RASC News Agency: In yet another chilling reminder of Afghanistan’s descent into lawlessness, Professor Ramez Peshtaz, a senior academic at Kabul University, was shot dead inside his home late Saturday night by unidentified gunmen. The attack, which occurred in one of the capital’s residential districts, has sparked outrage and fear among academics and civil society figures already living under Taliban repression.
Despite the Taliban’s repeated claims of ensuring “complete security across Afghanistan,” the country’s cities have become theatres of unchecked violence, targeted assassinations, and criminal impunity. The latest killing underscores what critics describe as the hollow façade of Taliban governance rhetoric of stability masking a reality of fear, decay, and failure.
Local sources confirmed that the assailants forced their way into Peshtaz’s residence around 9 p.m. on November 1, fatally shooting him before fleeing the scene. As with many such killings, no suspects have been arrested and no credible investigation has been announced. Residents say Taliban forces often appear only after incidents occur “counting bodies, not preventing crime.”
This murder marks the second high-profile killing in recent weeks. In a separate incident in Takhar province, a young man was shot dead during an armed robbery. Together, these events have highlighted the growing collapse of public safety and exposed the Taliban’s inability or unwillingness to establish functional law enforcement institutions.
Security analysts argue that the resurgence of urban violence reveals deep fissures within the Taliban’s own security apparatus, which is riddled with corruption, divided loyalties, and factional command structures.
“Afghanistan today has armed men, not a police force,” said one former Afghanistani security adviser now based in Europe. “The Taliban’s so-called security network is a patchwork of loyalists and local commanders who operate more like criminal cartels than protectors of the public.”
Residents of Kabul have voiced increasing alarm over the absence of effective night patrols, the proliferation of illegal weapons, and the rise of organized theft. In many neighborhoods, shopkeepers and homeowners report being extorted by Taliban-affiliated groups under the pretext of “tax collection” or “security checks.”
There are also mounting allegations that some Taliban members themselves are implicated in these crimes either directly or through complicity with armed gangs. While the Taliban routinely dismiss such accusations as propaganda, their refusal to conduct transparent investigations and the culture of impunity surrounding their fighters have lent growing credibility to public suspicions.
“People are afraid not just of criminals, but of those in power,” said a Kabul resident interviewed by RASC News. “You can’t even report a crime if a Taliban member is involved. Justice under their rule depends on who carries the gun, not who tells the truth.”
For the country’s shrinking academic community, the murder of Professor Peshtaz is a symbolic wound a stark reminder of how Afghanistan’s intellectual life is being systematically suffocated under Taliban rule. Universities that once fostered debate and progress now operate under censorship, surveillance, and fear. Dozens of lecturers, particularly women and secular scholars, have fled the country. Those who remain endure intimidation, ideological pressure, and now, the risk of assassination.
Human rights monitors warn that such incidents reflect not only a breakdown of law and order but also a deliberate campaign of silencing independent voices from journalists to educators whose existence challenges the Taliban’s authoritarian narrative.
Three years after the group’s return to power, the Taliban’s promise of peace and stability lies in ruins. Afghanistan’s urban centers are haunted by violence, its countryside crippled by poverty, and its citizens trapped between repression and despair.
As one Kabul University lecturer told RASC News:
“The Taliban claim to have ended the war, but what they’ve brought is a different kind of death slow, silent, and everywhere. We live in a country without safety, without justice, and without hope.”
Under the Taliban’s self-proclaimed “Islamic Emirate,” the concept of security has been reduced to political theatre a hollow performance that conceals a grim reality of chaos, corruption, and fear. The death of Professor Ramez Peshtaz, like countless others before him, stands as a tragic testament to a regime that cannot govern, cannot protect, and cannot silence the truth forever.
