Are the “new” Taliban more moderate than their predecessors in the 1990s? This is one of the most frequently asked questions after the change of power in Afghanistan. And more and more a sobering answer is emerging.
After the Taliban came to power in Afghanistan, the new rulers made it increasingly clear that, like their predecessors in the 1990s, they wanted to rule primarily with harshness and repression. A founding member of the extremist movement has now announced in an interview with the (AP) that executions and hand amputations will be carried out again as punishments, although perhaps not in public.
“Chopping off hands is very important for safety,” said Mullah Nooruddin Turabi. It has a deterrent effect. The cabinet is examining whether punishments should be carried out in public and will “develop a policy”.
Female judges should also pass judgments
During the earlier Taliban rule, Turabi was Minister of Justice, head of the so-called Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, which practically as a religious police force brutally enforced Sharia law, and one of the group’s cruelest and most uncompromising enforcers. He is one of a number of Taliban leaders, including members of the all-male interim cabinet, who are on a United Nations sanctions list.
In the new Taliban government, Turabi is responsible for prisons. The now in his early 60s, who lost a leg and an eye in fighting with Soviet troops in the 1980s, warned the world in the AP interview against interfering in the actions of the new rulers in Afghanistan. “Nobody will tell us what our laws should look like. We will follow Islam and make our laws on the basis of the Koran,” he said.
But while under the earlier Taliban rule, trials mostly took place in camera and judgments were made by Islamic clergy, judges – including women – should decide in future, Turabi assured. However, the basis of Afghan law will be the Koran and the same penalties will be reintroduced as before.
At that time, murderers were usually executed with a single head shot, carried out by the victim’s family, who had the option of accepting “blood money” and keeping the guilty alive. Convicted thieves were punished with the amputation of one hand, and muggers even had one hand and one foot cut off. The punishments often took place in the sports stadium in Kabul or on the grounds of the sprawling Eid Gah mosque in front of the public.
“We have changed”
“Turabi’s statements make it clear that the leaders of the group are still clinging to a deeply conservative worldview, even if they take advantage of technological changes such as video and cell phones,” said AP on the interview a journalist conducted with the Taliban. Turabi himself declared against it: “We have changed compared to the past.” The Taliban would now allow television, cell phones, photos and videos “because these are the needs of the people and we mean business.”
The Islamist implied that the Taliban see the media as a way of spreading their message. “Now we know that we can reach not just hundreds, but millions,” Turabi told the news agency. If the punishments were made public, people might even be allowed to take videos or photos to spread the deterrent effect.
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