The Kabul Tribune (KT)— A new Taliban decree sets out conditions under which Afghan women can seek a judicial separation from their husbands, while maintaining significant legal differences between men’s and women’s ability to end a marriage, according to an analysis published by the Afghanistan Analysts Network.
The 31-article Decree 18, ratified by Taliban Supreme Leader
Hibatullah Akhundzada on Jan. 24, 2026, outlines circumstances in which courts
can intervene to end a marriage, according to an unofficial English translation
published by the Afghanistan Analysts Network.
Under the decree, men can divorce their wives unilaterally,
while women generally need their husband’s consent or must seek a judicial
separation through the courts. The decree sets out 12 grounds on which a court
can grant such a separation.
The code is based exclusively on Hanafi jurisprudence,
according to the Afghanistan Analysts Network, and addresses issues including
absent or missing husbands and the circumstances under which a missing husband
can eventually be declared dead, allowing his wife to remarry.
However, the decree specifically excludes husbands who have
abandoned their wives from being subject to a court-ordered separation on that
basis, the analysis said.
The Afghanistan Analysts Network published the translation
by Islamic scholar and journalist John Butt alongside an analysis by researcher
Kate Clark examining the potential implications of the decree for Afghan women
seeking to end marriages.
Clark’s analysis draws on interviews with women who have
sought divorce or separation, as well as lawyers familiar with such cases. The
report said lawyers identified four of the 12 grounds as potentially useful for
women seeking judicial separation: a husband’s obstinacy or wrongful conduct, a
missing husband, lack of compatibility between spouses, and what the decree
describes as the “prerogative of puberty.”
The report said, however, that none of those grounds is
necessarily straightforward to pursue and that each presents its own
difficulties.
A particular focus of the analysis is women whose husbands
have abandoned them, moved abroad, stopped providing financial support or
married again while refusing to divorce their existing wives.
The Afghanistan Analysts Network said the issue is
particularly significant because of Afghanistan’s high rate of male migration
abroad. It questioned whether the new decree will provide women with a
practical way to end marriages that exist only on paper or continue to give
greater weight to a husband’s ability to end a marriage unilaterally.
Butt’s translation includes explanatory footnotes on legal and
religious terminology, the jurisprudential sources cited in the decree, and
relevant Quranic verses and Hadith, according to the Afghanistan Analysts
Network.
Butt studied at Darul Uloom Deoband in India, a major
Islamic seminary that has influenced the religious thinking of many Afghan
Sunni clerics, including Taliban scholars. He later worked in journalism and
broadcasting and reported for the BBC from Kandahar in the early 1990s.
The translation was edited by Roxanna Shapour and Kate
Clark.
