KABUL: The Taliban have ordered airlines in Afghanistan to stop women from flying unless accompanied by a male relative, in the latest crackdown on basic human rights by the country’s new rulers since seizing power.
The hard-line Islamists have imposed sweeping restrictions on freedoms, mostly targeting Afghan girls and women, and on Sunday also ordered local television channels to stop broadcasting BBC news bulletins.
Over the weekend, they also decreed that men and women could not visit parks in the capital on the same days.
After returning to power, the Taliban promised a softer version of the harsh rule that characterised their first stint in power, from 1996 to 2001, but restrictions have crept back — often implemented regionally at the whim of local officials.
Women are increasingly being shut out of public life — barred from school and most government jobs, and ordered to dress according to the Taliban’s strict interpretation of the Qur'an.
In their latest crackdown, the Taliban ordered Afghanistan’s Ariana Afghan Airlines and Kam Air to stop women from boarding flights unless they were escorted by a “mahram,” or adult male relative.
The decision was taken after a meeting on Thursday between representatives of the Taliban, the two airlines and Kabul airport immigration authorities, aviation officials said.
“No women are allowed to fly on any domestic or international flights without a male relative,” said a letter written by a senior official of Ariana Afghan Airlines to his staff, a copy of which was obtained by AFP.
A spokesman for the Taliban’s religious enforcers, the Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, denied ordering the flight ban, but two travel agents AFP contacted confirmed they had stopped issuing tickets to solo women travelers.
It was not clear if the edict would affect foreigners, although local media reported that an Afghan woman with a US passport was prevented from flying last week.
“Some women who were traveling without a male relative were not allowed to board a Kam Air flight from Kabul to Islamabad on Friday,” a passenger on the flight said.
The Taliban have already banned inter-city road trips for women traveling alone, but until now they were free to take flights.
The flight ban came as the vice ministry ordered that men and women should not visit parks in Kabul on the same days.
Women are now permitted to visit parks only on Sundays, Mondays and Tuesdays, while the remaining days are reserved for men, a ministry notification said.
“It is not the Islamic Emirate’s order but our God’s order that men and women who are strangers to each other should not gather at one place,” Mohammad Yahya Aref, an official at the ministry, said.
The new restriction on women follows Wednesday’s shutdown of all girls’ secondary schools just hours after they were allowed to reopen for the first time since August.
Tens of thousands of girls had flocked back to class, but officials ordered them home just hours into the day, triggering international outrage.
Taliban sources said that the decision was taken after a closed-door meeting of the movement’s top leaders last week in Kandahar, the de facto power center of the group.
Several Afghan women activists have warned of nationwide protests if the schools were not open within a week.
Rina Amiri, the US special envoy to Afghanistan, said repressing Afghan women and girls was no substitute for governance.
“Create a culture of hope rather than one of fear,” she said on Twitter.
The Taliban appear also to have set their sights on local media networks, which flourished under the previous US-backed regimes.
On Sunday, the authorities ordered the BBC’s television partners in Afghanistan to stop broadcasting news bulletins in Pashto, Persian and Uzbek.
“Since the foreign TV channels are broadcast from abroad, the Islamic Emirate has no access to control their contents,” government spokesman Inamullah Samangani said.
The Taliban have already ordered women journalists working in Afghan television networks to wear hijabs, and stopped channels from broadcasting foreign dramas.
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Taliban ban Afghan women flying alone in latest setback on rights
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Taliban ban Afghan women flying alone in latest setback on rights
- Hard-line Islamists have imposed sweeping restrictions on freedoms, mostly targeting Afghan girls and women
- Women are increasingly being shut out of public life – barred from school and most government jobs
Ukraine businesses struggle to cope as Russian attacks bring power cuts and uncertainty
KYIV: It is pre-dawn in the historic Podil district of the Ukraine capital, Kyiv, and warm light from the Spelta bakery-bistro’s window pierces the darkness outside. On a wooden surface dusted with flour, the baker Oleksandr Kutsenko skilfully divides and shapes soft, damp pieces of dough. As he shoves the first loaves into the oven, a sweet, delicate aroma of fresh bread fills the space.
