Taliban Detains More Than 10 In Ghor Over Alleged Opposition Ties, Say Sources

The Gender in Humanitarian Action Working Group and the Humanitarian Access Working Group published the report on Wednesday, examining the impact of Taliban restrictions on women working in aid organisations.

The findings are based on a survey of 122 humanitarian organisations operating across all 34 provinces of Afghanistan. The report identifies funding cuts, the dismissal of female staff, tighter operational restrictions and acceptance of Taliban conditions for women’s employment as its main findings.

It shows that the highest levels of restrictions on humanitarian organisations and female staff were reported in a handful of provinces.

Herat reported the highest rate at 36%, followed by Kabul with 31%, Nangarhar with 22%, Kandahar with 20% and Kunar with 17%.

The report presents the findings of the fifteenth round of the Gender in Humanitarian Action and Humanitarian Access Working Group survey.

It found that 56 percent of organisations had dismissed Afghan female employees because of funding cuts, while 46 percent said women could no longer attend offices as they had previously.

The report highlights that the education and health sectors have been most affected by restrictions preventing women from working. It also found that 45 percent of organisations were still trying to continue operations with both female and male staff.

Some 16% of women employed by aid organisations are now working from home following Taliban restrictions, while 61% of organisations said female staff required a male guardian to accompany them on work-related travel.

The Gender in Humanitarian Action Working Group is a humanitarian coordination mechanism bringing together the United Nations, international and national NGOs, and other humanitarian organisations in Afghanistan.

The Humanitarian Access Working Group coordinates issues related to humanitarian access among the UN, NGOs and other humanitarian actors.

According to the survey, 49% of organisations said their female staff had experienced increased anxiety and security concerns because of Taliban restrictions on movement and dress.

Some organisations also reported that women were being stopped by officials from the Taliban’s Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice while travelling to work.

Earlier, UN Women warned that cuts in international aid were pushing organisations supporting women in crisis-affected countries, including Afghanistan, to the brink of closure.

According to the witnesses, British soldiers placed Afghan detainees on forklifts, raised them into the air and drove at speed so they would fall off for entertainment.

The inquiry, established by the UK Ministry of Defence, is examining allegations of war crimes committed by British special forces in Afghanistan between 2010 and 2013, as well as subsequent attempts to conceal the alleged offences.

Monica Grenfell, who worked as a kitchen assistant and storekeeper alongside British special forces, told the inquiry that soldiers threw detainees from forklifts for amusement.

She said she remembered one soldier proudly describing how detainees were placed on a forklift, lifted into the air and then dropped by driving the vehicle quickly.

Grenfell compared the atmosphere within the unit to one in which soldiers had been “let off the leash”, adding that she felt there was no meaningful oversight of their conduct.

Christopher Green, a former British Army reservist who served between January and September 2012, was the second whistleblower to give evidence. He spoke about the killing of three farmer brothers in a village in Helmand province.

Green said his unit’s intelligence team was certain the three brothers were ordinary farmers and that there was no evidence they were Taliban commanders.

He added that when he tried to raise concerns about the killings with a liaison officer, he was met with hostility and accused of supporting the Taliban. He also said he was denied access to video footage of the operation.

According to Green, after the brothers were killed, the British government paid their mother £3,634 in financial assistance, which he said amounted to an acknowledgement that innocent civilians had been killed.

Responding to the allegations, a spokesperson for the UK Ministry of Defence said the government remained fully committed to supporting the independent Afghanistan Inquiry and thanked all current and former defence personnel who had provided evidence.

Hanafi said malicious groups were targeting the Taliban’s Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice because of what he described as its enforcement of Islamic law.

In mid-June, the ministry’s morality police launched an operation in Herat to detain women accused of failing to comply with the Taliban’s dress code. After dozens of women were detained, residents of the Jebrail area of Herat took to the streets on 9 June to protest the arrests.

The Taliban suppressed the demonstrations, and at least two teenage boys were killed. Following the protests, the group also launched a widespread campaign of arrests against demonstrators.

The United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) also confirmed the arrests of women in Herat. In a statement, it said the Taliban had detained at least 30 women on 27 and 28 May for allegedly failing to comply with the hijab requirement and had verbally threatened hundreds more.

The arrests drew widespread condemnation from human rights organisations and international bodies both inside and outside Afghanistan.

On Monday, the Taliban’s Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice published further excerpts from Hanafi’s speech in Herat.

