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Taliban back in contention in Afghanistan

Taliban back in contention in Afghanistan

Author: Rahimullah Yusufzai
Publication: The News
Date:
URL: http://www.thenews.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=6950

Almost five years after being thrown out of power as a result of the US military intervention in Afghanistan, the Taliban appear to have gained sufficient strength in some remote parts of the country to resume public executions of people convicted of murder by pro-Taliban Islamic courts.

In the first week of May, the Taliban claimed that Badshah Khan, a convict, was executed in the presence of a large number of people in central Urozgan province. Badshah Khan was tried by a Taliban-appointed Shariah court and found guilty of murdering one Fateh Khan, according to Taliban spokesman Qari Yousaf Ahmadi. Ahmadi said the court included ulema, who sentenced Badshah Khan to death after trying him under Islamic law.

Badshah Khan was publicly executed in the district headquarters town of Gizab in Urozgan, which is the native province of Taliban leader Mulla Mohammad Omar. The heirs of Fateh Khan reportedly refused to forgive Badshah Khan or accept blood money, despite repeated requests from the family of the convicted murderer and the religious scholars present on the occasion.

The members of the court then gave the go-ahead signal to the heirs of Fateh Khan to exercise their Islamic right of Qissas [revenge] and execute Badshah Khan. A member of the aggrieved family shot at Badshah Khan from close range. Soon afterwards he was dead and Qissas had been exacted.

This marked the first time after losing power in December 2001 that the Taliban organised a public execution of a convicted killer. Ahmadi said it showed the level of Taliban control in Urozgan and added that the Taliban had the power to arrest and try criminals and publicly implement decisions of their Islamic courts.

The Afghan government of President Hamid Karzai and the US and Nato military authorities refrained from commenting on Taliban claims. They neither confirmed nor denied the execution. Independent sources, however, confirmed that a man accused of murder had been executed in a remote part of the insurgency-hit Urozgan province.

That Urozgan is dangerous territory is known to US troops deployed in the provincial capital Tarinkot, and to the incoming Dutch soldiers. The government of Netherlands only reluctantly agreed to deploy troops in Urozgan. The Dutch troops will soon find out how risky their mission is. The freshly deployed Canadian troops in Kandahar and the British in Helmand have already experienced deadly Taliban attacks and the Dutch soldiers too will have to confront suicide bombers, ambushes and improvised explosive devices (IEDs) planted on roadsides.

The public execution was evidence of the growing Taliban power in Urozgan and in neighbouring provinces such as Kandahar, Zabul, Ghazni, Helmand, Nimruz and Farah in central and southwestern Afghanistan. Most of these provinces and other areas in the east and south near the border with Pakistan are inhabited by Afghanistan's majority Pashtun ethnic group, which provided the bulk of the Taliban's fighters. Unlike northern Afghanistan where the Taliban were never really able to find support among the non-Pashtuns, they still find sympathy for their cause among sections of the Pashtun tribes inhabiting provinces bordering Pakistan.

The public execution was also an indication that the Taliban remain unrepentant even after losing power. They have refused to concede past mistakes or shown any inclination to mend their ways to make themselves acceptable to more Afghans in particular and the international community in general. In fact, the Taliban have come to believe that their tough policies were right for bringing peace to violence-prone Afghanistan.

Since the Taliban's emergence in the fall of 1994, they have enforced a system of government and justice based on strict interpretation of Shariah, or Islamic law. After capturing power in most of the country following the fall of Kabul in September 1996, the Taliban introduced certain Islamic laws, including strict punishments for crime. Those convicted of murder were publicly executed, thieves had their limbs amputated and adulterers were stoned to death or lashed.

Public executions took place in the stadiums in Kabul and other provincial capitals. On a few occasions, such scenes were secretly filmed and the footage smuggled out of Afghanistan. These images were later portrayed as a symbol of Taliban atrocities. The Taliban, who were primarily students of seminaries known as madrassas, easily defeated the Afghan mujahideen, who had fought against the Soviet occupation troops with help from the US and its allies from 1979-89. In fact, most Afghan people were fed up with the mujahideen groups due to their infighting and cruelties after coming to power in 1992. Ironically, most of those hated mujahideen leaders and commanders have returned to power with the help and blessings of the US-led coalition troops.

The Afghan people initially welcomed and supported the Taliban in the hope that they would restore peace and enforce an Islamic system of government. But after a while, the Taliban became just another armed faction like the mujahideen and ruled with an iron hand. Distrustful of anyone else, the Taliban continued to fight other factions, such as the Northern Alliance, instead of reaching out to effect national reconciliation and stop bloodshed.

The Taliban also earned the wrath of human rights groups when they banned education for girls and prohibited women from working outside their homes. They continued to harbour Osama bin Laden and his Al-Qaeda lieutenants, and rejected demands by the United Nations and the United States to deliver Osama to face trial for his role in the 9/11 attacks and the 1998 bombings of the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

Though the Taliban brought relative peace to Afghanistan after years of turmoil, carried an effective disarmament campaign without foreign support and enforced complete ban on poppy cultivation, their harsh policies and refusal to expel bin Laden made them controversial and led increasingly to Afghanistan's isolation.

Now that the Taliban have regrouped, they have become more sophisticated and deadly in their attacks against the US-led coalition troops in large swathes of southern and eastern Afghanistan. The Afghan government, Nato and US military commanders and aid workers concede that the number of Taliban attacks have increased and that their tactics, including the use of improvised explosive devices have become dangerous. The Taliban's willingness to die would ensure that this Afghan summer would be long and deadly.

The writer is an executive editor of The News International based in Peshawar


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