Seconds later the lights go out, the ovens switch off and darkness envelops the room. Kutsenko, 31, steps outside into the freezing night, switches on a large rectangular generator and the power kicks back in. It’s a pattern that will be repeated many times as the business struggles to keep working through the power outages caused by Russia’s bombing campaign on Ukraine’s energy grid.
“It’s now more than impossible to imagine a Ukrainian business operating without a generator,” said Olha Hrynchuk, the co-founder and head baker of Spelta.
The cost of purchasing and operating generators to overcome power outages is just one of many challenges facing Ukrainian businesses after nearly four years of war. Acute labor shortages due to mobilization and war-related migration, security risks, declining purchasing power and complicated logistics add to the pressure, officials say.
Hrynchuk, 28, opened the bakery 10 months after Russia launched its full-scale invasion in 2022. That winter was the first year Russia targeted Ukraine’s energy system. Hrynchuk says they barely know what it is to work under “normal” conditions, but have never faced the challenges they do now.
Production is entirely dependent on electricity and the generator burns about 700 hryvnias ($16) worth of fuel per hour.
“We run on a generator for 10 to 12 hours a day. You have no fixed schedule — you have to adapt and refuel it at the same time,” Hrynchuk said.
‘Operate at a loss’
Olha Nasonova, 52, who is head of the Restaurants of Ukraine analytical center, says the industry is experiencing its most difficult period of the past 20 years.
While businesses were prepared for electricity cuts, no one expected such a cold winter and it’s been especially tough for small cafés and family-run establishments, because they have the least financial resources.
The “Best Way to Cup” project, which has two venues and roasts and grinds its own coffee, is on the brink of permanent closure. Co-founder Yana Bilym, 33, who opened the cafe in May, said a Russian attack shattered all its windows and glass doors in August. Bilym said the cost of renovation was 150,000 hryvnias (about $3,400), half of which she financed with a bank loan that she only recently finished repaying.
Last month, after several consecutive large-scale Russian attacks on the energy sector, her entire building lost its water supply, and soon after the sewer system stopped working.
“We were forced to close. We believe it’s temporary. Businesses in December and January, unfortunately, operate at a loss,” Bilym said.
Now she has to regularly check the coffee machine and the specialty refrigerators, which she fears may not withstand the cold. Bilym hopes the closure is short-term. Her husband volunteered to serve in the military on the front line and she wants him to have somewhere to come back to when he returns to civilian life.
Generators are expensive to run
Many businesses have become a lifeline for communities struggling with plunging temperatures. Ukraine’s government has allowed some firms to operate during curfew hours in the energy emergency as “Points of Invincibility,” allowing access to free electricity to charge phones and power banks, drink tea and have some respite from the cold.
Tetiana Abramova, 61, is a founder of the Rito Group, a clothing company that has been producing designer knitwear for men and women since 1991, the year Ukraine became independent.
It participates in Ukraine Fashion Week, the country’s biggest fashion show, and exports garments to the United States. Abramova took out a loan in 2022 to purchase a powerful 35-kilowatt generator costing 500,000 hryvnias ($11,500) to keep the business running during blackouts and a wood-fired boiler for heating.
“At work we have heat, we have water, we have light — and we have each other,” she said.
But it’s not easy. Operating on generators is 15 percent–20 percent more expensive than using regular electricity. As a result, production costs are currently about 15 percent higher than normal. Added to that, customer numbers have dropped by about 40 percent as many people have left the country, so the focus is now on attracting new clients through online sales.
“Profitability has fallen by around 50 percent, partly due to power outages,” she said. “This affects both the volume and efficiency of our work. We simply cannot operate as much as we used to.”
‘Main goal is to survive’
A macroeconomic forecast by the Kyiv School of Economics for the first quarter of 2026 says strikes on the energy system are currently the most acute short-term risk to the country’s GDP. The analysis says if business manages to adapt, output losses could be limited to around 1 percent or 2 percent of GDP. But if the energy system failures are prolonged it could lead to larger losses, of as much as 2 percent or 3 percent of GDP.
Abramova, an entrepreneur with more than 30 years of experience, says she spent nearly 100,000 hryvnias ($2,300) over two months on generator servicing to maintain production. But she cannot pass all those costs on to retailers.
“For us now, the main goal is not to be the most efficient, but to survive,” Abramova said.
