Education level no higher than sixth grade. Cannot work in most workplaces and cannot enter public places like parks, gyms and beauty salons. Cannot travel long distances without a male relative. Cannot leave home without covering from head to toe.

Now, according to a 114-page Afghan decree issued late last month — a document that formally codifies all Taliban government decrees restricting women’s rights — it is illegal for women to speak out outside their own homes.

Most of these bans were already in place for much of the Taliban’s three-year rule, slowly squeezing Afghan women out of public life. But for many women across the country, the release of the document felt like the nail in the coffin of their dreams and aspirations.

Hopes that authorities might lift the toughest restrictions, as Taliban officials have suggested that closed high schools and universities would eventually reopen to women, have been dashed for many women.

“We are going back to the days of the first Taliban rule, when women had no right to leave the house,” said Musarat Faramarz, 23, from Baghlan province in northern Afghanistan, referring to the Taliban’s rule from 1996 to 2001. “I thought the Taliban had changed, but we are going through the dark times again.”

Since the Taliban returned to power in August 2021, authorities have systematically stripped women of the rights they won during the two decades of U.S. occupation, especially those living in less conservative urban centers. Today, experts say Afghanistan is the most restrictive country in the world for women and the only one that bans girls from receiving high school education.

The release of the regulations has raised concerns about an impending crackdown that is emboldening so-called “virtue and anti-evil police” – government officials dressed in white robes who are deployed on the streets to ensure the country’s moral laws are followed.

The notice defines for the first time the enforcement mechanisms available to the officers, who now often issue verbal warnings but will now have the power to impose financial penalties or detention of up to three days if someone persists.

Before the laws were announced, Freshta Nasimi, a 20-year-old woman living in Badakhshan province in northeastern Afghanistan, had a glimmer of hope.

For a while, she heard a rumor from classmates that the government was interested in allowing girls to receive schooling through television – a concession that would allow girls to study at home. But that dream was killed after authorities in Khost province in the east of the country banned such programming earlier this year, suggesting that similar bans might be enacted in other parts of the country.

Now, Nasimi said, she is trapped in her home. The new law, which bans women’s voices — considered a private part of a woman that must be covered — effectively ensures that women cannot leave their homes without a male relative. She said she fears no taxi driver will speak to her for fear of a reprimand from the Taliban, and no shopkeeper will accommodate her demands.

She had always cherished the dream of becoming an engineer—and the steady income and freedom it brought—and now that dream was shattered.

“My future?” she asked helplessly. “I have no future except being a housewife and raising children.”

Analysts say the release of the law is part of a government-wide effort to regularize the operations of the various ministries to ensure they follow the extreme vision of Taliban supreme leader Haibatullah Akhundzada to institutionalize Islamic law. Analysts say the document is also aimed at eliminating any Western principles that the U.S.-backed government used to run Afghanistan before the Taliban returned to power.

The Taliban has strongly resisted outside pressure to ease restrictions on women, even though those policies have isolated Afghanistan from much of the West. Taliban officials argue that the laws are rooted in the Islamic teachings that rule the country. “Afghanistan is an Islamic country; Islamic law is naturally applicable to Afghan society,” government spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid said in a statement.

But the laws have been widely criticized by human rights groups and the United Nations Special Mission to Afghanistan, with mission head Rosa Otunbayeva saying they “envision a sad future for Afghanistan” and exacerbate “already intolerable restrictions” on women’s rights.

Even the visual cues of womanhood have slowly disappeared from the public sphere.

Over the past three years, female faces have been ripped off billboards, murals have been covered on school walls and images of women have been scraped off posters posted on city streets. Female mannequins are dressed in full black robes that cover them, with their heads wrapped in tinfoil.

Even before the new notices were issued, the threat of a reprimand from the law enforcement police was ever-present as more public places became off-limits to women.

“I live like a prisoner in my house,” said Faramarz, from Baghlan. “I haven’t left my house for three months,” she added.

The reversal of rights may be most difficult for girls who grew up in an era when women had ample opportunities during the American occupation.

Some girls, determined to continue their education, have found makeshift solutions. Clandestine schools for girls have sprung up across the country, often with just a few dozen students and a tutor, hidden away in private homes. Others have turned to online classes, even when the connection is spotty.

Muhadisa Hassani, 18, started studying again about a year after the Taliban seized power. She talked to two old classmates who had evacuated to the United States and Canada. At first, hearing what they were studying in school made her jealous, but then she realized it was an opportunity.

She asked them to spend an hour a week teaching her what they learned in physics and chemistry. She woke up at 6 a.m. to talk to them. And between sessions, she pored over photos of textbooks sent by two friends, Mina and Mursad.

“Some of my friends were painting, writing, and taking underground taekwondo classes,” Hassani said. “We were depressed all the time, but we had to be brave.”

“I love Afghanistan, I love my country. I just don’t like the government and people imposing their beliefs on others,” she added.

While informal, these classes and arts outlets give girls, especially those living in more progressive cities, hope and purpose. But the programs have limited reach.

Rahmani, 43, who asked not to give her last name for fear of retaliation, said she began taking sleeping pills every night to ease the anxiety of providing for her family.

Rahmani, a widow, worked for nonprofits for nearly two decades before the Taliban seized power, earning enough to support her four children. Now, she says, after women were banned from working for such groups, not only is she unable to support them — but she’s also lost her sense of self.

“I miss the old days when I could work, earn a living, serve my country,” Rahmani explained. “They have erased us from society.”