Afghanistan, law of morality. Cartoon of 25/08/2024 in CTXT
In 2021 the Taliban took control of Afghanistan and the US accelerated its announced troop withdrawal, when the de facto government created a ministry for the "propagation of virtue and the prevention of vice".
At that time, and for several days, I remember different analysts who the day before were experts in pandemic things, reconverted into Talibanologists who told us that this new batch of Taliban was less bad and that it would not behave as badly as in the past, but that, well, we would see.
Zabihullah Mujahid, spokesman for the Taliban chief, even said at the time that "there would be no revenge" and promised"an Islamic inclusive government" - you have to admit they are masters of black humour.
Less than a year later, in 2022, the Taliban authority issued an urgent order banning "until further notice" the admission of women to public and private universities throughout the country.
Now they have enacted new laws after being approved by supreme leader Hibatullah Akhundzada to "regulate" aspects of daily life such as music, public transport, shaving and celebrations, among other things. And women are once again losing out, to no one's surprise.
The 114-page document, published on the ministry's website, is the first formal declaration of laws on vice and virtue in Afghanistan. Measures include a ban on women's voices being heard in public spaces and their faces being seen in the street.
Much of the measures affect women, for whom the future looks bleak. They are required to cover their faces and bodies to avoid "causing temptation", so they "must not wear attractive, tight-fitting or revealing clothing". They are also forbidden to wear cosmetics or perfumes, in an attempt to prevent them from imitating "the dress styles of non-Muslim women".
For the UN, "the ratification of a "Law on the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice", with 35 articles detailing significant restrictions on the Afghan population, with arbitrary and potentially severe enforcement mechanisms" and the Taliban's ban on women being able to speak out and appear bare-faced in public offers a "distressing vision" of Afghanistan's future.
Everything the US touches ends the same way, or worse. Since the US overthrew Mohammad Omar in 2001, whom it had aided economically and militarily during the first Afghan war (1978-1992), for refusing to extradite Osama Bin Laden without a formal extradition request, more than 150,000 people have died and the Yanks have burned through some $978 billion, according to a 2019 Brown University study.
