1997
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INTERNATIONAL REPORTING |
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Index | 2/5 | 2/14 | 10/1 | 10/7 | 10/14 | 10/15 | 10/27 | 11/3 | 11/30 | 12/31
New Afghan Rulers Impose Harsh Mores of the Islamic Code
Already, a secretive, six-man ruling council of Islamic clerics has
reshaped the everyday lives of ordinary Afghans who, at least in
Kabul, long enjoyed one of the most liberal lifestyles of any
Muslim community in Central Asia. Cinemas have been closed,
the Kabul television station shut down, and the playing of all
music has been banned. A decree on Sunday from the new Department for the
Propagation of Virtue and the Prohibition of Vice ordered all men
in government jobs to grow "proper beards" -- meaning
untrimmed ones -- within 45 days. Western-style suits have been
banned. Women and girls have fared worse. Girls' schools have been
closed while the clerics, known as mullahs, study the "issue" of
education for females. Women with jobs have been told to stay at
home, and ordered, when venturing out, to wear a full "chaderi,"
a gown that covers a woman from head to toe, allowing her to
see only through a tightly-woven facemask. On Sunday, there were several instances reported in which
Taliban fighters stopped women on Kabul streets and beat them,
in one instance with a radio antenna ripped from a car, accusing
them of not covering their entire bodies.The mullahs, who have already imposed changes on the parts of
the country that have been under Taliban control, are introducing
the capital to sharia, the harsh Islamic criminal code that
prescribes stoning to death for adulterers and drug traffickers,
amputations of hands and feet for thieves, and flogging for the
sale or consumption of liquor. At least one man has already been
paraded through the city on a truck, his face blackened, a weight
attached to his lower jaw to keep his mouth open, and his left
hand severed. Still, the Taliban capture of the capital, after a 22-month siege,
has brought a breath of relief to the people in Kabul. Before the
dust storms blew up Monday, shrouding the city in a fine brown
haze, the morning sunlight showed the capital in a rare state, with
residents moving about without fear of the long-range artillery
that has killed at least 30,000 people and reduced much of the city
to rubble. And the voice of the city is changing, too, with people talking
about the possibility of an end to the seemingly eternal civil war
all across Afghanistan, something many Afghans have long said
they would sacrifice almost anything to achieve. The war began when the Afghan Communist underground seized
power in Kabul in a coup in April 1978. In 1979, Soviet
paratroops seized Kabul airport to begin a decade-long military
occupation. When they pulled out, Najibullah, the Soviet-backed
Afghan leader, retained power until 1992. Since, then he had
been sheltered in a U.N. compound in Kabul. After the collapse of Communist rule in 1992, a jumble of
guerrilla factions jostled for control of Afghanistan. Burhanuddin
Rabbani, one of the faction leaders, became president in the
government's most recent incarnation. The Islamic groups that
succeeded Najibullah, have been picked off one by one by the
Taliban, a movement that sprung out of Islamic religious schools
called madrassahs in 1994. The Taliban's pledge was to rid the
country of the anarchy fostered by the guerrilla factions. With their victory at Kabul, the Taliban now control 70 per cent
of the country and are fast closing in on the northern 30 per cent
that remains under the control of two surviving ethnic militias.
Throughout the day Monday, Taliban fighters in Japanese
pick-up trucks were said to be pouring north toward the Salang
Tunnel, a Soviet-built feature high in the Hindu Kush mountains
that is the last major barrier facing the Taliban before they
confront the militias of Gen. Rashid Dostum, an Uzbek, and
Ahmad Shah Massoud, a Tajik, who was the military commander
in the Kabul government that the Taliban ousted in the offensive
that culminated last week. Dostum, a former communist commander, was reported to have
rushed 2,000 troops to the northern end of the tunnel to stage a
last-ditch battle for survival. He is said to fear the same fate as Najibullah. On Thursday night, fleeing officials of the ousted Rabbani
government offered to take Najibullah with them, but he
declined, apparently believing the Taliban would not breach the
U.N. compound. Taliban fighters dragged Najibullah from the
compound at 1.30 a.m. on Friday, and had killed him by 4.30
a.m., U.N. officials said. He had been tortured and shot and his
mangled corpse was left hanging alongside his brother's. It will be a long time before most people in Kabul can think of the
Taliban, the Islamic fundamentalist militia force that captured
Kabul last week, without jarring recollections of the bloody way
in which the fundamentalists introduced themselves to this
war-shattered capital. "Najibullah was a bad Afghan, and a very cruel man," said one
man who was once a prisoner of the communist secret police.
"But what the Taliban did to him was quite horrible, and now we
must think about the kind of people they must be to do such a
brutal thing. Maybe our lives now will be even more difficult
than before." All across Kabul Monday, people lowered their voices when
asked about the fate of Najibullah, who was as brutal a ruler as
this harsh country has known, but who won grudging respect
from many Afghans for his peaceful surrender to the council of
former Muslim guerrilla leaders in 1992. The stillness that came with the end of the fighting in the capital
was compounded by an eery emptiness in many streets, partly the
result of most women staying home and partly the consequence
of a mass exodus to the north, said to have involved as many as
250,000 people, ahead of the Taliban's march into the city. Traffic moving southwards across the arid plain that separates
Kabul from the Hindu Kush suggested the exodus was
reversing, but many shops remained shuttered. One of the few busy spots was at the gates to the Arg Palace,
once home to Afghan kings and, since Thursday, headquarters of
the Taliban. Hundreds of heavily-beaded Taliban fighters
carrying Kalashnikov rifles milled about, many of them
southerners from the city of Kandahar, the original base for the
Taliban. Kabul people who dare to talk about the Taliban often
say that the new rulers' harsh brand of Islam is a product of the
walled-off mentality which, these people say, has been
characteristic for centuries of Kandahar. Arabic lettering on the white Taliban flag fluttering atop the
palace's clock tower spelled out the Taliban message. "There is
no God but Allah," it said, in the most sacred words of the
Koran. Another message came from the Soviet-built tank lurking behind
the gates, its barrel festooned with paper flowers. Beggars who
are one of the legacies of the war, many of them men missing
legs, moved among the Taliban fighters, some distinguishable by
white turbans of the kind favored by the ruling mullahs. After two decades, many people appeared to have decided that
there is no choice but to go along with the mullahs, while
reserving judgment on what their rule will bring. In the bazaar
that crowds along the banks of the Kabul River in the heart of the
city, Abdul Jabbar, an 85-year-old pensioner who practiced law
under the Afghan monarchy, approached a foreigner to practice
what he said was English grown rusty during years of war. Jabbar, wearing a freshly purchased prayer cap in Taliban white,
chose his words carefully. "We are perhaps a little happy that the
Taliban have come, because the fighting is ended," he said. "But
in future, we can only be happy if the Taliban do their work well.
Everything is in the hands of Allah." |
