RASC News Agency: Local sources in Panjshir Province have confirmed that Taliban authorities have recently detained and dismissed dozens of government employees solely for having “short beards,” in what critics describe as yet another oppressive measure rooted in the group’s extremist interpretation of religious codes. According to these sources, Taliban “religious enforcement committees” entered local government offices across Panjshir last week, inspecting the appearance of civil servants. Employees whose beards did not meet the Taliban’s arbitrary religious standards were reportedly arrested on the spot and transferred to a Taliban military base and detention facility in Dashtak.
In the past two days alone, at least 19 employees of the provincial Directorate of Education in Panjshir were detained following inspections by Taliban morality police. While a few have since been released on bail, several remain in custody. Local residents told Media that the Taliban brigade stationed in Panjshir is directly involved in carrying out these arrests. Since forcibly returning to power in August 2021, the Taliban have imposed a rigid dress code on government staff mandating untrimmed beards and traditional headwear and tasked their so-called Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice with enforcing visual conformity through intimidation and surveillance.
This campaign of coercion is not limited to Panjshir. Over the past several months, similar cases of beatings, verbal abuse, and dismissals of government employees have been reported in other provinces. In some cases, workers have been punished not only for trimming their beards, but also for failing to meet the Taliban’s subjective interpretation of “Islamic attire.” Ordinary civilians especially women have also been subjected to routine harassment, arrest, and even physical abuse by Taliban enforcers under the guise of monitoring public behavior and dress. These actions have further restricted daily life and widened the climate of fear in areas under Taliban control.
Observers say the Taliban’s relentless moral policing, arbitrary detentions, and suppression of personal freedoms signal an alarming intensification of authoritarian rule. What was once considered civil service under an internationally recognized government has now become a tool for ideological control, leaving Afghanistan’s bureaucratic institutions hollowed out and society at the mercy of unchecked religious extremism.
