Taliban

Above: Two members of the opposition hanged.The bodies of the two men will remain on the cranes all day as part of Taliban's policy to deter others.
"I am very upset because these people are human beings," said Zair Ahmed, a sixth grader on his way to school, wearing the mandatory black turban and clutching a handful of books. "They are our countrymen. We should feel pity for them."

In November 1994, a group named "Taliban" emerged as a military and political force. Taliban, which means "students of Muslim religious studies," are poorly educated rural Pashtun youths mostly recruited from refugee camps and religious schools (madrasas) in neighboring Pakistan. This movement, led by Mullah Mohammed Omar, a 31-year-old religious leader, claims to be restoring peace and security through the imposition of a strict Islamic order. With no functioning judicial system, many municipal and provincial authorities use the Taliban's interpretation of Shari'a (Islamic law) and traditional tribal codes of justice.

The Taliban now control between 65 and 85 percent of Afghanistan, a country where statistics are anyone's guess. (Even the population size of Afghanistan is uncertain: possibly 15, maybe 22 million. The U.S. Department of State's figure on war fatalities-1.5 million- has not changed since 1985, although the armed conflict there is now in its 19th year.) For the last two years, the Taliban have been trying to win both a seat at the United Nations and international recognition. Thus far, only three countries have recognized the regime: Pakistan, the United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia. And even Pakistan is becoming embarrassed by its neighbor.

Now in its sixth year of existence, the pariah regime has expunged all leisure activities. Their list of what is illegal grows daily: music, movies and television, computers, picnics, wedding parties, New Year celebrations, any kind of mixed-sex gathering. They've also banned children's toys, including dolls and kites; card and board games; cameras; photographs and paintings of people and animals; pet parakeets; cigarettes and alcohol; magazines and newspapers, and most books. Afghans are not allowed to be or talk with foreigners. They've even forbidden applause -- a moot point, since there's nothing left to applaud.

It would probably be quicker to list what the Taliban haven't banned. The regime has even outlawed paper bags. Like many of their edicts, this would be laughable if the penalties for infractions weren't so severe. Break the Taliban's law and you risk imprisonment, flogging, or execution. And to insure their dictates are followed, religious police, part of the "Department for the Propagation of Virtue and the Suppression of Vice," constantly roam the streets. Often teenage boys armed with automatic weapons, they also carry broken-off car aerials or electrical cabling to whip women they decide are not properly observing the regulations.

Explaining why his regime has banned virtually all forms of entertainment, Sher Abbas Stanakzai, who until recently was the Taliban's 36-year-old deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs says, "Time should be spent serving the country and praying to God. Nothing else. Everything else is a waste of time, and people are not allowed to waste their time."

For women, the restrictions are even harsher. Female education, from kindergarten through graduate school, banned. Employment for women, banned. It's now illegal to wear makeup, nail polish, jewelry, pluck your eyebrows, cut your hair short, wear colorful or stylish clothes, sheer stockings, white socks and shoes, high-heel shoes, walk loudly, talk loudly or laugh in public. In fact, the government doesn't believe women should go out at all: "Women, you should not step outside your residence" reads one of the Taliban dictates.

If women do venture out, it must be for an essential, government-sanctioned purpose, and they must wear the all-enveloping burqa and be accompanied by a male. Even then they risk their lives. Not so long ago, a young mother, Torpeka, was shot repeatedly by the Taliban while rushing her seriously ill toddler to a doctor. Veiled as the law requires, she was spotted by a teenage Taliban guard, who tried to stop her because she shouldn't have left her home. Afraid her child might die if she were delayed, Torpeka kept going. The guard aimed his Kalashnikov machine-gun and fired several rounds directly at her. She was hit, but didn't die on the spot, as she could have. Instead, Afghans watching the incident in the crowded marketplace intervened, and Torpeka and her child received prompt medical attention. When her family later complained to the Taliban authorities, they were informed that it was the injured woman's fault. She had no right being out in public in the first place.

The Burqa is a garment that covers women from head to toe, the heavy gauze patch across the eyes makes it hard to see, and completely blocks peripheral vision. Since enforced veiling, a growing number of women have been hit by vehicles because the burqa leaves them unable to walk fast, or see where they are going. The burqa has also become a severe financial hardship. The veil now costs the equivalent of five months salary-if any women were still receiving one. Most cannot afford to buy the garment, and whole neighborhoods must share one. It can take several days for a woman's turn to come round; even if she has money to shop for food, she can't go out until then.

To insure women are effaced as effectively as if they never existed, the government ordered all exterior windows of homes to be painted black. The only public transport permitted women are special buses, which are rarely available, and have all windows, except the driver's, covered with thick blankets. It is now illegal for women to talk to any men except close relatives, which precludes them from visiting male physicians, no matter how sick. The evening curfew begins at 7:30 p.m., after which no one, except government troops, is allowed out, even for medical emergencies. Even women in labor and needing hospital care must remain at home until morning.

Kabul is a city of beggars -- women who had once been teachers and nurses now moving in the streets like ghosts under their enveloping burqas , selling every possession and begging so as to feed their children. It is difficult to find another government or would-be government in the world that has deliberately created such poverty by arbitrarily depriving half the population under its control of jobs, schooling, mobility, and health care. Such restrictions are literally life threatening to women and to their children.

The Taliban's abuses are by no means limited to women though. Thousands of men have been taken prisoner, arbitrarily detained, tortured, and many killed and disappeared. Men are beaten and jailed for wearing beards of insufficient length (that of a clenched fist beneath the chin), are subjected to cruel and degrading conditions in jail, and suffer such punishments as amputation and stoning. Men are also vulnerable to extortion, arrest, gang rape, and abuse in detention because of their ethnicity or presumed political views. The Taliban's Shari'a courts lack even a semblance of due process, with no provisions for legal counsel and frequent use of torture to extract confessions.

Despite its disastrous and very public record on human rights, when the Taliban was petitioning the United Nations for a seat in the General Assembly last May, its then New York representative, Abdul Hakeem Mujahid, claimed his government was "protecting human rights and liberties in Afghanistan." He also stated that, having put a stop to the "miserable living conditions under which our women were living," they had "restored women's safety, dignity and freedom." He then went on to justify the Taliban's ban on women's education: Afghanistan lacks the resources to educate them, he said, adding that the Taliban also do not trust the values that became part of the education system under previous governments. Those reservations, however, only apply to women, since the regime continues to educate boys.

Mujahid omitted to mention a personal detail-how he circumvents the ban for his own daughter by sending her to an English-language school in Pakistan. But this kind of hypocrisy is common in Afghanistan today. Under the regime, cigarette smoking is severely punished, yet in every Taliban office you enter in Kabul, even that of the head of the department of Virtue and Vice, Mullah Qalam-ad-Din, from whom most of the restrictions originate, used ashtrays were always in evidence. A senior official in the foreign ministry chain-smoked throughout an hour-long conversation. "Isn't that illegal?" He was asked. "I can't help it, I'm addicted," he replied with a smile.

Robbery is punishable by amputation in a soccer field. The surgeons amputated the limbs after anaesthetizing the convicts and left the severed limbs on the ground for the spectators to rush and have a close look.

Content provided by the UNDP,The Dawn, The Afghan Times, Physicians for Human Rights, Buried Alive. Afghan Women Under the Taliban by Jan Goodwin and RAWA