HERAT, Afghanistan: Taliban officials in Afghanistan’s most progressive city have told driving instructors to stop issuing licenses to women, professionals from the sector said.
While Afghanistan is a deeply conservative, patriarchal country, it is not uncommon for women to drive in larger cities — particularly Herat in the northwest, which has long been considered liberal by Afghan standards.
“We have been verbally instructed to stop issuing licenses to women drivers ... but not directed to stop women from driving in the city,” said Jan Agha Achakzai, the head of Herat’s Traffic Management Institute that oversees driving schools.
Adila Adeel, a 29-year-old woman driving instructor who owns a training institute said the Taliban want to ensure that the next generation will not have the same opportunities as their mothers.
“We were told not to offer driving lessons and not to issue licenses,” she said.
The insurgents-turned-rulers seized back control of the country in August last year, promising a softer rule than their last stint in power between 1996 and 2001, which was dominated by human rights abuses.
But they have increasingly restricted the rights of Afghans, particularly girls and women who have been prevented from returning to secondary school and many government jobs.
“I personally told a Taliban (guard) that it’s more comfortable for me to travel in my car than sit beside a taxi driver,” said Shaima Wafa as she drove to a local market to buy Eid Al-Fitr gifts for her family.
“I need to be able to take my family to a doctor in my car without waiting for my brother or husband to come home,” she said.
Naim Al-Haq Haqqani, who heads the provincial information and culture department, said no official order had been given.
The Taliban have largely refrained from issuing national, written decrees, instead allowing local authorities to issue their own edicts, sometimes verbally.
“It is not written on any car that it belongs only to men,” said Fereshteh Yaqoobi, a woman who has been driving for years.
“In fact it is safer if a woman drives her own vehicle.”
Zainab Mohseni, 26, has recently applied for a license because she says women feel safer in their own cars than in taxis driven by male drivers.
To Mohseni, the latest decision is just a fresh sign that the new regime will stop at nothing to prevent Afghan women from enjoying the few rights they have left.
“Slowly, slowly the Taliban want to increase the restrictions on women,” she said.
Afghan women defend right to drive as Taliban curb licenses
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Afghan women defend right to drive as Taliban curb licenses
- ‘We have been verbally instructed to stop issuing licenses to women drivers ... but not directed to stop women from driving in the city’
Italian police fire tear gas as protesters clash near Winter Olympics hockey venue
- Police vans behind a temporary metal fence secured the road to the athletes’ village, but the protest veered away, continuing on a trajectory toward the Santagiulia venue
MILAN: Italian police fired tear gas and a water cannon at dozens of protesters who threw firecrackers and tried to access a highway near a Winter Olympics venue on Saturday.
The brief confrontation came at the end of a peaceful march by thousands against the environmental impact of the Games and the presence of US agents in Italy.
Police held off the violent demonstrators, who appeared to be trying to reach the Santagiulia Olympic ice hockey rink, after the skirmish. By then, the larger peaceful protest, including families with small children and students, had dispersed.
Earlier, a group of masked protesters had set off smoke bombs and firecrackers on a bridge overlooking a construction site about 800 meters (a half-mile) from the Olympic Village that’s housing around 1,500 athletes.
Police vans behind a temporary metal fence secured the road to the athletes’ village, but the protest veered away, continuing on a trajectory toward the Santagiulia venue. A heavy police presence guarded the entire route.
There was no indication that the protest and resulting road closure interfered with athletes’ transfers to their events, all on the outskirts of Milan.
The demonstration coincided with US Vice President JD Vance’s visit to Milan as head of the American delegation that attended the opening ceremony on Friday.
He and his family visited Leonardo da Vinci’s “The Last Supper” closer to the city center, far from the protest, which also was against the deployment of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to provide security to the US delegation.
US Homeland Security Investigations, an ICE unit that focuses on cross-border crimes, frequently sends its officers to overseas events like the Olympics to assist with security. The ICE arm at the forefront of the immigration crackdown in the US is known as Enforcement and Removal Operations, and there is no indication its officers are being sent to Italy.
At the larger, peaceful demonstration, which police said numbered 10,000, people carried cardboard cutouts to represent trees felled to build the new bobsled run in Cortina. A group of dancers performed to beating drums. Music blasted from a truck leading the march, one a profanity-laced anti-ICE anthem.
“Let’s take back the cities and free the mountains,” read a banner by a group calling itself the Unsustainable Olympic Committee. Another group called the Association of Proletariat Excursionists organized the cutout trees.
“They bypassed the laws that usually are needed for major infrastructure project, citing urgency for the Games,” said protester Guido Maffioli, who expressed concern that the private entity organizing the Games would eventually pass on debt to Italian taxpayers.
Homemade signs read “Get out of the Games: Genocide States, Fascist Police and Polluting Sponsors,” the final one a reference to fossil fuel companies that are sponsors of the Games. One woman carried an artificial tree on her back decorated with the sign: “Infernal Olympics.”
The demonstration followed another last week when hundreds protested the deployment of ICE agents.
Like last week, demonstrators Saturday said they were opposed to ICE agents’ presence, despite official statements that a small number of agents from an investigative arm would be present in US diplomatic territory, and not operational on the streets.
