KABUL, Oct. 16 -- A 13-year-old girl was held overnight by Taliban virtue and vice inspectors over how she wore her hijab, and was released the next day when her father came to collect her. Her case appears in a quarterly report from the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan, published Thursday, which documented more than 50 hijab-related arrests, detentions or cautions of women between July and September, most of them in Herat and Kabul.

The same day, the global hunger monitor known as the IPC reported that acute hunger and malnutrition in Afghanistan have reached the highest levels ever recorded. Set side by side, the two reports describe a winter in which the families in greatest need face rules that, by UNAMA's account, have turned wo...