Taliban further curbs women's rights and tramples human rights and anything civil as the world looks the other way
While the world’s attention is riveted on the war in Ukraine, Afghanistan’s Taliban regime is moving determinedly to make their present rule a clone of their earlier obscurantist and retrogressive one from 1996 to 2001. In the wake of a slew of measures restricting human rights, particularly of women, comes the recent decision to impose Sharia or Islamic laws and further curtail women’s freedoms.
The Taliban spokesman, Zabiullah Mujahid, tweeted late on November 13, 2022, that the organisation’s supreme leader, Hibatullah Akhundzada, had issued an obligatory command to “carefully examine the files of thieves, kidnappers, and seditionists," and “those files in which all the Sharia conditions of hudud and qisas have been fulfilled, you are obliged to implement.” He is quoted to have added, "This is the ruling of Sharia, and my command, which is obligatory."
Hudud stands for crimes against God, which include zina (unlawful sexual intercourse such as adultery) or false accusations thereof, consumption of alcohol, highway robbery, and some forms of theft. These can be forgiven neither on behalf of the victims nor by the State. The punishments, ranging from flogging, and stoning to death, amputation of limbs to crucifixion, have to be carried out in public. Qisas means retaliation and provides, as punishment to the offenders, exactly what they did to the victims, the essence of which is often summed up in the much-used expression, “An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.” Under the provisions of Sharia, the accused, or if he cannot be produced, a member of his family or tribe who is of comparable status has to be handed over to the family or tribe of the victims. The latter can either punish him as provided or let him off in lieu of financial compensation or forgive him. The punishments are as draconian as in the case of hudud.
Modern systems of jurisprudence shun the punishments prescribed under Sharia on the ground that these are inhuman. The Taliban’s implementation of Sharia during their first stint in power was searingly criticized globally. The initially-harbored view that the Taliban may not tread the same path again now lies in smithereens, as does their promise that women would be able to be educated and work according to the provisions of the Sharia. While some women still work in sectors like healthcare and education, most, particularly those employed by the government and other public institutions, have had to seize work after the Taliban swept back to power. Protest demonstrations by them have been violently broken up and some of those arrested were tortured with cables, pipes, and whips.
Remarkably, the world has done precious little besides freezing Afghanistan’s funds abroad, which has had virtually no effect as the Taliban have set up an effective system of tax collection. This once again conveys the message that morality and professed concern for freedom and democracy plays no role in international relations. If the democratic countries are looking the other way as women are being enslaved in Afghanistan, they did the same in the case of Jews who were marched to concentration camps or gas chambers or tortured horrendously in the name of “medical experimentation,” when Hitler was carrying out the “final solution” of the Holocaust. Some, especially in Britain, even tacitly supported the Nazi regime as a bulwark against the spread of Soviet influence--their attitude is summed up in the slogan, “Let the Nazi dog eat the Bolshie dog.”
Western democracies have not learned from history that such indifference can have disastrous consequences. The indifference to the fate of the Jews and inaction against Hitler when they could have thwarted his rise led to World War II, which Hitler unleashed once the German armament industry had been adequately built up in violation of the terms of the Versailles Treaty, and the Wehrmacht—as Germany’s unified armed forces were called between 1935 and 1945—was ready to strike.
More recently, the United States forgot all about Afghanistan after the last Soviet troops left it on February 15, 1989, and took little meaningful action while the Taliban turned it into a graveyard of human rights, particularly those of women. As a result, the Taliban harboured Osama bin Laden and all-Qaeda and became a spawning ground of global terrorism. And then there was 9/11. The killing of Ayman al-Zawahiri, in Kabul on July 31, 2022, by a US drone firing two AGM-114R9X hellfire missiles, clearly showed that the Taliban had been sheltering the al-Qaeda. Nothing else can explain his functioning from an exclusive locality in Kabul. It has also been harbouring organisations like the Jaish-e-Mohammad and Lashkar-e-Toiba.
These terrorist organisations seek to establish Sharia rule worldwide and are pathologically hostile to the western countries whose lifestyles they consider to be degenerate and which they consider to be the biggest obstacle to achieving their global aim. So is the Taliban, its initial emollient attitude to the West was an attempt to get their frozen funds released. They will strike when they are ready and the weapon will be terrorism. While they may not be able to repeat 9/11, nothing prevents them from hitting Americans and their interests abroad. Turbulent times are ahead.
(The author is Consulting Editor, The Pioneer. The views expressed are personal)
