When the Taliban swept to power in Afghanistan last month, its leaders vowed to respect women’s rights. But in the weeks since, the group has done little to assuage fears that it will once more bar women from politics and public life.

Among its early targets was the women’s affairs ministry in Kabul, which earlier this month Taliban fighters seized and, in a particularly ominous sign, turned it into a headquarters for the group’s notoriously brutal morality police.

Afghan women’s rights activists say that the move to abolish the ministry marks a symbolic end to the formal role women have played in government over the past 20 years. It has also highlighted the vital, though incomplete, position the ministry occupied since it was first established in 2001 with the aim of promoting women’s issues and rights through Afghan laws and policies.