Afghan Taliban order women’s beauty parlors to close

By AFP 4 July 2023, 8:08 pm

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A youth walks past a closed beauty salon with images of women defaced at Shahr-e Naw area in Kabul on July 4, 2023. (Wakil Kohsar/AFP)

Afghanistan’s Taliban authorities have ordered beauty parlors across the country to shut within a month, the vice ministry confirms, the latest curb to squeeze women out of public life.

The order will force the closure of thousands of businesses run by women — often the only source of income for households — and outlaw one of the few remaining opportunities for them to socialize away from home.

“I think it would have been good if women did not exist at all in this society,” says the manager of a Kabul parlor who asked not to be identified.

“I am saying this now: I wish I did not exist. I wish we were not born in Afghanistan, or were not from Afghanistan.”