Almost nine months after US President Joe Biden ceded control of Afghanistan to the Taliban and had a humiliating retreat from that country, the Islamist terror organization now running the country has ordered women to cover themselves head-to-toe while in public and also has imposed restrictions on women from attending schools, colleges and universities as well work in any government or private offices. The Taliban jihadist regime also is encouraging child marriage as well depriving women from basic fundamental rights, thus treating them as mere sex tools.
With Taliban jihadists further consolidating power in Afghanistan and gradually cruel sharia rule, it is feared that the country shall soon emerge into an Islamist Caliphate and safe haven of jihadists and Islamists. It is also feared that jihadists will use country’s cocaine and narcotic sectors in making hundreds of billions of dollars, which would ultimately go towards spreading terrorist activities throughout the Middle East and the world. Pakistani spy agency Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI), which has decades-old cordial relations with the Taliban leaders is also taking full advantage of the current situation in Afghanistan in generating cash though involvement in Afghan narcotic trade, while ISI is using a number of transnational drug trafficking networks and gangs in trafficking narcotics to India as well as other nations in the region, while it also it using India as transit for re-directing consignments of drug to various destinations in the US and Western countries.
One of ISI’s top collaborators in its narcotic trade is notorious terror don Dawood Ibrahim and his infamous D Company. It is also reported in media that Dawood Ibrahim has been collaborating with a man named Shahid Uddin Khan, an INTERPOL wanted convicted criminal and terror-funder in circulating drug consignments within the United Kingdom.
Declaring the latest decree for women to mandatorily wear Islamist burqa, Afghan Ministry for the Prevention of Vice and Promotion of Virtue said: “Those women who are not too old or young must cover their face, except the eyes, as per sharia directives, in order to avoid provocation when meeting men who are not mahram (adult close male relatives)”.
Shir Mohammad, ministry official, said: “For all dignified Afghan women wearing Hijab is necessary and the best Hijab is chadori (the head-to-toe burqa) which is part of our tradition and is respectful”.
The new decree from the Islamist terror organization also states that if a woman has no specifically important work to do outside of the household, it is better for her to stay at home.
The Taliban issued a specific set of escalating steps for anyone not complying with the head-to-toe covering order:
• In the first instance their home would be visited and their husband, brother or father would be talked to.
• In the second, their male guardian would be summoned to the ministry.
• In the third, the male guardian would be taken to court and could be jailed for three days.
The Taliban also decided not to reopen schools to girls above grade 6, backing out of a promise the regime made when it came to power last summer as Team Biden withdrew U.S. forces, paving the way for Taliban rule.
Meanwhile, Afghanistan is now the only country in the world which publicly limits education by gender. Under Taliban rule, girls are banned from receiving secondary education. Additionally, the ministry for women’s affairs has been disbanded, and in many cases, women have not been allowed to work.
The terror group had already banned women from undertaking long road trips without a close male relative and ordered taxi drivers to refuse to accept female passengers not wearing an Islamic hijab. Men and women are also banned from visiting parks at same time.
Heather Barr of Human Rights Watch alleged the Taliban’s apparent goal is “to erase women and girls entirely from public life” and make them “wards and property of their male relatives, with no autonomy”.
Many analysts are being proven correct after saying it was foolish for Biden administration officials and those of other Western nations to hope the new Taliban leadership would be more open to women’s freedoms.
Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury is an internationally acclaimed multi-award-winning anti-militancy journalist, writer, research-scholar, counterterrorism specialist and editor of Weekly Blitz. Follow him on Twitter @Salah_Shoaib
