On the evening of January 22, a group of armed Taliban fighters, accompanied by military armored vehicles, raided a building in the Shirpur area of Kabul and detained 40 individuals, including women, children, and men. Among those arrested were 26 women—including two teenage girls—as well as seven children and nine men. According to sources, 25 of the detained women were participants in anti-Taliban protests that had taken place in Kabul and Mazar-e-Sharif since the beginning of the regime. The group was part of the “Bread, Work, Freedom” movement—a grassroots campaign led by Afghan women demanding basic rights and justice.

Naira Kohestani, a protest organizer and former history and geography teacher at a private school, was among those arrested. After losing her job under Taliban rule, she joined the protest movement to demand her right to work. She was detained along with her husband and two children. Another member of the group, Hypatia (pseudonym), also participated in the protests and was arrested during the raid. Both Kohestani and Hypatia spent 17 days in Taliban detention, underscoring the risks faced by women peacefully resisting gender-based oppression in Afghanistan.

This armed raid on January 22 in Shirpur, Kabul represents a calculated act of repression by the Taliban against a peaceful women's protest movement. The detention of 26 women—including teenagers—alongside men and children, highlights the regime's use of intimidation, collective punishment, and brute force to quash dissent. The “Bread, Work, Freedom” movement symbolizes resistance to the Taliban's gender-apartheid policies; its suppression through arbitrary arrest demonstrates the group’s ongoing efforts to silence women’s rights activism. The 17-day detention without legal recourse further exposes the absence of judicial safeguards and due process under Taliban rule. This event is a stark example of state-led gender persecution and repression of civil liberties in Afghanistan.

Naira Kohestani’s account of her interrogation in Taliban custody reveals the deeply personal and ideologically charged nature of the regime’s repression. Her experience—being verbally abused, accused of serving foreign interests, and isolated while others were released—highlights the Taliban’s efforts to criminalize women’s activism by framing it as a threat to state and religious authority.