Taliban security forces opened fire on a rare public protest in the western Afghan city of Herat on Tuesday, killing at least two people and wounding several others, according to witnesses and medics. The demonstration — involving both men and women — broke out in response to a fresh crackdown on women accused of violating the Taliban's strict Islamic dress codes, with at least 16 women reportedly arrested or detained since Friday, including one pregnant woman.
Witnesses described security forces using sticks, whips and firearms to disperse a crowd of more than 100 people. Gunfire is clearly audible in videos circulating online, and women can be heard screaming. A photographer present told reporters he saw officers "striking protesters and firing weapons in the direction of the crowd" and that "a significant number of people were injured". Herat police acknowledged responding to the protest but denied any deaths had occurred, saying officers had "taken action to ensure security and maintain public order". Officials from the Taliban's Ministry for Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice — the so-called morality police, which enforces behavioural and dress rules — dismissed reports of mass arrests as "rumours", insisting that face-covering "is a divine obligation".
The crackdown followed Friday sermons in which imams, reportedly acting on behalf of the morality ministry, urged women not to leave their homes without full face-covering. Taliban rules require women to appear in public fully covered, including a burqa. The hijab was made mandatory in May 2022, shortly after the Taliban's return to power in August 2021, and has been enforced alongside a sweeping set of restrictions that ban girls above the age of twelve from attending school and bar most women from working.
Protesters at Tuesday's demonstration chanted "education, work, freedom" — a slogan that echoes the early resistance movements that emerged after 2021 but were gradually suppressed. Richard Bennett, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on human rights in Afghanistan, said he was "alarmed by the excessive use of force against seemingly peaceful protesters" and called for those responsible to be held accountable. Human Rights Watch similarly described the use of lethal force as "deeply alarming" and demanded the immediate release of all those detained.
Public protest against Taliban rule, particularly by women, has been exceptionally rare since 2021. Early acts of defiance were met with beatings, imprisonment and threats, effectively silencing organised dissent. Tuesday's events in Herat — one of Afghanistan's largest cities and historically a cultural centre near the Iranian border — mark one of the most significant open challenges to Taliban authority in years, and underscore the volatile tensions building around the enforcement of gender restrictions that international human rights bodies have described as amounting to gender apartheid.