The Taliban's supreme leader, Ahundzada, has ordered Afghan judges to fully apply Sharia law, especially for certain crimes and offences. This has been announced in a brief tweet by the spokesman for the Islamic Emirate, who warns that its compliance will be extensive to all of Afghanistan.
"Examine carefully the files of kidnappers, thieves and rioters," exhorted the religious guide, who lives in seclusion in Kandahar and of whom there has been no image available for years.
The warning has been interpreted as a return to legal practices in Saudi Arabia, which ruined the image of the first Taliban dictatorship. Among them, public executions, stoning or amputation of the hand of thieves, in certain cases. Something that would contradict the Taliban's promises of moderation to its very few and lukewarm international supporters, starting with Pakistan.
"When all the conditions are met, they are obliged to apply the sharia", he would have instructed the magistrates, "in the cases of hadad". The term refers to adultery, the false accusation of adultery, the consumption of alcohol, theft, kidnapping, banditry, apostasy and rebellion. "Also in the cases of qisas", something that can be translated as an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, in cases of murder, manslaughter or deliberate violence, although leaving the door open for the affected family to accept financial compensation for a crime of blood.
This is what the Sharia requires and this is my order", signs Hibatulah Ajundzada. Juridical pruritus, religious rigor and the desire for independence continue to be hallmarks of the Taliban regime. Today as yesterday, the Taliban take their example from Saudi Arabia, where the Sharia is law and where the death penalty by beheading in public is the order of the day, as is corporal punishment, with hundreds of lashes as the usual punishment, as if it were the courts of the Inquisition, but without bonfires.
This new rigorist twist is added to the puritanism that has women as its main victims. Above all, to those of the middle class who did not stampede out of the country with the occupiers, fleeing the Taliban advance. Many of them have lost their jobs and receive very poor help to stay at home. Others continue to work in private hospitals or in private schools, the only ones where adolescents, in addition to girls, continue to attend classes as before.
Last weekend, in addition, new measures came into force that deprive the few women who go to a gym from continuing to do so, alluding to the fact that the segregation of men and women was being broken. With the same argument, women are prevented from going to public toilets and, according to some voices, also access to public parks alone.
In fact, Afghan women have lost the right to travel without the "protection" of a male relative and must cover themselves with the hijab when going out, a common practice not only in most of Afghanistan, but also in the neighbors Iran and Pakistan, while it is residual in its ex-Soviet neighbors Uzbekistan and Tajikistan.
But it's not all bad news, despite widespread material misery and the pettiness of Taliban clerics. While women have lost out in individual autonomy, many Afghan men and women value some peace dividends. This has allowed, for the first time in decades, the appearance of national tourism.
The humanitarian organizations themselves recognize that for the first time they have access to all corners of the country. The big difference is the dropper arrival of foreign funds, which before came in handfuls and with little control. The economic picture is bleak, although previously rampant corruption has been reduced. Puritanism, in any case, will not suffice to fill the stomach.
