Kabul, Afghanistan ? The Vice and Virtues Ministry is returning to Afghanistan.

The government is saying it won’t resemble the Taliban version, but Human Rights Watch said the move “raises serious concerns about potential abuse of the rights of women and vulnerable groups.” The New York-based group said the new office would concentrate on alcohol, drugs, crime and corruption.

Karim Rahimi, President Hamid Karzai’s spokesman, described the new office: “The people were scared of the Vice and Virtues Ministry under the Taliban, but this new ministry won’t be like the Taliban’s. … It will take into consideration moral and religious activities to help improve Afghan society.”

Under the Taliban, the office employed 32,000 people to enforce bans on girls’ schools, TV, card-playing and other gambling, even on kite-flying and women’s public baths. The ministry’s enforcers would harass women whose head-to-toe burqa veils were not sufficiently all-covering, and men whose beards were not sufficiently long.

They enforced measures through public beatings and imprisonment.