By Justice Markandey Katju
I read the article ‘Will Kabul fall to the Taliban’ by Ahmad Faruqui published in nayadaur.tv.
https://nayadaur.tv/2021/06/will-kabul-fall-to-the-taliban/
I regret the writer has been somewhat economical with the truth, and has not elucidated what will really happen in Afghanistan when Kabul falls to the Taliban.
President Biden has said all US troops will withdraw from Afghanistan by September, and, as stated in the above article, district after district is already falling to the Taliban. It is only a matter of time before Kabul too falls. What will happen then ?
To reply, one must understand what is the Taliban, and note what they did when they were in power in Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taliban
To my mind the Taliban are nothing but a bunch of feudal village idiots, with a fanatic bigoted Wahabi ideology, somewhat like Tehreeke Labaik in Pakistan, or Gen Zia ul Haq, who are determined to take Afghanistan back into the Middle Ages
Here is what will inevitably happen once they come to power :
1. Girls will be forbidden to go to school
2. All women will be compelled to wear the burqa when they step out of their homes, and whipped if they do not.
3. Public whipping will be introduced for a host of acts, e.g. a woman seen with a man who is not her husband or member of her immediate family, persons not saying namaz 5 times daily, drinking alcohol, or not keeping roza during Ramzan.
4. Sharia law will be strictly enforced including stoning to death of women accused and found guilty of adultery, cutting off limbs of thieves, nikah halaala, etc.
5. All dargahs will be destroyed, calling them idol worship ( as in Saudi Arabia ). Saying “Ya Ali ” or ” Ya Gharib Nawaz ” will be declared ‘shirk’ and made a criminal offence punishable by a jail term or public whipping or worse.
6. Wearing a beard will be made compulsory for men ( as it is a ‘sunnat’ ).
7.To finance their government, the Taliban will encourage growth and export of opium, marijuana, etc ( while denying it publicly ).
8.Minorities like Shias, Hindus, Sikhs, Christians, Ahmadiyas ( the few who are left )
will face hideous persecution.
9. The surviving temples, statues ( like the Bamiyan Buddhas ) and idols in Afghanistan will be destroyed, and even museums having them will be ransacked by committing such vandalism.
10. