Taliban fighters have taken Salima Mazari, one of the only three women governors of Afghanistan, into their custody, according to local reports.
Mazari is the Hazara district Governor of Chaharkint, Balkh.
Mazari, who is known for raising her voice against the Taliban, had said earlier there will be no place for women if the insurgents take control of the country.
However, the detention of Salima Mazari shockingly came after the Taliban promised to have a new era of peace and security, saying they will forgive those who fought against them and grant women full rights under Islamic law, without elaborating what is surprisingly not at all compatible.
“In the provinces controlled by the Taliban, no women exist there anymore, not even in the cities. They are all imprisoned in their homes,” she has said in an interview from Mazar-e-Sharif before it fell to the Taliban
Mazari is a member of the Hazara community – most of whom are Shia Muslims, who the Sunni Taliban consider a heretical sect.
They have been regularly targeted by the Taliban and Islamic State fighters, including an attack on a school in the capital in May that killed more than 80 girls.
Before the Taliban’s sweeping takeover of Afghanistan, Mazari had been recruiting locals to supplement the conventional security forces in the district to fight off the militants.
However, the Taliban is slowly spreading its terror across Afghanistan. Reports have been emerging from Kabul and other cities about Taliban fighters beating up women and roaming around streets looking for ex-government workers.
In another such incident reported by the New York Post, the insurgents killed a woman for being in public without a head covering, The incident took place on Tuesday in Takhar province where the woman was shot for not wearing a burqa, the report added.
It further said that the woman’s body was lying in a pool of blood, and her family members were crying near it.
