RASC News Agency: The United States Department of State, in its most recent annual report on Afghanistan’s human rights situation, delivers a damning indictment of Taliban governance, depicting a nation gripped by fear, repression, and the systematic dismantling of fundamental freedoms. Released late on Tuesday, August 12, the report details an unbroken pattern of extrajudicial killings, targeted persecution of women, arbitrary detentions, the crushing of civil liberties, and a relentless assault on freedom of expression. The findings reveal that the condition of women’s and girls’ rights has plunged to an unprecedented low since the Taliban’s return to power. The regime’s draconian enforcement of its so-called “Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice” code has not only annihilated personal autonomy but has also placed women’s daily existence under suffocating, near-total control. Afghanistani women have been erased from public life denied education, employment, and even the right to move freely without male guardianship effectively consigning half the population to a life of enforced invisibility.
The report further documents an alarming surge in politically motivated killings, many targeting individuals linked to the former Afghanistan’s government and security forces. Both the Taliban and the Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISIS-K) are implicated as principal perpetrators. Yet, the Taliban categorically deny responsibility, refusing to establish any form of accountability while fostering a climate in which impunity is the norm. Media freedom once fragile but still breathing has been brutally throttled. More than 180 recorded violations in the past year include threats, arbitrary arrests, violent assaults, and the outright censorship of both print and digital platforms. Internet access is increasingly restricted, monitored, and weaponized to silence dissenting voices.
Drawing on United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) evidence, the report exposes harrowing scenes of public executions, floggings, and beatings carried out without trial acts reminiscent of the Taliban’s darkest days in the 1990s. Even more alarming is the documented recruitment of children into combat and logistical roles, a flagrant breach of international law. Over 340 minors have been exploited in this manner in the past year alone, with training camps operating openly in provinces such as Badakhshan. Arbitrary detentions and enforced disappearances have become instruments of political control. Women’s rights activists, journalists, and ethnic minority members are among those seized without legal cause, denied access to lawyers, and cut off from their families, their fates often shrouded in silence.
The humanitarian sector is similarly strangled by Taliban obstruction. Minimal aid is offered to returning refugees, while bureaucratic roadblocks deliberately hinder cooperation with international relief agencies. In some border regions, Taliban “morality police” impose brutal restrictions on those attempting to re-enter the country. The State Department’s conclusion is unequivocal: the Taliban have no genuine commitment to human rights, international law, or even the most basic principles of governance. Instead, they are actively dismantling the social, legal, and humanitarian fabric of Afghanistan, pushing the nation deeper into isolation, instability, and despair.
The report urges the global community to maintain relentless scrutiny of Taliban actions and to undertake urgent, coordinated measures to protect the rights, dignity, and survival of Afghanistan’s most vulnerable particularly women, children, and marginalized minorities before an entire generation is lost to repression and fear.
