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Violin bonfires – Taliban’s new dark age

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Kabul, August 17, 2023

Amid empty rhetoric of preserving the status quo, the US and its allies took the hasty and ill-judged decision to withdraw from Afghanistan. That was two years ago this week. Within hours the Taliban had barrelled into town and swept all before them.

Bit by bit, they demolished painstakingly-established freedoms, notably any rights at all for women. Anything like fun was out too, and the Taliban stamped on music of any kind, publicly beating and humiliating musicians.

TheTaliban quickly shut down independent press, radio stations, and TV

Playing or even listening to music is now banned as un-Islamic. In the western city of Herat, members of the notorious morality police last month created a huge bonfire of confiscated musical instruments, reminiscent of Nazi book burnings, reports Radio Free Europe.

Residents who spoke to RFE/RL’s Radio Azadi said the morality police have also started searching vehicles and homes as they seek to enforce the ban, which has been widely condemned.

“When the Taliban stops us at security checkpoints, they first look at the car’s audio system to see what we are listening to,” said Khalil Ahmad, a resident of Herat, adding that the militants confiscate MP3 players and thumb drives containing music.

The morality police patrol the streets at night in search of violators and Afghans caught contravening the ban can be beaten or jailed.

The morality police also enforce a strict dress code and gender segregation in society.

“I have a bitter memory of witnessing people being beaten for simply playing music in their cars,” said Ahmad Jawed, another Herat resident.

The 26-year-old said his friends played music inside their house during a birthday party earlier this month.

“We were very afraid and stressed that someone would report us to the authorities,” he told Radio Azadi. “The restrictions have become too much.”

Women’s rights have just fundamentally since the Taliban takeover two years ago

But women are undoubtedly the worst off in Afghan society. In two decades under US-backed government, the female literacy rate more than doubled between 2000 and 2018, albeit to only 30%. A generation of women got jobs as doctors, journalists, and lawyers. Now they are again being forced out of public life and in March the Taliban backtracked on their promise to let girls back into secondary schools.

In spite of their initial promises to respect women’s rights within the framework of Sharia law, the Taliban issued numerous decrees that prevent women and girls from exercising their basic rights to freedom of expression, liberty, work, and education.

Women and girls in particular are affected by  of discrimination and violence.

Girls and women have lost right to education

Afghans who do take to the streets to protest for their rights are being threatened, arrested, and tortured. Women’s rights activists report there have been detentions, child marriages, forced marriages and rapes.

In 1919, Afghan women were granted the right to vote. In 1920 the first school for girls opened its doors. In the 1970s, the Afghan government raised the marriage age for women from 18 to 21, abolished polygamy, and introduced compulsory education.

However, after their victory against the Soviet Union at the end of the 1980s, the Mujahideen – and later the Taliban – put in place severe restrictions on the rights of women. After the intervention of NATO forces in 2001, activists managed to fight for and achieve significant legislative progress.

More than one in three women is forced into child marriage, education is banned, sexualised violence is tacitly accepted, work opportunities have been all but abolished. Minorities such as the shiite Hazsara and the LBGTIQ+ are suffering horrendous abuse.

Many beatings and attacks have been deliberately targeted at women and girls of the Hazara ethnic minority. Activists are raising awareness of a ‘silent genocide’, and courageous Hazar women repeatedly hold demonstrations to protest against the injustice.

Life for  people has also deteriorated dramatically under the Taliban, whose openly anti-LGBTIQ+ attitude has manifested in a series of assaults on gays, lesbians, and others whose behaviour does not conform to traditional gender norms.

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