*Event date: 2024-12-29*
The Taliban’s supreme leader has ordered a ban on windows in residential buildings that overlook areas used by Afghan women, and he says existing windows should be blocked as well. The decree, reported by RFI, extends the government’s control over private architecture into spaces where women may be visible from neighboring homes.
According to the statement posted by government spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid, new buildings should not have windows that allow people to see the courtyard, kitchen, neighboring well or other places usually used by women. The order says that seeing women working in kitchens, in courtyards or collecting water from wells can lead to “obscene acts,” making the decree both a planning rule and a moral directive.
The instruction goes beyond new construction. Municipal authorities and other departments are told to monitor building sites, and where such windows already exist, owners are encouraged to build a wall or otherwise obstruct the view. That means the decree is designed not only to shape future development but also to alter existing homes.
The policy reflects the Taliban government’s continuing effort to police the separation between men and women in public and private life. In practical terms, it puts the burden on homeowners, builders and local officials to enforce a rule about visibility that is difficult to define and even harder to monitor consistently.
The decree is also notable because it treats sightlines from one home into another as a matter of state concern. Rather than focusing on public space, the order reaches directly into the relationship between neighbors and the design of ordinary residential buildings. That makes the policy unusually intrusive even by the standards of the Taliban’s wider restrictions on women.
The report does not say how strictly the rule will be enforced or what penalties might follow if owners fail to comply. But the instruction itself is clear enough to show the government’s direction: architecture must be altered so that women are less visible from outside.
For Afghan women, the practical effect could be to make ordinary tasks more hidden and more constrained. The decree specifically mentions courtyards, kitchens and wells, which are places associated with domestic labor and daily necessity. By targeting those spaces, the government is regulating not just appearance but ordinary movement inside homes.
That is what makes the order important beyond its technical wording. It is not simply about windows. It is another step in a broader campaign to remove women from visibility and to reshape the built environment around that goal.
The result is a new rule that reaches from the supreme leader’s office into the walls of private houses, showing how far the Taliban is prepared to extend its social control.
For now, the decree stands as a stark reminder that in Taliban-ruled Afghanistan, even a window can become a political issue.
