Taliban remove images of women from walls in Kabul

Fevzi Kızılkoyun-KABUL

The Taliban are covering the images of women depicted on the walls of Afghanistan’s capital Kabul with paint and writing pro-Taliban slogans over them.

The group, which captured large swathes of the country within days in a sweeping military offensive, is now dictating its rules even though it has not yet made those rules official.

As part of those undeclared rules, the Taliban are now whitewashing the colorful, lively pictures of women on the walls in the capital’s squares, streets and avenues.

Taliban militants wrote slogans on the covered walls, reading “We walk tall, free Afghanistan,” “Invasion is over, independence prevails,” “Only order is Islam,” and “God willing, our nation has defeated the U.S.”

One of those slogans also calls for tolerance to sort things out: “We need some endurance and some patience.”

Meanwhile, the Taliban are urging thousands of people, who fled to Kabul after the U.S. announced its plans to withdraw from Afghanistan, to return to their hometowns. Those people mostly live in tents in parks or empty buildings across the capital.

The Taliban ordered those people to evacuate those makeshift camps. Some 8,500 people are now heading back to Kunduz, Baghlan, Takhar and Daykundi.

“When the Taliban attacked our city, me and my family fled to Kabul because we were scared. We have been living on the streets, in the tent. We do not have money to return to hometown. We don’t know what is going to happen to use if we return,” said Muhammed Omar, a camp resident.

The country’s flag carrier Ariana Afghan Airlines has resumed domestic flights, while thousands of people in cash-stripped Kabul swarmed the main currency exchange market, which remained closed since the Taliban seized the capital, as it started to operate again. Taliban militants set up check points at the gates of the market.