The Taliban demand that the heads of all mannequins be covered or cut off. Interviews with local residents and eerie storefront photos provide insight into the new reality of Afghanistan.

In Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan, mannequins were once a symbol of fashion and culture. But last year shopkeepers started displaying them headless or covered in cloth just to keep their shops open.

Black plastic bags cover the heads of evening dress mannequins in Afghanistan, Monday, December 26, 2022. AP Photo/Ebrahim Noruzi

In August 2021, the Taliban announced that store owners must remove the heads from their mannequins or dispose of them all together.

But several shopkeepers begged the Taliban to let them keep their mannequins intact. The Taliban agreed, but with one condition – all mannequins must be with closed faces.

One such store owner is Faisal Azizi. Before coming to the US in March to study political science and government at Dartmouth College, he ran a family business selling traditional Afghan clothing.

Azizi told Insider that the Taliban forced locals to deface banners featuring pictures of top models before attempting to ban the use of mannequins altogether.

The Taliban believe that statues and images in human form are prohibited in accordance with their strict interpretation of Islamic law.

But experts such as Bahar Jalali, an Afghan-born professor of modern Middle Eastern history at Loyola University in Maryland, believe the mannequin-damaging activities are part of an extremist ideology against individual freedoms and the deprivation of life in Afghanistan of any semblance of normal life. .

“Even under the most conservative Afghan regimes of the past, mannequins were an integral part of the urban landscape,” Jalali, who fled Afghanistan after the Soviet invasion in 1979, told Insider, adding that the Taliban find female figures offensive and offensive. shameful.

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