Some Afghans knew exactly what the Taliban wanted once they were able to retake control until the US-backed state fell in August 2021. Some American officials and spectators hoped the Taliban’s Islamic Emirate, which had ruled the country since the 1990s, would see a significant change.
This day, they hoped, a more sophisticated and logical vision may have replaced the Taliban’s recently extremist approach.
Some claimed that there was a moral obligation to view Afghanistan’s new leaders cautiously optimistic. The key may be engagement. Something more ran the risk of condemning the nation and its inhabitants to poverty and loneliness.
Some were n’t convinced.
During the negotiations that led to the February 2020 Doha contract, the Taliban’s place on post-settlement Afghanistan’s politicians remained confusing. During the later intra-Afghan discussions with the former Afghan government, the group kept this obscure position.
Therefore, its official Zabihullah Mujahid appeared to assure the new government that it would regard women’s rights “within the standards of Islamic law” when they spoke at a press event three days after Taliban forces took command of Kabul.
Despite making an effort to create a sympathetic image in the wake of its tough rule in the 1990s, the Taliban’s conservative regime has continued to suffer from poor legitimacy over the course of the following three years.
What had appeared to be Taliban 2.0 to some as Taliban 2.0 has since grown more comfortable in its hold on power, however, has grown to look more like the old, terrible, and conservative Taliban.
Since 2021, Hibatullah Akhundzada, the head of Afghanistan’s Islamic Emirate, has issued – not all at once but slowly – more than 50 laws that affect most areas of society.
Some hard-won efforts under the original state, such as freedom of expression and the media, have been suppressed. The program has forced into departure, imprisoned or murdered some former government users, despite having announced a basic asylum.
The restrictions on women’s training, including those that forbid it after the age of 12, have become so severe that many journalists, academics, and activists have called the resulting subjection “gender segregation” because of how they treated women.
Some female students were forced to flee the state. A group of female health students recently made headlines after receiving funding to study in the UK.
Additionally, the government has revived flogging and open killings that are reminiscent of Taliban practices from the 1990s. The government will even begin public murdering, according to an proclamation issued in March 2024.
The Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice ( PVPV ) is now in charge of enforcing a number of new “vice and virtue” laws.
Until then, government has been largely by laws from the Taliban management. However, these do not provide an explanation of how they should be enforced despite giving an indication of the government’s growing extremist and autocratic nature. This confusion may occasionally give local authorities some leeway, including the ability to overlook decrees in some circumstances.
But the current legislation change removes these inconsistencies, empowers the Taliban’s conscience authorities and is legal on anyone residing in Afghanistan.
Blueprint for persecution
Especially severe on women are the new regulations. They require that a woman wear the hijab and that it be made of a substance heavy enough to completely cover her face and body, as well as to prevent people from tempting them.
People are now prohibited from speaking outside the community home because their voices are also thought to be a source of temptation. A person who can be heard chanting, even from her own house, is deemed a criminal and subject to sanctions. Perhaps a person is not permitted to gaze directly at a person who is not her father or blood relative.
Everyone in society” who is worthy” can carry out enforcement. Studies by two” trustworthy” people are enough to bring a trial. This possibility is alarming because it could lead to random complaints made based on political or personal vendettas.
Actually, protection will become carried out by the agency’s officials, the conscience police or mohtaseb. Although these words are not defined and the law is rife with personal concepts that are open to interpretation by those enforcing them,” Fairness and generosity” are mentioned as guiding concepts for how the new rules may be implemented.
The package’s new media laws make it possible for the morality police to compel the media to stop publishing material that is considered to be in violation of Sharia and images of living things. The future of Afghan TV broadcasting will be seriously questioned by this last step.
The laws also forbid music in public and “un-Islamic” hairstyles. Men must develop beards that are at least as long as a fist. As a worrying sign for continued humanitarian engagement involving non-Muslim foreign workers, the law prohibits befriending, helping or imitating “nonbelievers”.
The Mohtaseb will impose on-the-spot fines, imprisonment for one to three days, and prosecution for repeat offenders in the regime’s courts. Regardless of whether they pray at home or not, the morality police also have the authority to compel visitors to the mosque.
Taliban representatives recently reportedly spoke at UN-sponsored talks in Doha where Zabihullah Mujahid demanded the release of funds frozen by the West and the relaxation of regime sanctions. He dismissed Western concerns over the regime’s treatment of women as” cultural differences”.
However, these new laws effectively eliminated any fundamentalist contradictions between the current regime and its 1990s-era predecessor, a pariah that made Afghanistan into a marginalized outcast.
Kambaiz Rafi works in Durham University’s School of Government and International Affairs.
This article was republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.