As women-led protests spread across Iran after 22-year-old Mahsa Amini died in police custody for violating hijab laws, women in neighboring Afghanistan have also been taking to the streets.

Iran's protests quickly turned bloody, with the death toll (including security forces) currently at around 200. Though large protests have happened before, this time the tempo is more sustained and anti-regime demonstrations have spread to religious centers like Qom and Mashhad as well. While the Afghan protests are notably smaller in size and have mostly included Hazara women, they have continued apace for several weeks and university students have gotten involved. The Hazara are an ethnic minority group in Afghanistan who practice Shiite Islam and have faced ongoing discrimination from the Sunni Taliban regime.

In Afghanistan, some of the largest protests led by women started after a Sept. 30 suicide attack on an educational center in Kabul in which 53 Hazara girls were killed. Expanding to universities in Herat, Bamiyan, Daikundi, Balkh and Panjshir, the latest is Kapisa where female students from Al-Biruni University took to the streets. 

Heather Barr, associate women’s rights director and former senior Afghanistan researcher at Human Rights Watch, told Al-Monitor that it is very moving to see women’s protests in Afghanistan nowadays. “These are notable for a few reasons. First, we know how brutal the Taliban’s response to women’s protests have been, so these protestors are displaying extraordinary courage — and it is very clear and noticeable that women are the leaders of peaceful opposition to violence and human rights violations in Afghanistan," she noted.