Taliban’s repressive rule in Afghanistan is driving its own demise

Two years after coming to power, the regime’s systematic repression of women, minorities and former officials is not just inhumane, but will in the end destabilise the country
Afghanistan’s neighbours, including China, will not tolerate its descent into chaos

Chris Fitzgerald

Published: 1:00am, 3 Sep 2023

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A damning report handed down by the United Nations this week reveals that the Taliban’s repression in Afghanistan is not solely directed at women. It shows a systematic targeting of former officials and minority groups that threatens to tear the country apart.

The United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (Unama) has recorded “credible reports” of serious human rights violations by the Taliban against those associated with the former Islamic Republic of Afghanistan.

This includes at least 800 cases of extrajudicial killings, arbitrary arrests and detention, torture, and enforced disappearance against government officials and members of the armed forces. The UN mission’s interviews with victims and their families has revealed a climate of fear.

The Taliban had promised a general amnesty for former officials and members of the armed forces when it retook power in 2021. At the time, spokesperson Zabiullah Mujahid claimed that “nobody will be harmed in Afghanistan” and that “there is a huge difference between us now and 20 years ago”.

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, said the Taliban’s broken promises were a “betrayal of people’s trust”.

The movement is already systematically removing women from Afghan society despite early promises to respect their rights. This includes barring them from education and employment – most recently banning beauty parlours, denying women one of the few remaining avenues of work open to them – enforcing veiling and forbidding freedom of movement. The situation has got so bad that UN representatives have labelled the treatment of Afghan women as “gender apartheid”.

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The Taliban has rejected the UN accusations as “not true and far from reality”, and insisted the killings and disappearances were based on “personal enmity” or “revenge”.

These abuses suggest one of two scenarios. Either the Taliban ruling elite are not in full control of the country, allowing their subordinates to target people at will, or the movement is conducting a planned, systematic attack on those it believes are not worth a place in their Afghanistan. Events on the ground suggest it’s likely to be both, and the Taliban isn’t stopping at members of the former regime.

The Shiite Hazara minority group were persecuted by the Taliban during its first stint in power between 1996 and 2001. This time, the Hazara community has reported forced evictions, persecution and even deadly attacks on their towns and places of worship.

Since 2021, Amnesty International has documented extrajudicial killings of Hazaras in several provinces. In a report last year, the group’s secretary general Agnes Callamard said that “these violent deaths are further shocking proof that the Taliban continue to persecute, torture and extrajudicially execute Hazara people”.

There are also accusations that the Taliban is allowing, or at least failing to prevent, attacks on Hazaras by Islamic extremist groups in Afghanistan.

Reports have also surfaced of the Taliban persecuting non-Muslim minority groups. Afghanistan’s small Sikh and Hindu communities have faced increasingly strict restrictions, including a ban on their religious holidays in public. Many have since left the country.

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More broadly, the Taliban continues to implement punishments under the guise of sharia law. This includes public executions. More recently, in June, a man was executed in the eastern province of Laghman.

In November last year, the movement’s supreme leader, Mullah Haibatullah Akhundzada, ordered the return of “qisas” and “hudud” punishments that include public floggings, stoning or the amputation of body parts for theft or adultery.

The targeting of different groups points to a systematic and sinister attempt to eliminate those who do not fit with the Taliban’s extreme interpretation of Islam. This, in effect, is the movement trying to turn Afghanistan into an ideological state, where it alone decides who is welcome.

This is dangerous and threatens to boil over into an environment of extreme violence where women, minority groups and former officials are targeted at will. At best, they will be denied their fundamental human rights; at worst, they will be tortured or killed.

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But this could prove a step too far for the Taliban. Afghanistan’s neighbours have called on the movement to respect the rights of women and minority groups and form an inclusive government.

These countries are wary of the security and economic problems that come with the Taliban’s brutal rule. China, in particular, has significant political and economic clout with the Taliban and is unlikely to tolerate the situation in Afghanistan deteriorating further.

Afghanistan is also a different country to the one the Taliban first ruled in the 1990s, with many Afghans experiencing better living conditions and new-found freedoms before the movement returned. Afghans have seen bad rulers come and go over a 40-year period of invasions and civil strife and will not tolerate a bad regime prioritising ideological battles and brutality over rebuilding the country.

If the Taliban is serious about governing, it needs to act in a way that is acceptable to its neighbours. That means respecting the rights of all Afghans and not allowing the country to descend into a state of wanton violence.

Otherwise, the Taliban could quickly find itself without friends and out of power.

Chris Fitzgerald is a freelance journalist and project coordinator for the Platform for Peace and Humanity’s Central Asia Programme