The divisive new penal code introduced by the Taliban, which has reintroduced the legal recognition of slavery in Afghanistan and further limits the power and autonomy of women and minorities, is just the latest move in the terror group’s quest to turn Kabul into a haven for Islamist terror groups, an expert told The Jerusalem Post on Tuesday.
Under the Taliban’s penal code, which includes 119 articles, published on January 7, 2026, the penalty for animal abuse outweighs that of a serious case of domestic violence.
Under Article 32, “If a husband strikes his wife with excessive beating resulting in fracture, injury, or the appearance of bruising on her body, and the wife proves her claim before the judge, the husband is deemed a criminal; the judge shall sentence him to fifteen days of imprisonment,” while under Article 70, those who cause animals to fight can receive a five month sentence.
The Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace and Security published that the message behind the penal code is clear; under the Taliban’s hierarchy, women are afforded less protection than an animal.
Mursal Sayas, an Afghan women’s rights activist, journalist, and the CEO of Women Beyond Borders, told the Post that the Taliban had manufactured a climate of vulnerability for women and responsibility for men, the same climate that feeds into a culture of domestic abuse.
The Taliban punishes the men of the family if a woman goes out without a chaperone or without full covering, puts families in a position where men are solely responsible for the expenses of a household, and reduces women to “slaves” in their homes, which have become “cages,” she said.
UN Special Rapporteur for Afghanistan, Richard Bennett, said last week he was “still analyzing the Taliban’s new Criminal Procedure Code, including from a human rights and sharia perspectives, but it is already very clear that the implications for #Afghans are extremely concerning.” He has yet to make a more public comment.
Afghan women prevented from working amid widespread poverty
Approximately 85% of Afghans live on less than one dollar a day, 69% are experiencing subsistence insecurity, and only 6% of women are working across all sectors, according to statistics shared by the United Nations Development Programme.
“The women today, they cannot even buy their own pads during their periods. So how can they ask the men to always pay for their expenses? Even the basic expenses, they do not have money for that. It gives power to men to abuse women at home,” Sayas explained, reflecting on how the financial strain was adding to the surge in domestic violence.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention lists economic stress, weak community sanctions against intimate partner violence, and income inequality as some of the main risk factors for the perpetration of intimate partner violence.
Adding further strain, new reports have revealed the Taliban quietly restricted women’s access to contraception, forcing extra mouths to feed on already struggling families. Healthcare workers revealed to The Guardian last week that supplies of contraception gradually begun to reduce in 2023 and are now almost non-existent. One doctor told the British paper that the Taliban had made threats against him if he continued to administer birth control, and other medical officials reported seeing daily cases of abuse-induced miscarriages.
“Right now, with the poverty that existed already in Afghanistan, the families cannot feed the children they already have,” she said. “It's not just about producing the children and their sexual health, which is not being taken care of in Afghanistan, it can damage or hurt economically and socially, because it brings women down to a new kind of slavery… It restricts them more and more, minimizes their roles to birth-giving machines.”
Many of the restrictions imposed on women will also have long-term consequences for the Afghan public sector, particularly in the field of health.
There are currently 10.3 key health workers per 10,000 population in Afghanistan, according to the National Center of Biotechnology Medicine, falling significantly short of the World Health Organization’s Universal Health Coverage threshold of 44.5 key health workers per 10,000.
As nearly 2.2 million girls have been prevented from attending higher education, the next generation will suffer a shortage of nurses, doctors, and midwives, Sayas warned.
“On the other hand, the females who practice as a doctor or as a nurse in the hospitals [now], they also face problems and challenges and violence, even from the Taliban and their troops inside the hospitals, for not wearing the burka, for not covering their face, for not having a chaperone,” Sayas continued, reflecting on how women were being ousted from the essential roles they carry out.
Those who have braved the Taliban’s threats and continued to practice in healthcare, despite the challenges the legally mandated coverings have created, are paid less than men, she continued, making it financially unviable for families to spare a male relative to chaperone them at work.
Earthquake sees shortage of rescue personnel due to restrictions on women
The real consequences of these restrictions were felt during last year's devastating earthquake, when a shortage of rescue personnel hindered efforts to dig survivors out, she said.
UN Women Special Representative in Afghanistan Susan Ferguson shared similar information in September, stating “What I heard from health workers and from some women was that there was a particular area in the earthquake-affected zone where there were cultural norms that meant that women themselves didn't want men to touch them and that men also didn't want to touch women as they were trying to rescue them.”
Resources are also being squandered as humanitarian organizations attempt to work around the Taliban rule, Sayas said. Organizations must now pay for male chaperones, diverting much-needed resources from supplies and personnel.
Sayas filmed a documentary for France’s Channel 5 following the earthquake. “It is horrible, horrible,” she recounted. “When you see the situation, the poverty, and the people who have to live in the tents, and the people who have young children, and they even don't have a rag or don't have a closed space to live there. Even now, we're living in the winter, and the winters in Afghanistan are quite cold in those areas… so snowing, flooding, and all those things. Children are dying. Mothers are dying. People have been injured, and there weren't any sufficient responses.”
Further restricting the resources reaching those most in need, Sayas cited reports that the Taliban had been taking a percentage of the aid for themselves and their soldiers.
The Taliban “didn't respond well because they don't have the capacity to respond well,” she explained. “They are not educated. They don't know about all those things. They just know how to shoot, and this, this can affect every aspect of people's lives in Afghanistan.”
Outside of the “gender apartheid” and poverty, Sayas described how civilians in Afghanistan were left uncertain with vague and contradictory laws that leave people open to corporal punishment.
While murder is punishable by the death penalty, the Taliban instructed that every citizen should follow Sunni Islam, and those attempting to follow Shia Islam or another religion should be killed by a vigilante, Sayas continued. “So it gives the opportunity to people to punish others, like without law, without codifying it, and it provokes the people against each other.”
“If you dance, you can be arrested,” she continued, “and we don't know which kind of dance, even if there are traditional dances.” She added that anyone who attends a non-Islamic event, whether a poetry reading or a literature event, can be arrested by the Taliban.
Expanding concerns to the international community, Sayas said there were reports that the Taliban is permitting different terrorist groups to set up bases in Afghanistan, creating a “safe house” for them.
In less than 10 years' time, Sayas warned it would be “too late for the whole world.”