Taliban order all Afghan women to cover their faces in public

The all-enveloping burqa, traditional in Afghanistan, allows women to see only through a small grille. The alternative would be the niqab, which covers the face but not the eyes. While almost all adult women in Afghanistan wear some form of hijab, many in cities cover only their hair.

The Foreign Office said the Taliban could not hope for international recognition or an end to sanctions imposed when they were an insurgent group carrying out regular suicide attacks that took a heavy civilian toll, if they did not live up to obligations on protecting women.

The group had promised it had changed over the two decades since it ran Afghanistan as a brutal, impoverished theocracy in the late 1990s, where women were barred from almost all work and education.

The Taliban have also prevented women from protesting, and many former activists, journalists, security force members and other high-profile women have been in hiding for months after several attacks and murders.