Can’t expect the Taliban to change
The restrictions are vague and vulnerable to varying interpretations, which would give the Taliban ample opportunity to crack down on anyone
It increasingly seems that the Taliban’s second innings in power is headed to being a clone of its first (1996-2001). Women had been shorn of all basic human rights — to work, education and even healthcare, during the Taliban’s previous tenure. They could also not appear in public unescorted by a “close” male relative — husband, father, son or brother — and wrapped from head to foot in a burqa. Men were deprived of all sources of entertainment and amusement and imprisoned in a life full of taboos. A savage criminal justice system was in place with public executions and punishments like amputation for theft.
Indications that it will be the same this time as well are emerging gradually as restrictions are imposed. The latest, according to the AFP and BBC, are the new “religious guidelines” issued by the Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice. These direct Afghanistan’s television channels to, among other things, stop showing plays and soap operas featuring women actors. Women journalists and presenters have been ordered to wear Islamic hijab on the screen. Films showing Prophet Mohammad or other revered figures are not to be shown, nor should films considered against the principles of Sharia — or Islamic law — and Afghan values. Comedy and entertainment shows that insult religion or may be considered offensive to Afghans are also forbidden from being shown.
The restrictions are vaguely worded and vulnerable to varying interpretations, which would give the Taliban enforcers ample opportunity to crack down on anyone they consider to be an offender. This has already been happening with musicians. While, unlike during Taliban’s first innings, music has not been banned, musicians are being harassed. Their establishments are being raided and instruments broken. They live in fear. Many of them are trying to leave the country. There is a growing feeling that music is set to disappear from the lives of Afghans. It would be a tragedy if this happens. Afghanistan has a vibrant tradition in music, influenced by Indian and Iranian classical music. Besides, it has had a thriving pop music scenario marked by the syncing of electronic instrumental and dance beats with more traditional rhythms.
The justice system also appears to be set to return to what it was under the Taliban’s first innings. On September 25, 2021, corpses of four men, alleged kidnappers killed in a shootout with policemen, were hung in public areas at several places in the city of Herat to convey, in the words of the province’s deputy governor, Mawlawi Shir Ahmad Mujahir, the “message” that kidnappers would not be tolerated. That this was not an aberration is clear from the fact that it happened just after Mullah Noroddin Turabi, one of the founders of the Taliban and the head of the dreaded Department for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice, which had savagely enforced the draconian rules and laws prevailing during the Taliban’s earlier rule, had told the AP’s Kathy Gannon during an interview that the punishments administered then will return, though these may not be carried out in public. “Cutting off hands is very necessary for security”, he had said, adding that it had a deterrent effect.
The media is under severe pressure. The 11-point guidelines announced by Qari Muhmmad Yusuf Ahmed, the interim director of the Government Media and Information Centre, on September 19, 2021, include directives against publishing matters in conflict with Islam or insulting to national personalities and instruct journalists to produce news reports in coordination with the Government media office. The announcement, a requiem for media freedom, comes in the wake of sustained attacks on journalists and other forms of pressures on them, which have sent many into hiding and effectively closed down 153 media outlets since the Taliban came to power.
The plight of women, it increasingly seems, may be the same as during the first Taliban regime. Not one of them was included either in the first set of 33 ministers in the caretaker Government announced on September 7, 2021; nor in the second one of 44, announced on September 21, 2021. The Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid held out the possibility of women being included later but suggested no time frame. The Taliban’s record during its present incarnation in power does not hold out much hope, The order not to telecast IPL matches because of the presence of women in the audience, the Kabul Mayor’s ordering of women — with the exception of those whose jobs could not be done by men — to stay at home, the reopening of secondary schools with boys and not girls, the order by the Taliban-appointed vice-chancellor of the Kabul University barring women from the campus as long as “a real Islamic environment is not provided for”, are instances which reflect an attitude towards women which does not augur well for the future of their rights under the present dispensation.
Nothing, however, makes the Taliban Government’s attitude towards women more ominously clear than the shutting down of the Ministry of Women’s Affairs and the reincarnation of the Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, in the building it had occupied.
(The author is Consulting Editor, The Pioneer. The views expressed are personal.)
Source: The Pioneer
