Following the withdrawal of the US and NATO from Afghanistan, and the chaos left behind because of the Biden administration’s shockingly bad planning, the Islamist militants who ruled from 1996 until 2001 have returned to power.
Before we ask what the future may hold for the people of the new “Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan,” and how the international community should deal with the extremist government, we should look back to the period when this group ruled the country and remember the countless human rights breaches they committed.
The Taliban imposed strict rules according to their narrow interpretation of Shariah, banning television, music, photography, and children’s toys. Women were not allowed to go to school or work, or even visit a market without an adult male chaperone.
In 2001, Taliban leader Mullah Omar gave orders to his militants to blow up two giant 1,500-year-old Buddha statues carved into a mountain in the central Bamiyan province, on the ground that Islam prohibited idolatry. The destruction of the world’s tallest standing Buddhas prompted an international outcry and highlighted the group’s intention to erase any signs of pre-Islamic history.
Twenty years later the Taliban’s ideology has not changed, nor has their interpretation of Shariah, and their desire to establish an Islamic emirate is becoming reality. Simply put, there is no reason for the world to open its arms and grant this regime the international legitimacy it craves unless it proves its commitment to preserving civil liberties, human rights, women’s rights, and tolerance.
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