Activists have been left outraged after a US porn star was ‘welcomed’ to Taliban-controlled Afghanistan where women can’t leave the house without a male guardian, speak in public or even be glimpsed through a window in her own home.
Travel snaps shared by Whitney Wright, 33, from Oklahoma, from her recent visit to the Islamic nation, were a world away from her usual flow of lingerie snaps and X-rated videos.
They included photographs of some of the country’s tourist landmarks – like the Herat Citadel and Sabz Masjid or the Green Mosque in Balkh – as well as a snap of Wright on a swing set in a park and a now deleted photo of her with what appears to be an AK47, posing in the Band-e Amir national park.
In 2023, women were banned from visiting the popular attraction because they were not wearing the hijab ‘properly’ and ‘going sightseeing is not a must for women’, according to the all-male vice and virtue ministry.
‘Afghanistan,’ her one-word caption of the Instagram post, also comprising aesthetic images of Wright – who has previously travelled to other predominantly Muslim nations such as Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon.
The Taliban-controlled government’s strict ‘virtue and vice’ laws require women to cover their faces and bodies in public, refrain from singing or reading aloud in public, and looking at men to whom they are not related.
Women in Afghanistan can no longer visit national parks or beauty salons, with the morality laws also banning them from playing sports or undertaking any form of solo travel beyond the perimeter of their houses.
When American adult film star Whitney Wright (above) showed off the highlights from her recent visit to the Islamic nation, Afghan women were outraged. A now deleted photo shows her with what appears to be an AK47, posing in the Band-e Amir national park
Wright has previously travelled to predominantly Muslim-dominated counties like Iran, Iraq , Syria , and Lebanon
Whitney said she was excited to visit a lake that was frozen solid, so she posed in a pedalo instead
While the Taliban has not commented on Wright’s visit to Afghanistan during the holy month of Ramadan, activists have criticised the ‘hypocritical’ government for promoting the country as a tourist destination while Afghan women are ‘imprisoned in their own homeland’.
‘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 news outlet RFE/RL’s Radio Azadi.
‘It is fundamentally hypocritical,’ she called out the decision to grant a tourist visa to Wright, an American citizen.
The outlet also reported claims that female tourists and solo travellers are being invited to visit the country in a bid to soften its international reputation and promote Afghanistan as being safe for women but, said Nasima Bidargar, ‘this freedom is only for foreigners’.
Meanwhile, Afghan women are ‘deprived of their most basic rights’, the activist added.
Today, social media platforms like Instagram and Tiktok are awash with travel guides for Afghanistan that are created by female travel influencers and content creators from countries like Hungary, Australia, and the UK.
Diána Leskó, who runs the @theglobetrottingdetective blog on Instagram, said she spent four weeks travelling ‘independently…and mostly solo’ across the country and ‘felt extremely safe’, and even advises her followers to engage with a ‘friendly Tali bro’.
‘There is too much fear-mongering about Afghanistan that makes people concerned about and afraid of traveling there,’ she captioned a video that showed Leskó wearing a traditional salwar-kameez while covering her head with a pink dupatta (scarf).
The Oklahoma native’s social media posts included photographs of some of the country’s tourist landmarks – like the Herat Citadel and Sabz Masjid or the Green Mosque in Balkh – as well as a snap of Wright on a swing set in a park
Sydney-based travel blogger Paris Hailwood is among female travel influencers from Western countries creating content about Afghanistan
Diána Leskó, who runs the @theglobetrottingdetective blog on Instagram, said she spent four weeks travelling ‘independently…and mostly solo’ across the country and ‘felt extremely safe’
UK-based travel vlogger Astrid Sieber, whose Instagram bio reads ‘Official National Crush of Afghanistan’, has multiple posts chronicling the ‘story of one of the most beautiful countries I’ve ever been to’ while expressing her desire to return to Afghanistan again and again
‘The more time I spent there, the more relaxed I became,’ Leskó added, referring to a month spent visiting ‘off-the-beaten-path places’ places such as Panjshir Valley, Balkh, Kabul, Ghazni, and Parwan.
She highlighted experiences like savouring a ‘hearty bowl of a local Aghan soup’ or enjoying a cup of tea while ‘enjoying the panoramic view’ from the tourist attraction of Golghondi Hill.
She also documented her visit to a school where she ‘had the privilege of learning Dari (one of the country’s two official languages) from a group of incredibly schoolgirls’.
Since returning to power, the Taliban leaders have banned girls from studying beyong grade six.
One day after Wright shared that she had visited Afghanistan, Sydney-based travel blogger Paris Hailwood told her followers she was ‘grinning so hard my cheeks hurt’ after experiencing a snowstorm in Afghanistan.
Her short video showed Hailwood dressed in a red shawl that covered her blonde hair as snow fell from the night skies.
In a separate Instagram post, including pictures taken during her trip to Herat, Hailwood revealed she had ‘spent the last two weeks in Afghanistan and there is more to go’.
‘It just gets better,’ she gushed, adding the country has become ‘a place so close to my heart’.
Afghan burqa-clad women walk along a street in Kandahar on September 3, 2024
Taliban security personnel stand guard as an Afghan burqa-clad woman (R) walks along a street at a market in the Baharak district of Badakhshan province on February 26, 2024
Astrid seen riding a donkey in one of her travel posts about Afghnistan
UK-based travel vlogger Astrid Sieber, whose Instagram bio reads ‘Official National Crush of Afghanistan’, has multiple posts chronicling the ‘story of one of the most beautiful countries I’ve ever been to’ while expressing her desire to return to Afghanistan again and again.
In one post, Sieber can be seen posing outside the gates of the Band-e-Amir national park in the country’s Bamiyan province last December.
In May 2023, the country’s acting minister of virtue and viice, Mogammad Khaled Hanafi, banned women from visiting the national park following complaints ‘about lack of hijab or bad hijab’.
Exiled MP Mariam Solaimankhil defiantly reacted to the ban by sharing a photograph from her last visit to the national park on X/Twitter, adding: ‘We’ll return, I’m sure of it.’
American traveller and YouTuber Meg donned a niqab – a garment worn by Muslim women that covers them from head to toe – for a five-day trip to Afghanistan last July.
The introduction for the five-part series on her YouTube channel reads: ‘My goal for this video is to try and put politics aside, and get a taste of what the culture and humanity of a country is like through tourism.’
In start contrast to these Western solo travellers, Afghan women must necessarily be accompanied by a male guardian even when stepping outside of their houses.
The Taliban’s morality code requires that any woman trabelling more than 75km or leaving the country must be chaperoned by a mehram or a male relative. ]
Women without mehrams told the Guardian they ‘don’t dare to go far’ from their homes or streets.
‘I don’t dare go far from this street, and I haven’t been beyond this area since the Taliban came,’ said Hasina, who was forced to give up her tailoring job in the wake of the group’s return to power.
‘I heard that when they find out about families without a mehram, they are taking women away.
‘Even if I found a job outside the home, I wouldn’t take it.’