after taking power last august, however, they held off on issuing any new laws on what women should wear until now, that is. today, they decreed that all women must cover their faces with a veil in public, and they laid out an escalating series of punishments for any woman not complying, beginning with their male relatives being talked to at home. then, if a woman still isn t complying, those male relatives being summoned by taliban officials, then potentially being jailed for three days and taken to court. now, this is a conservative country, and many women already wore a face veil of sorts, but in kabul and other big cities, as you can see from this clothes market, many women cover their hair but not their faces, and women s rights activists, as you can imagine, have reacted to this decree with dismay. they see years of fragile progress on women s rights being rolled back. remember, teenage girls are still not allowed back into the classroom in most of the country.