Afghan Women Beaten by Taliban at September 2021 Kabul Protests

Originally published 2021-09-13.

In early September 2021, only weeks after the Taliban returned to power, groups of Afghan women walked into the streets of Kabul and other cities with handwritten placards demanding the right to work, to study and to have a voice in government. Several of them later told the BBC that Taliban fighters broke up their marches with beatings, whips and electric shock devices, and journalists who covered the protests said they were detained and beaten too.

This article sets out what was reported, when and where it happened, why the women were protesting, and how the situation for women in Afghanistan developed in the years that followed.

What happened at the September 2021 protests

The Taliban took Kabul on 15 August 2021 as US and NATO forces completed their withdrawal after a 20-year war. Within three weeks, women had begun organising small but very visible demonstrations.

• 4 September, Kabul. Mostly women, joined by activists and reporters, marched towards the presidential palace. Taliban forces blocked them, fired into the air and used tear gas. Protesters were struck with rifle butts and metal objects, and one woman was reportedly knocked unconscious and needed stitches.
• 7 September, Herat. Around 200 people demonstrated. Taliban fighters whipped protesters and fired live rounds; sources cited in later reporting said two or three people were shot dead.
• 8 September, Kabul and Faizabad. Taliban fighters broke up protests in both cities. In Kabul, women described being whipped, beaten, shocked with taser-like devices and verbally abused.

The placards in the photo above, held up in Kabul, called for women's participation in the new cabinet. When the Taliban announced an interim government on 7 September, it contained no women at all.

What the women told the BBC

Speaking anonymously for their safety, protesters described a peaceful march that was followed by several vehicles full of armed fighters. One woman said she was struck twice on the shoulder, was still in pain days later and could hardly move her arm. She also described insults so degrading that she would not repeat them. Her summary of the fighters' message was blunt: "They told us to go home saying that's where a woman's place is."

Another supporter explained that her own family had begged her not to go, warning she could be killed, and that she argued with her brother so she could attend. She said she would keep protesting regardless, and her words became one of the most widely quoted lines from those weeks: "It is better to die once than die gradually."

That sentence captures why the protests mattered. For many of these women, the alternative to speaking out was not safety but a slow loss of education, work and freedom of movement.

Journalists detained and beaten

Reporters who tried to document the marches were also targeted. On 8 September, several journalists from the Kabul newspaper Etilaatroz were detained. The paper published photographs of two of them, reporters Taqi Daryabi and Nematullah Naqdi, showing whip and cable marks on their heads, faces and bodies after their release. Two of the detained journalists were reportedly treated in hospital.

اطلاعات روز: تقی دریابی و نعمت‌الله نقدی، دو گزارشگر روزنامه اطلاعات روز پس از بازداشت توسط طالبان، به شدت مورد لت‌وکوب قرار گرفته‌اند.
آثاری از شلاق و کیبل‌ بر سر، صورت و بدن این دو گزارشگر اطلاعات روز به چشم می‌خورد. pic.twitter.com/0vuEwYW28b

— اطلاعات روز | Etilaatroz (@Etilaatroz) September 8, 2021

Another Afghan journalist told the BBC that fighters took his phone, microphone and equipment, hit him repeatedly and deleted all his videos. He said a commander became especially angry at the photo on his phone's home screen, which showed a man and a woman embracing, and hit him hard across the face.

Taken together, these accounts showed two aims at once: stopping the protests, and stopping the world from seeing them.

Promises of moderation and the record from 1996 to 2001

After taking Kabul, Taliban spokesmen said the movement had changed and that women's rights would be respected "within the framework of Islamic law". Many Afghans and outside observers were sceptical, because they remembered the group's first period in power.

Between 1996 and 2001, the Taliban barred most women from paid work, kept girls out of school beyond roughly the age of eight, required women to wear the burqa in public and forbade them from leaving home without a male relative. Women were excluded from radio, television and public gatherings. Music was banned, and punishments such as public flogging and executions, often staged in sports stadiums, were used to enforce the rules.

How women's rights changed after the protests

The fears of September 2021 proved well founded. In the following years, restrictions were introduced step by step:

• September 2021: only boys were allowed back into secondary school.
• March 2022: a promised reopening of girls' secondary schools was reversed on the day it was due.
• May 2022: a decree required women to cover themselves fully in public, with male guardians liable for penalties.
• November 2022: women were banned from parks, gyms and public baths.
• December 2022: women were suspended from universities, and aid organisations were ordered to stop employing them.
• 2023: beauty salons were ordered to close.
• March 2024: the Taliban leader announced that flogging and stoning would be applied to women convicted of adultery.
• August 2024: a "vice and virtue" law restricted women's travel without a male guardian and even limited their voices being heard in public.
• December 2024: women were reportedly barred from training as nurses and midwives.

Women continued to protest, often in small groups indoors or in brief street actions filmed on phones, and several organisers were detained. Their persistence is a reminder that the September 2021 marches were not a single outburst but the start of a long, dangerous campaign.

Why these first protests still matter

The September 2021 demonstrations are important for three reasons. First, they were an early, public test of the Taliban's promises, and the violent response gave a clear answer within weeks. Second, the testimony and photographs, including the images of the Etilaatroz reporters, became part of the documentary record used by rights groups and the United Nations. Third, they showed that Afghan women were not passive victims of events but were organising and speaking for themselves at great personal risk.

When reading about these events, it helps to keep the specifics in view: particular marches on particular days, named reporters, and individual women describing what happened to them. Their accounts are the most direct evidence of how the new authorities chose to respond to peaceful dissent.

Sources: BBC News: Afghanistan women protesters describe Taliban beatings; Etilaatroz (@Etilaatroz) on X, 8 September 2021; Wikipedia: 2021 Afghan protests; Wikipedia: Treatment of women by the Taliban.