Seconds later the lights go out, the ovens switch off and darkness envelops the room. Kutsenko, 31, steps outside into the freezing night, switches on a large rectangular generator and the power kicks back in. It’s a pattern that will be repeated many times as the business struggles to keep working through the power outages caused by Russia’s bombing campaign on Ukraine’s energy grid.
“It’s now more than impossible to imagine a Ukrainian business operating without a generator,” said Olha Hrynchuk, the co-founder and head baker of Spelta.
The cost of purchasing and operating generators to overcome power outages is just one of many challenges facing Ukrainian businesses after nearly four years of war. Acute labor shortages due to mobilization and war-related migration, security risks, declining purchasing power and complicated logistics add to the pressure, officials say.
Hrynchuk, 28, opened the bakery 10 months after Russia launched its full-scale invasion in 2022. That winter was the first year Russia targeted Ukraine’s energy system. Hrynchuk says they barely know what it is to work under “normal” conditions, but have never faced the challenges they do now.
Production is entirely dependent on electricity and the generator burns about 700 hryvnias ($16) worth of fuel per hour.
“We run on a generator for 10 to 12 hours a day. You have no fixed schedule — you have to adapt and refuel it at the same time,” Hrynchuk said.
‘Operate at a loss’
Olha Nasonova, 52, who is head of the Restaurants of Ukraine analytical center, says the industry is experiencing its most difficult period of the past 20 years.
While businesses were prepared for electricity cuts, no one expected such a cold winter and it’s been especially tough for small cafés and family-run establishments, because they have the least financial resources.
The “Best Way to Cup” project, which has two venues and roasts and grinds its own coffee, is on the brink of permanent closure. Co-founder Yana Bilym, 33, who opened the cafe in May, said a Russian attack shattered all its windows and glass doors in August. Bilym said the cost of renovation was 150,000 hryvnias (about $3,400), half of which she financed with a bank loan that she only recently finished repaying.
Last month, after several consecutive large-scale Russian attacks on the energy sector, her entire building lost its water supply, and soon after the sewer system stopped working.
“We were forced to close. We believe it’s temporary. Businesses in December and January, unfortunately, operate at a loss,” Bilym said.
Now she has to regularly check the coffee machine and the specialty refrigerators, which she fears may not withstand the cold. Bilym hopes the closure is short-term. Her husband volunteered to serve in the military on the front line and she wants him to have somewhere to come back to when he returns to civilian life.
Generators are expensive to run
Many businesses have become a lifeline for communities struggling with plunging temperatures. Ukraine’s government has allowed some firms to operate during curfew hours in the energy emergency as “Points of Invincibility,” allowing access to free electricity to charge phones and power banks, drink tea and have some respite from the cold.
Tetiana Abramova, 61, is a founder of the Rito Group, a clothing company that has been producing designer knitwear for men and women since 1991, the year Ukraine became independent.
It participates in Ukraine Fashion Week, the country’s biggest fashion show, and exports garments to the United States. Abramova took out a loan in 2022 to purchase a powerful 35-kilowatt generator costing 500,000 hryvnias ($11,500) to keep the business running during blackouts and a wood-fired boiler for heating.
“At work we have heat, we have water, we have light — and we have each other,” she said.
But it’s not easy. Operating on generators is 15 percent–20 percent more expensive than using regular electricity. As a result, production costs are currently about 15 percent higher than normal. Added to that, customer numbers have dropped by about 40 percent as many people have left the country, so the focus is now on attracting new clients through online sales.
“Profitability has fallen by around 50 percent, partly due to power outages,” she said. “This affects both the volume and efficiency of our work. We simply cannot operate as much as we used to.”
‘Main goal is to survive’
A macroeconomic forecast by the Kyiv School of Economics for the first quarter of 2026 says strikes on the energy system are currently the most acute short-term risk to the country’s GDP. The analysis says if business manages to adapt, output losses could be limited to around 1 percent or 2 percent of GDP. But if the energy system failures are prolonged it could lead to larger losses, of as much as 2 percent or 3 percent of GDP.
Abramova, an entrepreneur with more than 30 years of experience, says she spent nearly 100,000 hryvnias ($2,300) over two months on generator servicing to maintain production. But she cannot pass all those costs on to retailers.
“For us now, the main goal is not to be the most efficient, but to survive,” Abramova said.
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