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