Men cannot dine with family in restaurants: Taliban

Kabul: Taliban's new gender segregation plan implemented in Herat province of Afghanistan mandates no permission for men to dine with their family members in family restaurants, Khaama Press reported.

A Taliban official, Riazullah Seerat, at the Ministry for Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, said that restaurant owners were verbally ordered that the rule applies to wedded couples too.

Seerat also stated that the ministry had issued a directive requiring Herat's public parks to be gender-segregated, with men and women authorised to attend only on separate days, Khaama Press reported.

Further, the gender segregation rule is imposed on public parks too in Herat. Men and women should visit parks on separate days, Khaama Press reports.

"We told women to go to parks on Thursday, Friday and Saturday. The other days are set aside for males to visit for leisure and exercise," Seerat said.

Since regaining control in August last year, the Taliban have increasingly implemented restrictions that separate men and women.

Despite promising that they would be lenient, the Taliban have increasingly implemented hardline restrictions, particularly regarding women, after taking Kabul. Last week, the militant group's supreme leader Hibatullah Akhundzada had, issued an order that if a woman did not cover her face in public, her father or closest male relative would be summoned and eventually incarcerated or fired from government jobs.