Afghan women face yet another restriction as the Taliban crackdown reportedly extends beyond real life, with authorities in Herat detaining women over their social-media activity. Cases reported by Rukhshana Media describe women being questioned, held and ordered to stop posting photos and videos online.
For context, five years after the Taliban returned to power in August 2021, the de facto authorities have issued more than 100 decrees affecting women and girls, according to UN Women.
The agency has described Afghanistan as a 'global outlier with no parallel in the modern world', citing sweeping restrictions on education, employment, movement, public participation and legal equality.
The latest cases reported from Herat involve women who said they were detained after posting content on Instagram, including everyday photographs and paid promotional material.
Rukhshana Media reported that one woman, identified as 26-year-old Somaiya, was held for 72 hours and released after signing a pledge to stop using social media. Another woman, identified as 18-year-old Aliya, said she spent three nights in detention before being released under a similar condition.
The accounts were reported by Rukhshana Media based on interviews with the women involved. They do not, on their own, establish a formal nationwide law criminalising all social-media activity by Afghan women.
Taliban Vice and Virtue Department and Afghan Women's Social Media Restrictions
The reported cases centre on the Taliban's Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, which has increasingly policed women's online presence. In Somaiya's account, she was summoned to the department in Herat after relatives reported her Instagram posts, which included images of her daily life and paid promotions for local businesses.
She told Rukhshana Media she expected a warning but was instead interrogated and taken to Herat's women's prison for 72 hours. 'I kept saying I would sign a written pledge that I would no longer post my photographs. I begged and pleaded with them, but they took me to prison,' she said.
Officials told her it was her own family who had reported her, with some reportedly arguing she should spend years behind bars.
Somaiya was released only after signing a pledge to stop all social media activity and deleting her content, including the paid promotions that had provided a small income. She said authorities invoked 'ghairat', a concept of family honour often used to justify controlling women, to object to her images.
Somaiya's account is not the only case reported by Rukhshana Media. Another woman, 18-year-old Aliya, who said she had around 60,000 Instagram followers and earned money through promotions, was detained last year and held for three nights before being released on the same condition: no more social media use.
'They told me that even if I wore a mask, it was not acceptable for me to work and advertise. They said Islam does not say that a woman should appear on television or on a screen, and that this was considered a crime,' Aliya told the outlet.
Human Rights Watch has documented a broader pattern in which the vice and virtue ministry has intensified restrictions on women's freedom of expression, including bans on women's voices in public and arbitrary detention for alleged 'morality' infractions.
In 2025, the Taliban added new regulations curbing media freedom and increased restrictions on social media, while local outlets have been ordered to comply with strict content rules, including prohibitions on images of people.
Mental Health Crisis Deepens as Afghan Women Face Yet Another Restriction
The reported restrictions come amid a severe mental-health crisis among Afghan women. UN Women reports that seven in 10 women in Afghanistan now describe their mental health as 'bad' or 'very bad', with rising levels of anxiety, hopelessness and despair linked to confinement, loss of rights and limited access to support.
More than half of 3,200 women surveyed said they leave their homes only once or twice a month because of restrictions on movement and access to public spaces.
Access to mental-health and psychosocial support remains severely constrained, with shortages of trained professionals, funding and services, particularly in remote areas, according to a UN special rapporteur's report on women's and girls' right to health in Afghanistan.
Remote counselling and online workshops exist but are often inaccessible due to internet connectivity problems and the lack of private spaces.
For women like Somaiya and Aliya, the threat of detention for posting online removes one of the few remaining avenues for income and self-expression. The reported cases illustrate how restrictions on women's public lives may also extend into their online activities.
