she has left her neighborhood. “Because of my mother’s condition, I want to take her abroad to a better hospital, but I dare not. I know if I travel far I’m likely to be stopped,” he said, adding that he finds the situation unbearable. “I can’t stand this. I am a person who studied and worked all these years, now an illiterate can stop me, ask questions, argue with me and I can’t argue with him.” Archie Bland and Nimo Omer take you to the top stories and what they mean, free every weekday morning Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain information about charities, online advertising and content sponsored by external parties. For more information, see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and Google’s Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. Students who have won scholarships abroad are gripped with anxiety over whether they will be allowed to board their flights without a mahram, WhatsApp group chats shared with the Guardian showed. A husband, brother, father, son or nephew can fulfill the role of mahram. But after decades of war, Afghanistan has about 2 million widows who may not have a living father, brother or son able or willing to serve as their mahram. Divorced and single women face similar problems. Some women gamble to escape detection, ignoring rules they say make no sense. “I’ll take the risk and leave, and I know they’ll react, but what should I do?” said a young activist, who still travels alone for work. “If I don’t have a mahram, where can I find one?” I can’t just buy one or ask a Talib to be my mahram.” The Taliban’s solution to the conflict between laws that deny women autonomy and the daily struggles of many women without guardians is to deny that there is a problem. “They have to have someone,” Sadeq Akif Muhajir, a spokesman for the ministry for the propagation of virtue and prevention of vice, told Rukhsana Media recently. “They have brothers or nephews.” Hasina has a brother and Wazhma an uncle who could be their official guardian, but both have made it clear they want no financial responsibility for their relatives and will not accompany them to a border crossing to leave the country . “He is not here to take any responsibility or support us, he is here for his own goal and when it is achieved he will return,” Wazhma said of her uncle, who recently returned from Iran to sell her a shared house family. she lives with her mom and sister since her father’s death. Officially, any woman traveling more than 75 kilometers (46 miles) or leaving the country needs a mahram. Photo: Nava Jamshidi/Getty Images Others have increased family members, but at a price for all. Camila* lived only with her sister and mother until last August. Now her nephew, 17, sleeps at their house, even though he misses his mother who is on the other side of town. “Before the Taliban came, we lived here alone,” Camila said. “We were not afraid of anything. Now it has become very scary for us, we know that the Taliban only values men.” Mahram rule also contributed to an economic disaster for families without male adults amid a wider economic collapse. Regulations make it harder or scarier for women to find work or commute to work. Hasina used to make a decent living as a seamstress but now she is struggling because she is afraid to go out on her own. “I wait for customers to come here so I can sew their clothes at home,” she says. Inevitably her income has fallen. “I dare not go far from this road and I have not gone beyond this area since the Taliban came. I heard that when they find out about families without a mahram, they take wives. Even if I found a job outside the home, I wouldn’t take it.” It also distorts family relationships. An unfortunate minority are forced to rely on their young sons to fulfill the role of ‘protector’, distorting the normal dynamic between mother and child. “According to Taliban rules a boy over seven can be a mahram; isn’t it silly to think that a seven-year-old can defend his mother or stop something bad?” said Sahar*, a widow and mother of seven girls and three boys, the eldest just 12 years old. “They value a boy and consider a woman as nothing. They want to isolate us. And [being given this power] affects boys. You can feel it even in our family,” he says. “Islam gives many rights to women, but the Taliban have taken them all away. “Right now, Afghan women are all alone, even if you want to support us, you can’t. Only we know and our God knows what we are going through.”
- Names have been changed
