Belqis Roshan: “This code closes every door to justice.”

In January 2026, a new penal code was introduced in Afghanistan, profoundly redefining the country’s legal and social structure. The text institutionalizes the division of society into castes, consolidates inequalities, and systematically targets women and religious minorities.

CISDA interviewed Belqis Roshan, a former Afghan parliamentarian now a refugee in Germany.

Different penalties for rich and poor

CISDA: With the new penal code, the Taliban have further exacerbated the living conditions of the population, especially women. What are the most serious provisions?

Roshan: The new code is justified as faithful enforcement of religion, but in reality it serves to increase control over the population and the discretionary power of clerics. In four years of government, Emir Hibatullah Akhundzada has issued 470 provisions, 100 of which targeted women. None have benefited the people.

The code builds on and reinforces the framework of the so-called Law Against Vice and for Virtue of 2024. The difference is that, while the provisions were previously addressed to the population as rules of conduct, they are now addressed to judges, imams, and village chiefs, requiring them to impose severe penalties.

Article 9 is the most shocking: it divides society into four classes—religious, wealthy, middle class, and indigent—and establishes different penalties for each. The wealthy and mullahs, even if they violate the law, are not punished: at most, they are reprimanded. The middle class and the poor, however, face trials and corporal punishment, which becomes more severe the lower their social status.

It is the legalization of slavery. A system that the world considered obsolete and is now being brought back to life.

If you can’t go to the hospital, you can’t prove violence.

CISDA: What concrete consequences does this have for women?

Roshan: Article 32, on married life, stipulates that a violent husband be jailed for 15 days if he beats his wife, but only if he has caused her bruises or fractures that the wife can prove. However, women cannot leave the house alone to go to the hospital: in effect, they cannot prove anything.

Furthermore, Article 34 prohibits a woman from leaving her husband’s home without permission to go to her family of origin. If she does, she and the father who takes her in risk flogging and three months in prison.

This demonstrates that the woman is considered the property of her husband or father. The doors of justice are closed.

Children are also exposed to violence. The new code neither explicitly prohibits nor punishes physical or psychological violence against children, leaves ample room for corporal punishment by parents or guardians, and includes a very weak regime for asserting children’s rights.

Teachers are punished only for bruises or fractures. Other forms of abuse, including sexual violence, which is widespread in madrasas, are neither explicitly mentioned nor sanctioned. This gives absolute power to teachers instead of protecting minors.

Religious freedom abolished: “Risk of religious conflict”

CISDA: Religious freedom is also being drastically limited. What effects could this have?

Roshan: Article 2 recognizes the Hanafi school as the only legitimate religion. This is a dangerous provision that can fuel religious divisions and conflicts.

Sikh, Hindu, Ismaili, and other minority communities have coexisted in Afghanistan for centuries. Outlawing them creates deep tensions. Furthermore, declaring non-Hanafi Muslim schools illegitimate provides a pretext to target minorities such as the Hazaras, who are already persecuted.

Recently, in Badakhshan province, dozens of Ismailis were forced to destroy their places of worship and convert.

It is very dangerous to create these divisions, because other countries in the region, such as Iran, despite supporting the Taliban, fuel internal rifts and can exploit them to pit one faction against another, even to the point of provoking religious wars with other Muslim countries, each with its own vision.

There are also armed religious sects, linked to the Iranian or Pakistani governments, that can transform into veritable mercenary brigades. For example, the Zainabiyoun-Liwaza Brigade, of Pakistani origin, was used by the Iranian government during the recent protests precisely because it was foreign, to repress and kill demonstrators who had become out of control.

Or Jaish al-Adl, active in Baluchistan and linked to Iran, which has sent between 40,000 and 50,000 fighters to Syria, many of whom have died in the war. This sect is still present and active in Afghanistan today.

Justice is based on coerced testimony

CISDA: How is the code enforced?

Roshan: Although it hasn’t yet been formally promulgated, it’s already being implemented.

While some rules and penalties are precisely defined, many others are left to the discretion of the religious. For example, the article on faith establishes that anyone who does not follow the Hanafi school, promotes another religious interpretation, or opposes the Taliban can be sentenced to death. Since the judicial system is based not on evidence but on testimony, often extracted through torture, it becomes easy to eliminate someone by accusing them of violating Islamic principles.

This has a devastating effect on freedom of speech. Only Sharia law, administered by clerics, applies, and all avenues of access to justice are effectively blocked. So-called judges can act completely arbitrarily.

The code is formally addressed to judges, who retain a central role, but in practice it also grants direct powers to clerics: some articles—such as the one concerning insults or criticism of the Taliban—do not specify which behaviors constitute crimes, allowing mullahs and imams to directly manage both the accusation and the punishment. They all come from madrassas, religious schools, and interpret the rules according to their own training and vision.

The new code thus formalizes a power that clerics already exercised previously. In 2016, for example, a woman was accused of burning the Quran and convicted without trial, based on an accusation made directly by an imam. Today, their authority is even broader.

Imams also have the power to establish different penalties for men and women who renounce or abjure the Hanafi religion: a man can be sentenced to up to two years in prison, while a woman faces life imprisonment accompanied by periodic lashes administered to “push her to return to the faith.” Again, the final decision rests with the imam.

Other provisions are also vague and leave room for discretion, such as Article 59, which criminalizes “dancing” or “watching dance,” prohibitions that can be used to repress any form of popular cultural expression.

The fire smolders in international silence

CISDA: Despite hunger and repression, protests are limited. Why?

Roshan: It’s not acceptance, it’s brutal repression. Men and women are arrested, tortured, killed. But the situation is explosive: the fire smolders.

The Taliban are hated, and many of them don’t trust themselves to be among the people unless escorted and protected in armored vehicles.

There are ongoing small demonstrations, often bloodily repressed. In Baluchistan, many protesters have been killed during protests against the outsourcing of gold mining to a company that had also appropriated publicly owned land. The situation is so tense that the Taliban have deployed numerous armed militants to protect the mine.

People aren’t afraid of dying. I heard of a man detained because he didn’t stop to pray while accompanying a sick person to the hospital: “Kill me if you want, but I can’t pray now,” he replied.

Even hunger forces us to overcome fear: many girls, forbidden from working, disguise themselves as men to find work, even though they face enormous risks if discovered.

CISDA: The international community has reacted little. Only the UN Human Rights Council seems to consider what is happening in Afghanistan important and has placed human rights and the condition of women on the agenda of its 61st meeting. But it is only a consultative body, without political power. Why this disinterest?

Roshan: The Taliban government is supported by all states. Humanitarian aid effectively serves to keep the government afloat, while the population receives only crumbs. Great Britain and the European Union talk about gender apartheid, but take no concrete measures. The United States rejects asylum requests, and we cannot forget that it was they who brought the Taliban back to power.

The only way forward is popular unity

CISDA: Despite hunger affecting 90% of the population and the suppression of many human rights, including for men, we have not seen any protests. Is it out of fear or for other reasons? How can we get out of this situation?

Roshan: The American occupation has provided some freedoms, but it has also prevented real change. Today, the Taliban are supported by foreign powers and have become a structured political force. They have politicized their fundamentalism, thanks in part to what many of them learned at the “school” of Guantanamo. Four of the current ministers passed through there.

The solution can only come from the unity of the Afghan people, regardless of ethnicity or religion. And from international public pressure on their governments to stop supporting the Taliban. Without external support, this regime would be unable to survive.