Frontline
November 1998
Cover Story

Taleban: More ‘Islam’, more misery

Its website tells you how the Taleban are Allah’s  own gift to Afghanistan. Independent reports of realities on the ground tell a very different story

Propaganda 
Observance of the Islamic Hejab or Veil
To comply with the Islamic code of Hejab, as well as to reduce the degree of threat to the personal safety of women, the Islamic State of Afghanistan is asking the women to observe the Islamic Hejab, and cover their faces in public. This is a measure that is undertaken for the simple reason of protecting the honour, dignity, and personal safety of the women in Afghanistan.

Deed 
l “Turpeki was taking her toddler to the doctor. The child had acute diarrhoea and needed to be seen by a doctor soon. Turpeki was dressed in a burqa. She reached the market area when a teen-aged Taliban guard noticed her. The guard called her. Turpeki knew that if she stopped she would be beaten for appearing in public. She was also frightened that her child might die if she did not hurry. She began to run. The Taliban guard aimed his Kalashnikov at her and fired several rounds. Turpeki was hit but did not die. People intervened  and took the mother and the child to the doctor. Turpeki’s family then complained to the Taliban leaders. But were simply told that it had been the woman’s fault. She should not have been appearing in public in the first place; one she did, she should stop, when told to and not run away.”

l “A Taliban guard stopped an Afghan woman who had gone out of the house, and beat her severely with a cable rod for not wearing a burqa. The woman cried that she could not afford to buy a burqa but the guard did not stop beating her”. 

l “The young woman was carrying her baby, her two friends walking beside her. All three were veiled, their faces completely hidden from view. Suddenly a passing car braked to a halt and two men jumped  out…It was clear they were the Taliban from Kandahar. Each was brandishing a stick They set about beating the women on the legs. As their arms rose and fell, they shouted that the women should never come out in public dressed in such immoral fashion again. A few inches of bare leg were showing above the women’s ankles between their shoes and the bottom of their pajama–style trousers. The woman with the baby staggered and swayed beneath the blows, desperately trying to stay upright. None of the three dared to utter a sound as the sticks whipped their legs. Then the men got back in the car and drove off. The incident lasted less than 5 minutes, but it was sufficiently brutal to leave the women quaking as they limped  silently away.”
(Amnesty International, November 18, 1996, reported in the RAWA publication, Burst of the “Islamic Government” bubble in Afghanistan, January 1997).

l “A woman comes into a Kabul hospital with burns over 80 percent of her body. An official of the Taliban, the fundamentalist group ruling most of Afghanistan, prohibits the doctor from undressing her. The doctor says she will die if he does not treat her. “Many Taliban die on the battlefield,” replies the official. The woman, untreated, dies.” 
(New York Times, Editorial
Nov. 6, 1997).

l Doctors working in Taliban-held Afghanistan were ordered Thursday to deny treatment to women not accompanied by a close male relative, state–run Radio Shariat announced.
“The department of regulation and inspection of the public health ministry announces to all doctors and medical personnel not to examine and treat women without their legal Mahram present,” Radio Shariat said.
The ruling is the latest in a long series of tough measures aimed at reforming public health structures, in which the puritanical Moslem militia has attempted to minimize contact between men and women. It is also likely to pose serious problems for the Afghan capital’s estimated 30,000 widows, many of whom have no male relatives to accompany them. All public hospitals have already been tightly segregated and are subject to regular inspections by religious police squads from the ministry for the fostering of virtue and prevention of vice.
It also comes amid a crisis of foreign–aid medical projects in the Afghan capital, many of which have been suspended following militia threats to locally recruited female staff.
(AFP, Kabul, June 25, 1998)..

Propaganda
Restoration of Women’s Safety, Dignity and Freedom
 Being highly concerned about the well–being of its female citizens, the Islamic State of Afghanistan, soon introduced measures to put a stop to the miserable living conditions under which the women lived in Kabul. After the communists took over in Kabul, they began to exploit women for the purpose of advancing their political and social agendas. In spite of war condition in the country and with no work in the offices, the communist regime forced a large number of women to attend government offices only for their amusement. 

