DATE=10/10/00
TYPE=BACKGROUND REPORT
TITLE=The Taleban's Afghanistan (2 of 3)
NUMBER=5-47145
BYLINE=Ed Warner
DATELINE=Kabul
CONTENT=
VOICED AT:
INTRO: The Taleban have established the most extreme version of Islam to be found in the world today. Throughout Afghanistan, strict codes of dress and behavior are enforced by a ministry set up for that purpose. Women are banned from most work and from schools. But the Taleban are discovering these rules clash with the needs of their impoverished country. Outsiders offering help find it hard to work under such rigid conditions. /// OPT /// In the second of three reports /// END OPT /// From Kabul, V-O-A's Ed Warner describes the Taleban's Islamic regime.
TEXT: Observers say one agency works well in Kabul: the Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice. Hundreds of recruits eagerly carry out its mandate as they scour the city for any glimpse of female flesh or beardless males.
When they are outside, women must be fully covered, head to toe, with gauze over their eyes restricting their vision. As they trudge along the streets, none too steadily, many begging for money, they have the look of aliens from another planet. While men freely exchange greetings, shake hands and embrace, women remain apart.
Woe to those who violate the rules. Freba Hamidi is a young Afghan woman who recently fled with her family to Peshawar, across the border in Pakistan. With her face now exposed, she recalls how she once made the mistake of going shopping without a complete covering. A Taleban patrol closed in and flailed her with sticks. She received the same treatment on another occasion, when a bit of ankle was showing.
Being a woman, she was fired from her job at a radio station in Kabul; her father and mother had also lost their posts. I think I am a good Muslim, says Freba Hamidi, but the Taleban give Islam a bad name:
/// HAMIDI ACT, FARSI FADING TO ENGLISH ///
Life in Afghanistan is very difficult,
especially for women who have been deprived of
the right to work and to get an education. And
they are all at home. Women used to be able to
work for N-G-O's -- foreign non-governmental
organizations. But recently, the Taleban
stopped them from working there and threatened
to shut down any N-G-O that employs them.
/// END ACT ///
The Taleban say they want to protect women from the promiscuity and decadence of the west. N-G-O's would just like to put them to work. Compromise is apparently possible. Told to dismiss Afghan women who work in a bakery, the U-N's World Food Program removed them officially but rehired them on an informal basis. That seemed agreeable to the Taleban.
In his office at the Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice, the Deputy Minister, Mullah Mohammad Salim, is arguing with another mullah over the phone. The ministry has shut down an ice-cream store, because female customers were exposing their faces to eat the ice cream. True enough, says the mullah at the other end of the line, but look at it his way: the women are eating apart from men, and that is a good thing. Well, OK, replies Mullah Salim, "We will let the store reopen" -- in what could be viewed, generously, as another act of incremental change.
At the entrance to the ministry, a group of men with wispy beards, or none at all, are waiting to get documents that will keep them from being punished. One has just returned from several years in Iran:
/// REFUGEE ACT, FARSI FADING TO ENGLISH ///
They told me I had to cut my hair in accordance
with Islamic rules. I did that, and now I'm
back to get an exemption for not having a beard,
so that I will not be bothered by the patrols.
/// END ACT ///
As the refugee from Iran was talking, the deputy minister walked out, casually remarking: "You see, we have not detained him." Other Afghans say it is easy enough to elude the patrols with a little ingenuity.
Much depends on the individual ministry and the man in charge. Mary MacMakin is head of an N-G-O called Parsa, and a popular figure in Kabul. Nevertheless, the Virtue-Vice Ministry imprisoned her for four days, for working with Afghan women, and then ordered her out of the country. Once she left, the Foreign Ministry called to apologize and asked her to return. She remains in Kabul, fully committed though somewhat more discreet.
There is apparently no division among the Taleban on handling more serious crimes. After a series of explosions in Kabul, several men were arrested and sentenced to death. Two were recently hanged in the city stadium, and their bodies removed to a main intersection to serve as an example to others. Bills were stuffed into their mouths and ears to signify the money they accepted for their crimes.
Deputy Interior Minister Mullah Khaksaar, soft-spoken but emphatic, says the culprits were caught with the explosives and were tried and convicted. The trial, of course, was not public. So there is no way of verifying the accusations.
Minister Khaksaar concedes Taleban security forces need improvement:
/// KHAKSAAR ACT, PASHTO FADING TO ENGLISH ///
Right now there is no security problem inside
Afghanistan. But our security forces are not up
to international standards. We do not have
proper equipment, because so much was destroyed
in the years of war. Despite this, we have been
able to bring security to the country. The
Taleban are dedicated and are not working for
personal gain.
/// END ACT ///
Mullah Khaksaar, who has also headed Taleban intelligence, says his ministry is planning to establish an academy for police, and put them in uniform. Eventually, they will replace the militia of the Ministry for Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice. (Signed)
/// OPT OUTRO /// In his final report from Kabul, Ed Warner tells about the enormous economic decline that has brought Afghanistan from relative prosperity to its present unhappy status one of the poorest nations on earth. /// END OPT ///
NEB/EW/WTW
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