On Monday, September 27, information spread in the media about a new legislative ban in Afghanistan - men were prohibited from shaving their beards and visiting barbershops. However, the next day the country's officials denied such a ban. We decided to check how things really are with shaving beards in Afghanistan.

Such Russian-language media outlets wrote about the ban as "Novaya Gazeta", TASS, "Kommersant", "Vedomosti" etc. Information also appeared in English - at BBC, CNN, ABC And Independent. A refutation of such a ban was published in Russian Lenta.ru, Gazeta.ru And "Moskovsky Komsomolets". They all cited a major Afghan TV channel as their source. ToloNews.

Those sources who wrote about the ban referred on two points: a statement made by the head of information and culture of Helmand Province, and a document received by local residents. This statement was successful discover on the website of local media Etilaatroz. According to their information, the head of the department is named Hafez Rashid Gelmandi. There is only one news in Russian for this name - publication on Facebook with information about the ban, posted on a page with the declared category “Humor, jokes, memes, life hacks.” In English - a little more: his mentions in the tweet is an Afghan journalist, and there is material 2020 with its mention on the Afghanistan Analysts resource. It says that Hafez Rashid Helmandi (yes, here his name is no longer spelled Hafez, but Hafiz) by Sher Mohammad Abbas Stanekzai was described as a former Taliban media employee in Helmand and that he published a series of tweets about the murder of Afghan journalist Mohammad Ilyas Dayi. On Twitter, a user with the same name not located. On Radio Liberty Afghanistan succeeded discover news about the release of two Taliban from prison, one of them is a certain Hafiz Rashid, there is even a photograph of him.

This material allows us to suspect that the official’s name is actually Hafiz Rashid, and Helmandi is some kind of nickname, consonant with the name of the province - Helmand (it is quite possible that these are just two different people). However, there is still no head of information and culture with that name. It can be assumed that too little time passed after the Taliban came to power for information about the head of one of the departments in the province to appear in English.

The second source of the ban, according to media reports, is the instructions received by local residents. The materials of Western publications do not clarify whether these instructions were written or oral. From the written ones we were able to discover photograph sheet of paper with an inscription. The signature says that this is the ban. Unfortunately, photo translation programs were unable to clarify whether the document was relevant and whether it could be considered genuine. Translation options from Arabic (as suggested by language autodetection), Persian and Urdu are absurd, and translation from Pashto and Dari is not available in the functionality of such applications.

Auto-decryption (translation of a picture into text) and subsequent translation from Pashto using another algorithm also did not produce results.

Screenshot of auto-transcription in Google Translator

It is impossible to reliably determine whether a photograph of a document is relevant to the case, as well as establish its authenticity, without a specialist who speaks the necessary languages.

Another official, Inamulla Samangani, a member of the cultural commission of the Ministry of Culture and Information, appeared in the refutation of the ban on shaving the beard. There is more information about him in open sources than about Hafiz Rashid Helmandi. He is mentioned in publications TASS, Russia Today, The Tribune India, India Today etc. However, commenting on the information about the ban, Inamullah Samangani does not deny the fact of the ban; he only reports that this is not the official position of the Taliban. This formulation does not exclude the possibility of introducing a ban at the local level.

In various movements of Islam, attitudes towards beards miscellaneous. Some consider wearing a beard strictly obligatory, others consider it to be the most recommended; shaving it is considered sinful in some places, and simply undesirable in others. The Taliban is a radical movement and, moreover, in its last rise to power it really obliged men wear beards, and those whose beard length was less than a clenched fist, were exposed punishment. Therefore, the ban on shaving the beard does not contradict already known facts.

Thus, it is most likely that Helmand province, and perhaps several others, actually introduced such a ban. However, it is not a law issued by the Ministry of Morals and Vice, but an act issued by local authorities, which local residents will nevertheless have to comply with.

*An organization recognized as terrorist in the Russian Federation.