The Islamic State decided to pay the salaries of these women at their homes, so that they could stay home and take care of their families and children. The purpose of this policy is to help revive the Afghan family and household, as the foundation of the Afghan society, a foundation that was intentionally destroyed by the communist regime. 

The Islamic State of Afghanistan is determined to provide educational and employment opportunities for the women of Afghanistan.

Deed 
l The United Nations called for an emergency meeting with Afghanistan’s Taliban religious army after its decision to close more than 100 private schools, many of them educating girls. “The closure will have a devastating impact on welfare of many of the … neediest people — particularly women and children,” the UN said in a statement released in neighbouring Pakistan. Scores of small, home–based vocational training programmes are also to be shut.” 
(AP,  June 18, 1998)

l KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — Concealed in giant swaths of blue cloth, an Afghan woman steps out of the shadows and whispers in accented English: “I am an educator. Do you have a job for me, not in Kabul, in the provinces?” 

The rancid smell of an open sewer hangs heavy in the mid–afternoon heat and the bark of stray dogs makes the whisper barely audible. 
Another woman outside a blue-tiled mosque eyes a foreigner. Quickly she tucks her chin to her chest and stoops her shoulders trying it seems to bury herself deep inside her burqa. She steps forward, her hand outstretched. 

“I’m not a beggar, but I have no choice. I need food for my family,” says a voice from within. In the capital, ruled by Afghanistan’s hard–line Taliban religious army since 1996, women have been on the receiving end of most of the militia’s harsh Islamic edicts. They can’t work and are forbidden to leave their homes unless accompanied by a male relative. Taxi drivers routinely are beaten if their fare is a woman alone. 

l Kabul, May 17, 1998: Aid workers in Taliban–controlled Afghanistan have reported a dramatic increase in the number of women committing suicide because they can no longer bear the country’s all–pervasive Islamic code.
In the worst cases, women have taken their own lives by swallowing caustic soda — an agonising and lingering death. In addition, the number of women admitted to mental hospitals with severe depression has more than doubled since the Taliban took control of Afghanistan’s capital, Kabul, 20 months ago and forbade women to work.

There has also been a rise in domestic violence as frustration builds up in families, already in dire economic straits. And there are reports of prostitution among street children as young as eight or nine.
(Julian West, International News Electronic Telegraph, 
17 May 1998, Issue 1087)

l Islamabad (AFP): Pakistan has banned the importation of bones from neighbouring Afghanistan after reports that human remains were being sold as animal bones, officials said Thursday. An investigation has also been ordered into allegations suggesting the human bones were being brought into Pakistan in the guise of  animal remains, they said. 

The ban on import of all kinds of bones from Afghanistan will remain in force until the completion of the probe.  The Sunday New York Times reported this week that desperate Afghan children retrieved human bones from graveyards for export to Pakistan, where they were used for making cooking oil, soap and chicken feed. It quoted merchants in Kabul as saying the human remains were mixed with bones from dogs, cows, horses and donkeys and sold to middlemen who trucked them to Pakistan. 
(Published by The Frontier Post, Pakistan, January 17, 1997)

l All token humanitarian relief  assistance are under the control of the ‘government’ authorities. Distribution of relief supplies to pauperised widows and their families provides golden opportunities for the depraved fundamentalists to take pious advantage of the destitute ‘beneficiaries’. They begin with asking for bribes and then work their way to more carnal gratification, culminating in the prostitution of the miserable women.
(‘The Burst of the ‘Islamic government’ bubble in Afghanistan, RAWA publication No. 2, January 1997).

l ‘Chief Minister’ of Heart, Mullah Yar Mohammed, leading member of the Taliban, married with two women in a week. He also paid about Afghani 10,000,000 to his third wife’s father. 
(Payam–e–Zan, No.44, Sept. 1996)
 


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