An adult star’s visit to Afghanistan has sparked fury after she posed holding a rifle a national park which the Taliban banned women from.
Whitney Wright, 33, from Oklahoma, shared images from her recent visit to the Islamic nation on Instagram, including snaps at landmarks like the Herat Citadel and the Green Mosque in Balkh.
The actress also posted a picture of her on a swing set and a now-deleted photo of her with what appears to be an AK-47, posing at the Band-e-Amir national park.
Meanwhile, the Taliban has banned women from visiting the park following complaints ‘about lack of hijab or bad hijab’ at the site.
Ms Wright, a US citizen, has recently travelled to a range of predominantly Muslim nations, including Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon.
The Taliban government’s strict ‘virtue and vice’ laws prohibit women in Afghanistan from being visible in their homes from neighbouring houses, singing or raising their voices in public and looking at men to whom they are not related.
Women are also strictly required to cover their faces and bodies in public, while those over the age of 12 are not allowed to attend secondary and higher education.
The Taliban has not commented on Ms Wright’s visit, which took place during Ramadan, but campaigners have accused the government of being ‘hypocritical’ by promoting Afghanistan as a female-friendly tourist destination.
‘Afghan women are imprisoned in their own homeland, while foreign visitors – no matter their background – are treated with hospitality,’ women’s rights activist Washma Tokhi told Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.
‘It is fundamentally hypocritical,’ Ms Tokhi says.
Social media platforms have been flooded with travel influencers and content creators, including female vloggers visiting Islamic nations.
Diána Leskó, who runs the @theglobetrottingdetective blog on Instagram, says she spent four weeks travelling ‘independently…and mostly solo’ across Afghanistan and ‘felt extremely safe’.
She recommends that her followers engage with a ‘friendly Tali bro’.
‘There is too much fear-mongering about Afghanistan that makes people concerned about and afraid of traveling there,’ Leskó captioned a video that showed her wearing a traditional salwar-kameez while covering her head with a pink dupatta.
‘The more time I spent there, the more relaxed I became,’ she adds.
The Instagram bio of UK-based travel vlogger Astrid Sieber reads: ‘Official National Crush of Afghanistan’.
Ms Sieber has multiple posts documenting the ‘story of one of the most beautiful countries I’ve ever been to’ as well as her desire to return to Afghanistan.
In one post, Ms Sieber can be seen posing outside the gates of the Band-e-Amir national park in the country’s Bamiyan province last December.
The Taliban government banned women from visiting the Band-e-Amir national park in 2023 after Afghanistan’s acting minister of ‘virtue and vice’ Mohammad Khaled Hanafi said women had not been observing hijab at the site.
Hanafi says going to the park to sightsee ‘was not obligatory’ for women, the local Tolo News agency reports.
Afghan former MP Mariam Solaimankhil defiantly reacted to the ban by sharing a photograph from her last visit to the national park on X, saying: ‘We’ll return, I’m sure of it.’
Fereshta Abbasi, a researcher at Human Rights Watch, said the ban was enforced on Women’s Equality Day, describing it as ‘total disrespect to the women of Afghanistan’.
Last month, a British family lost touch with their parents, aged in their 70s, after they were reportedly detained for teaching parenting skills to mothers in Afghanistan.
When the Taliban seized power in 2021, university sweethearts Barbie and Peter Reynolds decided to stay.
They spent 15 years running training projects in schools and had no plans to leave. They loved the country so much they married in its capital Kabul in 1970.
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Far from being persecuted for their work, Barbie was even the first woman issued a certificate of appreciation by the Taliban.
However, pair now languish in jail, where they have been since their home in Nayak was raided on February 1.
The Foreign Office advises against all travel to Afghanistan, saying ‘the security situation is volatile’.
British nationals are at a ‘heightened risk’ of being detained and could face ‘months or years of imprisonment’, the Foreign Office says.
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