Clothes shops in Kabul have been instructed to hide the faces of mannequins by order of the Taliban.
When the Afghan regime swept back to power in August 2021, it imposed an austere interpretation of Islamic law, including an edict against depicting human faces.
The rule is enforced across the country by teams from the Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice.
Dressed in long white jackets, they visit Kabul’s stores multiple times each week.
“The environment must be Islamic,” said one salesman in Kabul, who asked not to be named for fear of reprisals.
“It makes the display a bit ugly,” he said, adding that it “doesn’t affect sales”.
Women’s evening dresses – bought to be worn only in private, at gender-segregated weddings or engagement parties – are displayed with mannequins’ heads wrapped in plastic, foil or black bags.
“Later, they may order that the arms are also covered in plastic,” the salesman predicted.
The Taliban government has told women to completely cover up when they are in public.
Women running errands in Kabul’s shopping district wear abaya robes and cover their faces with a medical mask.
After the ban on depicting human faces was fully introduced in January 2022, religious police in Herat decapitated mannequins by cutting and snapping off the heads.
In Kabul shopping centres, mannequins’ heads are now mostly covered by plastic bags or wrapped in foil.
“In some areas, the ‘Vice and Virtue’ visit on certain days, so (the shopkeepers) cover and then uncover the faces of the mannequins,” said Popalzai, a shopkeeper using a pseudonym.
“But here, there are between three and six guys who come two or three times a week. They check from a distance, they are much softer than before,” added the shopkeeper, who experienced the Taliban government’s first reign between 1996 and 2001.
At the entrance to his store, male mannequins in Western clothes such as jeans or three-piece suits – discouraged by the Taliban authorities – are all hooded. One of them is wearing sunglasses.
But staff report that customers appear unfazed by the head coverings.
“There are more serious problems,” said another shopkeeper, referencing the tough economic climate and the restrictions on women’s education and work.
“This is not very important for Afghan people,” he said. “We make do with it.”
Source Agencies
