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
Deed
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.”
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.”
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.
Propaganda
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 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.
“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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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