For youngsters on social media when they travel in a four-wheeler, an Instagram story or a Snapchat update consisting of a behind-the-wheel image may appear familiar.
Gen-Z, their predecessor millennials and even the people from Gen-X often take to social media when they are behind or near the wheel, to show a fleeting world in front of the car’s windshield sometimes accompanied by a particular music track.
For Zareena, 24, who last year lost her right to attend university in Taliban-ruled Afghanistan’s capital Kabul, a behind-the-steering-wheel Snapchat update while she was on Kabul’s roads was a part of her life until August 2021. Not anymore.
Afghan women in Taliban-ruled Afghanistan not allowed to drive or travel in taxis without a male companion and they must covered in burqa while travelling in a four-wheeler, WION can confirm.
By the time Taliban leader Hibatullah Akhundzada issued an official decree in May 2022 to women to hide their faces completely in public, they had already been following the same for the last eight months.
But there has scattered defiance of this ruling across Afghanistan as many women refuse to wear burqas and still walk the streets with their faces uncovered.
Zareena also showed WION the screenshots of those glittery Snapchat updates of a distant time in recent history. For innumerable youngsters of her age across the world – Afghanistan an exception – such social media updates still pretty much remain part of their lives. But not for Zareena.