Taliban authorities have granted themselves immunity from the numerous crimes committed by their own members, including moral corruption, murder, and the widespread torture of citizens, particularly women and girls, in various provinces of Afghanistan under the pretext of enforcing Islamic Sharia law in public spaces. In the latest incident, the Taliban publicly flogged twenty-five individuals in the Zaranj city stadium, located in the center of Nimroz province. The news agency, Bakhtar, which operates under the Taliban’s control, reported that these individuals were whipped for various offenses such as theft and engaging in illicit relationships. According to information released by the Taliban, the accused individuals were supposedly punished by the provincial court’s criminal judiciary branch of the Nimroz city. The Taliban announced the punishment of these individuals in the Zaranj city stadium on Thursday, November 9th.
It is worth noting that the Taliban has granted leniency to several of its own members involved in cases of moral corruption, child exploitation, adultery, and bribery, following the circulation of documentary videos. Prior to this, a video circulated on social media showed a high-ranking Taliban member, Mullah Ahmad Akhund, engaging in child exploitation. However, a Taliban court declared him innocent through a written statement, allowing Mullah Ahmad to continue his role as the head of the Kabul power company.
On the other hand, a Taliban supporter who had sexually assaulted two girls aged ten and eleven in Takhar province, captured in images of the assault, was temporarily arrested by the Taliban before being released again. According to local sources in Takhar, one of these girls was the minor daughter of a former Afghanistan government military official.
For the past twenty years, the Taliban has manipulated Islam as a means to gain power and deceive young individuals for the purpose of carrying out terrorist attacks and achieving their political objectives. Currently, by donning the mask of Islam, they claim to be committed to Islamic values. The release of videos exposing the sexual assault, child exploitation, and moral corruption of their commanders and authorities has become a new source of headaches for the Taliban, as it reveals their true faces. Furthermore, videos of naked video calls between Qari Qadeer, another Taliban commander, and a young girl in a Lajaward mine in Badakhshan province, have also been circulating on social media. The footage shows this Taliban figure engaging in explicit video conversations discussing sexual matters with the young girl.
While the Taliban has taken a harsh stance against allegations of sexual relationships among ordinary citizens, often imposing punishments such as public floggings, stoning, and executions in their desert courts over the past two years, they have only resorted to dismissing and removing their own officials and members from government positions without subjecting them to any form of punishment. In the early months of this year, the Supreme Court of the Taliban group had announced through a message that it had issued a death sentence for 175 suspects and ordered the stoning of 37 others. The court further stated that it had also issued a sentence of placing four other defendants under the wall and had punished 103 individuals according to what this group describes as the implementation of Sharia law.
Previously, Mullah Haibatullah, a leader appointed with the Taliban, had instructed the judges of this group to enforce the punishments and retributions in the country. However, he later ordered the release of Abdulghani Haqbin, the head of the Counterterrorism Command and the security commander of the Taliban group in Kandahar, who had been detained in Spin Boldak district of this province on charges of adultery and homosexuality by the intelligence agency of this group.
Meanwhile, religious scholars and human rights organizations have condemned the Taliban’s makeshift courts for citizens and stated that the judgments against the defendants in these courts have been unfair and discriminatory. They have also pointed out that these courts are demonstrating a group-based, ethnic, and linguistic bias in juxtaposing the Islamic laws and regulations between their own members and ordinary members of society.
According to them, the Taliban group, despite documented evidence of moral corruption, child exploitation, adultery, and sexual abuse by their members, along with the continuous violation of human rights and the massacre of civilians in the past two years, have not even symbolically issued a single punishment against them.
