KABUL: Afghanistan’s Taliban government has outlawed public protest across the entire country under a sweeping new police law, in what rights organisations are calling one of the harshest measures imposed during five years of Taliban rule.
The legislation — known as the “shurta” law, using the Taliban’s preferred term for police — was approved by supreme leader Hibatullah Akhundzada and published in the official gazette on August 22, according to the Afghan Ministry of Justice. It runs to five chapters and 53 articles, with the Ministry of Interior designated as the implementing authority.
The central provision is Article 50, which directly prohibits any demonstration anywhere in Afghanistan. The text sets out no exceptions and no conditions under which authorities could permit a rally or public gathering of any kind.
Beyond the protest ban, the law substantially widens the authority of Taliban security forces. Officers are empowered to identify citizens, summon individuals for questioning, detain suspects, conduct searches and carry out surveillance. The document also details permissible instruments of force, listing water cannons, shields, batons, barriers, weapons and explosives.
Critically, the law extends the period a person can be held without charge from three days to ten — or longer with a court order.
On the question of corporal punishment, which remains widely used in Afghanistan, the legislation instructs officers that they may not strike prisoners with weapons such as sticks or wires without a court order. It does, however, permit them to use force to compel a suspect to repent, and states that officers are allowed to “use anger.”
Human Rights Watch condemned the law on Thursday, describing it as a “ruthless effort to suppress all dissent” by the Taliban administration. The organisation’s Asia director told AFP that the Taliban were tightening legislation out of fear of dissent.
Amnesty International called the police law “another sweeping assault on human rights in Afghanistan,” singling out the protest ban as “among its most egregious provisions.”
The practical effect may be more symbolic than operational, given how thoroughly public demonstration has already been suppressed. Protests have become rare in Afghanistan since the Taliban returned to power in August 2021. The group has repeatedly detained demonstrators — particularly women who took to the streets over restrictions on education, employment and freedom of expression.
The suppression has at times been lethal. A group of UN experts reported that at least two people were killed in June when security forces allegedly opened fire on a women’s rights rally in the western city of Herat.
The new law lands weeks after the five-year mark of Taliban rule, which fell on August 15. Human Rights Watch marked the anniversary by publishing a timeline of abuses, stating that the Taliban have “entrenched one of the world’s worst human rights crises” and systematically dismantled the rights of women and girls.
Afghanistan remains the only country in the world where girls are barred from education beyond the sixth grade. Women face severe restrictions on employment, movement and public expression, are required to travel with a male guardian, and may only be treated by female medical staff. The Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice has banned women’s voices from being heard reciting the Quran or singing in public.
The country is simultaneously in the grip of a severe humanitarian emergency, with close to 40 per cent of the population in urgent need of assistance — a crisis deepened by steep cuts in foreign donor funding and by large-scale forced returns of Afghan refugees from both Iran and Pakistan.
Enforcement patterns are already visible. Earlier this month, the Taliban intelligence agency detained two United Nations employees for 11 days without providing any reason for their arrest.
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