Ban on Women’s Presence at Band-e-Amir: How the Taliban Took Away Women’s Right to Recreation
August 27, 2023

Nimrokh Media reports that the Taliban, continuing their series of misogynistic decrees, have banned women from visiting the Band-e-Amir National Park in Bamyan province. On Saturday, August 26, Mohammad Khalid Hanafi, the acting head of the Taliban's Ministry of Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, announced that women will not be allowed to visit the park until "principles" are established for them.

Hanafi urged the group’s fighters and officials in Bamyan to implement this directive, emphasizing that “tourism” for women is “neither obligatory nor essential.”

Band-e-Amir is a series of natural lakes located 70 kilometers from the center of Bamyan city and is considered one of Afghanistan's main tourist attractions. Before the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan, thousands of women and men visited Band-e-Amir National Park for recreation every year, and local authorities organized a "tourism festival" with hundreds of young women and men in attendance.

Band-e-Amir is a series of natural lakes located 70 kilometers from the center of Bamyan city and is considered one of Afghanistan's main tourist attractions. Before the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan, thousands of women and men visited Band-e-Amir National Park for recreation every year, and local authorities organized a "tourism festival" with hundreds of young women and men in attendance.

The Taliban’s ban on women visiting Band-e-Amir National Park is a stark example of how public, cultural, and recreational spaces are being systematically closed off to women. By framing women's presence in nature as “non-essential,” the regime not only denies women access to leisure and nature, but also reinforces the ideology that women do not belong in public or visible life unless tightly controlled