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Human Rights Discarded In Afghanistan

Are claims of “ISIS did it” being used to cover-up for Taliban atrocities?

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Two boys grieve over their father's coffin, a victim of the Kunduz Mosque attack in Afghanistan in October. (Photo: @MalikHaanya Twitter)

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The Taliban are making life harder and harder for the people every day, and people are realizing every day that this Taliban and that Taliban of twenty years ago are no different. Only time has changed, but the Taliban are the same. They still believe in suppressing ethnic groups that are different, reject religious minorities, consider women to be inferior and consider themselves and their thoughts as the only right path. They view the critics of their government as criminals. The Taliban has so far offered nothing but suffering to the people of Afghanistan in nearly three months of rule.

Natiq Malikzade, an Afghan freelance journalist and social activist living in exile, reminds us of some of the Taliban crimes: “There are very clear examples of war crimes and human rights violations by this group. When we say clear examples, we mean criminal movements from the Taliban, which are still going on. When the Taliban attacked Panjshir two weeks after they captured Kabul, they blocked all supplies of medicine and food to the province for nearly two months and also most people in the province have been forced by the Taliban to flee their homes and villages and the Taliban now turned those houses into military bases.”

“Several mass graves were found in different parts of Panjshir,” he noted. “They killed hundreds of civilians, including one of my uncles, who had only been married for five years.”

In other provinces where the motive for confronting and fighting the extremist Taliban government is high, the Taliban have committed similar atrocities. “In Andarab, the resistance against the Taliban is still going on”, he explained. “The Taliban have raided hundreds of civilian homes and harmed family members. For example, one of the cases that came to the attention of the media was the killing of Dr. Zainuddin Andarabi and 11 members of his family by the Taliban.”

Lamentably, “These things have now become the reality of Afghanistan. What is very disturbing is that the international community has forgotten about Afghanistan. They forgot their responsibility here. None of them now speaks about these crimes by the Taliban and the violation of human rights in Afghanistan which are the result of the mistakes that they were part of.”

It has been almost three months since girls went to school for the last time, and it has been over 40 days since the Taliban officially banned girls from going to school; unfortunately this seems very common for many countries around the world. Also, in the past two months, thousands of Hazara families, most of whom are Shiites, have been displaced by the Taliban in various provinces such as Daikundi and Balkh, and are now living in cold weather in the mountains.

“Not a single country has done anything about this,” Malikzade added. “Even Iran, which calls itself a supporter of the Shiites, all they have done so far is make a simple, dry statement. Human rights violations by the Taliban are very high at the moment. From banning women to work, banning girls from school, and other banning of other needs of a healthy society such as music and entertainment, which I currently put them in second place because there are more important issues that need to be discussed.”

Malikzade then concluded; as a citizen and a freelance journalist, “the only thing we can do is not to give up and we must reflect on these cases as much as possible and not let the crimes committed by these criminals be easily forgotten. But sometimes, we get very frustrated because the world is not paying attention anymore to what happens here.”

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Some believe that some kind of agreement was made between the Afghan authorities and the Taliban to rule Afghanistan. Haanya Malik, an Afghan journalist and women rights activist who examines the issue from this perspective, stated: “After the deal between Ghani and the United States with the Taliban and after the fall of Kabul, the Taliban promised to secure the people, create more employment and educational opportunities, improve the living conditions of the people, and ensure the full security of the people. But just a few days after the terrorist group came to power, people with the wrong ethnicity and language were massacred in Andarab and Panjshir.”

Several hundred families were forcibly evacuated from Panjshir, Daikundi and other provinces.

Hundreds of people were sentenced to death for collaborating with the former government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, and images of a number of beheadings were shared on social media. The gates of schools and universities were closed in months for the girls, and given the conditions announced by the Taliban, there would be no job opportunities for women in important office positions.

Malik believes that the worst effects of the Taliban rule were on women and ethnic minorities: “The most important issue after the rise of the Taliban is the worsening situation for the Hazara and Shiite people in the center and provinces of Afghanistan. In the last two and a half months, there have been several suicide attacks on Shiite mosques, with the Taliban blaming ISIS.”

“It should be noted that many scholars and writers believe that there is no ISIS in Afghanistan,” Malik added.  On the other hand, members of the Taliban expressed their regret for not fulfilling their dream (carrying out a suicide attack).  However, it can be seen that there is no ISIS and that it is the Taliban who are killing innocent people to get to their long-held dream.

She concluded by warning about Pakistan’s role in the ascent of the Taliban: “Pakistan could be a more serious threat to the world than the Taliban. Pakistan has always been backed by the West, the same west which has seen itself as an enemy of extremism. The world should not be deceived by the Taliban’s promises.  This group has never lived up to its commitments and has always acted contrary to what it says.”

The Taliban was terrorizing and killing young children and elderly citizens in Afghanistan's Andarab valley in August, said former Afghan interior minister Massoud Andarabi in an interview. (Screencap: timesnownews.com)

“Human rights, which are considered as one of the most important things for human beings, have unfortunately been neglected and disvalued in the last decade in Afghanistan,”  Afghan female journalist Rabia Sadat stated. 

Referring to those events in Afghanistan, she believes that the Afghan people are experiencing hardship and oppression again under the ruling of Taliban, a group who do not care about human rights at all: “The Taliban have done what they can to abuse human rights from the time they controlled Afghanistan till today and they did most of their criminal acts in secret and far from the public sight. All of what they have done are human rights violations.”

Rabia is of the belief that this radical religious group has done many crimes to the Afghan people: “They did everything to this people, from wounding to killing them, beating and whipping in public, imprisoning people, insulting and humiliating them, forcing them to leave their homes and land and mass killing men, women and children.”

Rabia Sadat then concluded: “The Taliban do not recognize the people’s privacy and violate it, suppress individual freedom, working rights, walking outside especially for women, education for girls and do not care about these basic rights of the people from different classes. They deprived people from benefiting from their human rights and everything they do amounts to human rights abuses.”

Rachel Avraham is a political analyst working at the Safadi Center for International Diplomacy, Research, Public Relations and Human Rights.  She is the author of “Women and Jihad: Debating Palestinian Female Suicide Bombings at the American, Israeli and Arab Media.”  

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Our positioning as a Zionist News Media platform sets us apart from the rest. While other Canadian Jewish media are advocating increasingly biased progressive political and social agendas, TheJ.Ca is providing more and more readers with a welcome alternative and an ideological home.

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