Norway slams Afghan Taliban edict demanding women cover up

By JAN M. OLSEN
Associated Press
COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) — Norway has slammed the latest Afghan Taliban edict demanding women cover up head to toe in public and warned that Afghanistan’s new rulers are “steering the country toward a humanitarian, economic and human rights catastrophe.” The Taliban decree, announced on Saturday, ordered all Afghan women to wear all-covering clothing in public, the traditional burqa, and threatened to punish their male relatives in cases of noncompliance. It evoked similar restrictions on women and other hard-line measures imposed by the Taliban during their previous, 1996-2001 rule of Afghanistan. Henrik Thune, Norway’s deputy foreign minister, said on Sunday that he is outraged and that the edict is “completely unacceptable.”