Haji Hekmat insists no such thing happened. As we leave the station, he gestures to a number of the young men working there, remarking they do not have beards.
“See! We’re not forcing anyone,” he says, grinning.
It’s clear the group do want to portray a softer image to the planet . But in other parts of the country the Taliban are reported to be behaving far more strictly. The differences may depend upon the attitudes of local commanders.
With reports of extra-judicial revenge killings and other human rights abuses in a number of the areas they’ve captured, the Taliban are warned by Western officials they risk turning the country into a pariah state if they struggle to seize it by force.
What many associate most closely with the Taliban’s previous stint in power, is that the brutal punishments administered under their interpretation of shariah .
Last month within the southern province of Helmand, the group hanged two men accused of kid kidnapping from a bridge, justifying it by saying the lads had been convicted.
In Balkh, on the day we visit a Taliban court session, all the cases are associated with land disputes. Whilst many fear their sort of justice, for others it a minimum of offers the likelihood of a quicker resolution than the notoriously corrupt government system.
“I’ve had to pay numerous bribes,” complains one among the litigants as he discusses his previous attempts to resolve the case.
The Taliban judge, Haji Badruddin, says he is not yet ordered any punishment within the four months he’s been in office, and emphasises the group features a system of appeal courts to review serious verdicts.
But he defends even the harshest penalties. “In our Sharia it’s clear, for those that roll in the hay and are unmarried, whether it is a girl or a boy, the punishment is 100 lashes publicly .
“But for anyone who’s married, they need to be stoned to death… For those that steal: if it’s proved, then his hand should be stop .”
He pushes back against criticism of the punishments as incompatible with the fashionable world.
“People’s children are being kidnapped. Is that better? Or is it better that one person’s hand is chopped off and stability is brought within the community?”
For now, despite the Taliban’s rapid advance, the govt remains on top of things of Afghanistan’s biggest cities. the approaching months are likely to ascertain protracted and increasingly deadly violence because the two sides wrestle for control.
I ask Haji Hekmat if he’s sure the Taliban can win militarily? “Yes,” he replies. “If peace talks aren’t successful, we’ll win, God willing.”
Those talks however, have stalled, and therefore the Taliban’s repeated demand for the creation of an “Islamic government” appears tantamount to a involve their opponents to surrender.
“We have defeated both the foreigners,” says Haji Hekmat, “and now our internal enemies.”