Province by province, the Taliban government’s leader, Sheikh Haibatullah Akhundzada, has tightened his grip over Afghanistan. With a recent show of force in the western city of Herat, he has asserted control over one of the last havens where people had still been able to quietly ignore some of the Taliban’s restrictions.

Since retaking power in 2021, the Taliban have enforced a rigid set of rules about religious practice, dress and daily life. Across Afghanistan, women and girls face restrictions on access to education, most jobs and travel. But in some parts of Herat, the country’s third-largest city, men kept their beards short and women wore heels and makeup — despite the Taliban’s dress codes.

Now, that’s changing.

I traveled to Herat in June and found that these pockets of resistance to the Taliban are disappearing.

Sheikh Akhundzada’s morality police have arrested dozens of people over the last few weeks. Many women said they now avoided leaving their homes out of fear of being caught in the wave of arrests. Some people had even protested, a rare act of public resistance, but the Taliban cracked down on them, too.

“They are spreading fear like a virus,” said Hengameh, a Herat resident in her 30s.

She and most of the two dozen other residents, religious leaders, human rights defenders and teachers interviewed in Herat asked to be identified only by their first names, or to remain anonymous because of fear of retaliation by the Taliban.

They described an intense new climate of fear and intimidation that has settled over vast parts of one of Afghanistan’s most cosmopolitan cities.

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