KABUL, AFGHANISTAN – Taliban authorities have ordered media outlets in Afghanistan’s western Herat province to stop broadcasting images of living beings, extending restrictions on visual reporting, local sources said.
According to the sources, the heads of the Taliban’s Department for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice and the Department of Information and Culture in Herat summoned media managers and YouTubers to a meeting on Wednesday to communicate the order.
A media official who attended the meeting told KabulNow that Taliban authorities said the ban was issued by the group’s supreme leader and that failing to comply would be considered a sin.
The sources added that the authorities also instructed journalists and media workers to grow beards and avoid wearing neckties.
The ban is part of a broader set of restrictions under the Taliban’s so-called morality law, approved in August 2024, which forbids photographs and films of “animate beings” and instructs journalists to rely on written and audio reports instead of live images.
According to the Afghanistan Journalists Center (AFJC), an Afghan media watchdog, the restriction is now enforced in 23 of the country’s 34 provinces and has resulted in the closure of at least 20 television stations.
Press freedom, once considered a major achievement under the previous government, has sharply declined since the Taliban returned to power in August 2021. Afghanistan now ranks 175th out of 180 countries on the 2025 World Press Freedom Index, just above Syria, Iran, North Korea, and Eritrea.
Over half of the country’s media outlets have shut down, and many journalists have fled or gone into hiding. Female journalists face particularly severe restrictions, including bans on broadcasting their voices in some provinces, further limiting public access to independent news.
