Women Can Only Fly With Male Chaperone, Say Taliban in Afghanistan

The Taliban have informed airlines in Afghanistan that women cannot fly alone but must be accompanied by a male chaperone when boarding domestic or international flights, Reuters reported on Sunday. The news agency quoted two sources who could not be named for security reasons as saying that the Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice sent airlines a letter on Saturday informing them of the new requirement. Unaccompanied women who had already booked tickets, they said, would be allowed to travel on Sunday and Monday. But some women with tickets were turned away at Kabul’s airport on Saturday. The policy comes just days after Afghanistan’s fundamentalist government backtracked on its promise to open high schools to girls, a move that drew protests and condemnation from both foreign governments and rights organizations and from local Afghan citizens. The US on Friday, reacting to the Taliban’s reneging on previous assurances, canceled meetings with Taliban officials on plans to give the country access to much-needed economic assistance. The Taliban say they have not brought back the restrictions that were in place under their previous rule from 1996 to 2001, which barred women from education, work or leaving the house without a male relative. And they say they are respecting women’s rights as defined by Islamic law and Afghan culture.