RASC News Agency: Multiple international humanitarian organizations, including agencies affiliated with the United Nations, have suspended their operations at the Islam Qala border crossing in western Afghanistan following the Taliban’s latest decree imposing sweeping bans on women’s participation in aid and health-related work.
Local sources in Herat confirmed on Tuesday that the decision came after the Taliban’s so-called Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice ordered an immediate halt to the employment of women in all charitable and humanitarian sectors operating in the border region.
Witnesses reported that Taliban agents stormed several aid offices last Thursday, issuing verbal warnings and written directives that women were no longer permitted to work, even in critical health programs. The agents further warned that any organization defying the order would face prosecution, closure, or confiscation of assets.
One humanitarian coordinator speaking to RASC under condition of anonymity said:
“They claimed women could only appear in public wearing a full burqa, mask, and gloves. Such conditions make effective humanitarian work almost impossible. This is not governance it is deliberate obstruction of compassion.”
On Saturday, Taliban officials tightened the restrictions even further, decreeing that only one or two female doctors would be allowed to remain active at clinics in the area, while all other female personnel including vaccinators, community health educators, and relief coordinators were ordered to vacate their posts immediately.
An emergency meeting was subsequently convened between Taliban representatives, international aid agencies, and United Nations officials to address the crisis. During the meeting, Taliban authorities insisted that no more than four women would be permitted to work in all refugee and returnee camps along the Islam Qala border a measure that aid groups denounced as arbitrary, inhumane, and inconsistent with any recognized governance standard.
Representatives from the United Nations and other global organizations condemned the Taliban’s gender apartheid policies, warning that the continuation of such restrictions would make it impossible to deliver humanitarian aid responsibly or safely. Shortly thereafter, several agencies jointly suspended all operations in the region “until conditions for equitable work are restored.”
The implications of this shutdown are immediate and devastating. Every day, hundreds of Afghanistani returnees many of them women and children cross back into the country from Iran through Islam Qala. With aid operations frozen, thousands are now stranded without access to medical care, food, or temporary shelter.
Human rights observers note that this is not an isolated act, but rather part of the Taliban’s broader campaign to systematically erase women from public life, in direct defiance of international humanitarian law. Since their return to power in 2021, the group has barred women from secondary and higher education, banned them from most workplaces, restricted their movement, and forced female aid workers the backbone of relief efforts into silence.
The United Nations, along with the Organization of Islamic Cooperation and leading donor countries, has repeatedly called on the Taliban to rescind gender-based prohibitions, warning that Afghanistan now faces the risk of total humanitarian collapse if female staff who constitute nearly 40% of the country’s aid workforce remain excluded.
Yet, despite growing diplomatic pressure, the Taliban leadership continues to double down on its hardline ideology, prioritizing control over compassion and ideology over human survival. The result is a nation trapped in the grip of preventable suffering, where the ruling regime appears determined to extinguish even the faintest hope for dignity, equality, and humanitarian relief.
