Life under the Taliban regime

Treatment of women

Women in particular were targets of the Taliban's notorious restrictions, prohibited from working; from wearing clothing regarded as "stimulating and attractive," including the "Iranian chador," viewed as insufficiently complete in its covering); from taking a taxi without a "close male relative"; washing clothes in streams; or having their measurements taken by tailors.
Employment for women was restricted to the medical sector, since male medical personnel were not allowed to examine women. One result of the banning of employment of women by the Taliban was the closing down in places like Kabul of primary schools not only for girls but for boys, because almost all the teachers there were women.
Women were made to wear the burqa, a traditional dress covering the entire body except for a small screen to see out of. Taliban restrictions became more severe after they took control of the capital. In February 1998, religious police forced all women off the streets of Kabul and issued new regulations ordering "householders to blacken their windows, so women would not be visible from the outside." Home schools for girls, which had been allowed to continue, were forbidden. In June 1998, the Taliban stopped all women from attending general hospitals, leaving the use of one all-women hospital in Kabul. There were many reports of Muslim women being beaten by the Taliban for violating the Sharia.

Ban on culture
A sample Taliban edict issued after their capture of Kabul is one decreed in December 1996 by the "General Presidency of Amr Bil Maruf and Nahi Anil Munkar" (or Religious Police) banning a variety of things and activities: music, shaving of beards, keeping of pigeons, flying kites, displaying of pictures or portraits, western hairstyles, music and dancing at weddings, gambling, "sorcery," and not praying at prayer times. In February [2001], Taliban used sledgehammers to destroy representational works of art at the National Museum of Afghanistan.
At the Kabul zoo most animals were killed or left to starve. When the Taliban first entered the city zoo after taking over Kabul, one Taliban soldier "jumped into a bear's cage and cut off his nose, reputedly because the animal's beard was not long enough." At the lion's den another fighter leapt inside and proclaimed, `I am the lion now!` The lion killed him, but another Taliban soldier "threw a grenade into the den, blinding the animal." The noseless bear, blind lion, and two wolves, "were the only [zoo] animals that survived the Taliban rule."
Non-Western festivities were not exempt from bannings. The Taliban banned the traditional Afghan New Year's celebration of Nowruz as anti-Islamic, and "for a time they also banned Ashura, the Shia Islamic month of mourning and even restricted any show of festivity at Eid." The Afghan people were not allowed to have any cultural celebrations if the women were there. If it was only men at the celebration it would be allowed to go forth, so long as it did not go over the curfew time of 9:00 pm.
Taliban official Mullah Mohammed Hassan explained that "of course we realize that people need some entertainment but they can go to the parks and see the flowers, and from this they will learn about Islam." The Education Minister Mullahs Abdul Hanifi told questioners that the Taliban "oppose music because it creates a strain in the mind and hampers study of Islam."

Ethnic massacres and persecution
The worst attack on civilians came in summer of 1998 when the Taliban swept north from Herat to the predominantly Hazara and Uzbek city of Mazar-i-Sharif, the largest city in the north. Entering at 10 am on 8 August 1998, for the next two days the Taliban drove their pickup trucks "up and down the narrow streets of Mazar-i-Sharif shooting to the left and right and killing everything that moved -- shop owners, cart pullers, women and children shoppers and even goats and donkeys." More than 8000 noncombatants were reported killed in Mazar-i-Sharif and later in Bamiyan. Contrary to the injunctions of Islam, which demands immediate burial, the Taliban forbade anyone to bury the corpses for the first six days while they rotted in the summer heat and were eaten by dogs. In addition to this indiscriminate slaughter, the Taliban sought out and massacred members of the Hazara, a mostly Shia ethnic group, while in control of Mazar.
While the slaughter can be attributed to several factors -- ethnic difference, suspicions of Hazaras loyalty to their co-religionists in Iran, fury at the loss of life suffered in an earlier unsuccessful Taliban takeover of Mazar -- takfir by the puritanical Sunni Taliban toward the Shia Hazaras was instrumental. It was expressed by Mullah Niazi, the commander of the attack and governor of Mazar after the attack, in his declaration from Mazar's central mosque:
"Last year you rebelled against us and killed us. From all your homes you shot at us. Now we are here to deal with you. The Hazaras are not Muslims and now have to kill Hazaras. You either accept to be Muslims or leave Afghanistan. Wherever you go we will catch you. If you go up we will pull you down by your feet; if you hide below, we will pull you up by your hair."
Hazara also suffered from a siege by the Taliban of their Hazarajat homeland in central Afghanistan and the refusal of the Taliban to allow the UN to supply food to Hazara to the provinces of Bamiyan, Ghor, Wardak and Ghazni. A month after the Mazar slaughter, Taliban broke through Hazar lines and took over Hazarajat. The killing of civilians was much less common there than in Mazar, but occurred nevertheless.
During the years that followed, rapes and massacres of Hazara by Taliban forces were documented by groups such as Human Rights Watch.

Economy
Peace did bring economic development to Afghanistan. The so-called "transportation mafia" operating out of Pakistan "cut down millions of acres of timber in Afghanistan for the Pakistani market, denuding the countryside as there was no reforestation. They stripped down rusting factories, ... even electricity and telephone poles for their steel and sold the scrap to steel mills in Lahore.".

Conscription

According to the testimony of Guantanamo captives, before their Combatant Status Review Tribunals, the Taliban, in addition to conscripting men to serve as soldiers, also conscripted literate and numerate men to staff its civil service. Ironically, given the derivation of their name for themselves, some of the Taliban leaders were illiterate.