After paying 1,000 afghanis (about $15) to a Taliban police district official, Bulqais received a threatening phone call. Pay at least 4,000 afghanis (about $62), she was told, or her home would be searched and her salon shut down.
Bulqais works secretly from home. She is among several female beauticians in Kabul who say Taliban police district officials demand monthly payments to allow them to keep working, threatening home searches, salon closures and arrest if they refuse.
Two women interviewed for this report, Maryam and Bulqais, say they have made the payments themselves. Both say the money is collected in cash, with no receipts. The women’s names have been changed to protect their identities.
Maryam says she paid a district official 4,000 afghanis (about $62) in September. She handed over the cash directly and received no receipt, she says.
The payment was part of a recurring demand. Maryam, who has worked as a beautician for eight years, says the Taliban have collected money from her every month for about a year, except during Ramadan.
“Taliban police district officials take 3,000 or 4,000 afghanis a month in protection money,” she says, referring to sums equivalent to about $46–$62. “We pay because they know we work secretly from home. If we don’t pay, they won’t let us work. They even threaten to put us in prison.”
How the money is collected
Maryam says the district official spoke to her directly, while someone close to him collects payments from salons in Kabul’s Pul-e Surkh neighbourhood.
Bulqais also says she pays district officials each month. According to her, a Taliban official at the district office keeps salon owners’ phone numbers and demands payment at the end of each month. Her friends who work as beauticians face the same demands, she says.
Both women describe payment as a condition for being allowed to keep working.
“If you pay the district official, he leaves you alone,” Bulqais says. “But if you don’t pay every month, they make trouble for your business, insult us and our clients, and stop us from working.”
Maryam says Taliban members have searched her home twice and taken some of her expensive salon equipment.
Arrests and informants
Previous reports have described the arrests of female beauticians, including women working from home.
Soraya, a beautician in Herat interviewed for this report, says she was arrested for continuing to work in secret. The Taliban made her pledge to stop providing beauty services, she says.
She also says the Taliban send women into salons to report on the beauticians’ activities. These women visit the premises and then pass information to the Taliban, according to Soraya.
Another beautician, Yasmin, says demands for money and threats to close her home-based salon have continued even as her client numbers have fallen. Some clients exploit the situation, she says, threatening to report beauticians to the Taliban.
No other source of income
The Taliban banned women’s beauty salons in July 2023, giving them until July 25 to close. At the time, the Afghanistan Women’s Chamber of Commerce and Industry estimated that closing roughly 12,000 salons nationwide would deprive about 60,000 women of their source of income.
The women interviewed say they continued working secretly from home because they had no other way to earn a living.
Before the ban, Maryam owned a well-equipped salon. After it closed, she moved her business into her home. Beauty work remains her only source of income and covers her family’s expenses.
Despite the searches and the loss of her equipment, she says she has no other way to support her family and continues to work.
Yasmin turned to beauty work after losing her previous job. Before the Taliban returned to power, she worked at a court, earning more than 30,000 afghanis a month (equivalent to about $464 at September’s exchange rate) to cover her family’s expenses.
After restrictions on women’s employment in government offices cost her that job, she says, she could find no other work and had to learn a new trade.
“I started learning the work at a salon. Then I set up a salon at home because I had no other way to earn a living,” she says. “I had to cover all the household’s needs with that income.”
Bulqais, her family’s sole breadwinner, has worked from home for about three years. She says she lives in fear of arrest, unsure how long she will be able to keep working.
An unanswered complaint
Bulqais says she complained to the Taliban’s Interior Ministry about officials taking money from beauticians, but the complaint brought no result.
The ministry’s spokesperson was contacted several times for a response to the allegations of extortion and threats. The ministry had not responded by publication.