In one part of his remarks, Hanafi said the media should be used as a platform under the current circumstances and urged media managers to apply the ministry’s morality law themselves before promoting it through their outlets.

The Taliban minister also claimed that human rights in Afghanistan were protected in accordance with Islamic principles. He said the international community should instead focus on countries where, according to him, human rights were being violated and people were deprived of even the most basic rights, including the right to life.

Downplaying the arrests of women and girls in Herat, Hanafi questioned why the deliberate killing of thousands of women and children elsewhere received less attention than the enforcement of the Taliban’s hijab rules. He claimed the issue of hijab was being distorted and exploited for political purposes.

The meeting, attended mainly by female representatives from the OIC’s 57 member states, is nearing the end of its second day in Islamabad.

Sources earlier told Afghanistan International that the OIC had asked the Taliban administration to send an authorised female official to the meeting. However, the Taliban had no woman in a senior position who could attend. Mujahid did not explain why the group had no representative at the conference.

In an audio message broadcast by the local Ariana News network, Mujahid claimed that women’s rights in Afghanistan were guaranteed “under Islamic law”.

Without naming any organisation, he said the Taliban administration could not grant women rights recommended by other bodies if those rights had “no place in Islam”, reflected Western culture or raised religious objections.

Mujahid said on Monday that the Taliban administration was made up of “a group of Islamic scholars” who understood Islamic rights better than others. “We assure you that our sisters in Afghanistan enjoy their rights under Islamic law,” he said.

He added that the Taliban supported OIC initiatives wherever they were carried out.

The ninth two-day ministerial conference on women in OIC member states opened in Islamabad on Sunday. It brought together 190 delegates, most of them women, from 57 countries, but no Taliban representative attended.

The conference agenda states that participants will also discuss the crisis in Afghanistan and restrictions on women’s and girls’ education.

The Taliban claims to protect women’s rights, although Afghanistan is currently the only country in the world where girls and women are barred from education beyond the sixth grade. The Taliban’s morality law also severely restricts women’s presence in public and describes their voices as something that must be concealed.

Women are also barred from most employment, apart from limited roles in education and healthcare.

The Taliban’s restrictions on Afghan women have repeatedly been condemned by the OIC and other international organisations, which have called for the protection of women’s fundamental rights in Afghanistan.

The Afghanistan Media Support Organisation (AMSO) published an analytical report titled Under the Shadow of Fear and Censorship on Sunday, saying its findings were based on information gathered from across Afghanistan between 10 June and 10 July 2026.

The report assesses the situation facing Afghan media in four areas: security and physical safety, administrative and professional challenges, technology, and ideological restrictions.

According to the report, journalists faced arbitrary arrests, mistreatment, beatings and security threats during the reporting period.

AMSO said some journalists were detained by Taliban intelligence after covering official events. Others, it said, were arrested and beaten over routine disputes, including disagreements about transport costs.

The organisation said journalists who were released from detention were pressured to remain silent about their treatment and discouraged from filing complaints or speaking publicly about their experiences. It said such practices had deepened fear and self-censorship among media workers.

In another section, AMSO criticised Taliban spokespersons for the way they disseminate information, saying many publish announcements late at night or through their personal social media accounts instead of using official channels during working hours.

According to the organisation, this practice has made access to information more difficult for journalists and, in some cases, has led to administrative disputes and salary deductions.

AMSO also reported increased interference by the Taliban’s Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice in media activities. According to the report, some radio stations received warnings about broadcasting female voices, while ministry inspectors continued conducting visits to media offices.

The organisation also said journalists continued to face pressure to grow beards and alter their appearance in line with Taliban directives.

The report further said the Taliban had warned journalists against publishing reports on Afghanistan’s economic difficulties, rising fuel prices, disputes among Taliban officials and details of security incidents in either the media or on social media.

According to AMSO, some journalists have been threatened with detention or suspension for publishing such material.

The organisation also described restrictions on the use of smartphones in several government offices as a serious obstacle to media work, saying the measure had significantly disrupted journalists’ access to information, communication with spokespersons and the production of video interviews.

In its conclusion, AMSO said Afghanistan’s media sector was facing a deep, widespread and multidimensional crisis.

The organisation warned that shrinking freedom of expression, the systematic restriction of access to information, growing security, economic and psychological pressure on journalists, and intensifying censorship posed a serious threat to the future of Afghanistan’s media and increased the risk of the gradual loss of professional journalists and media workers.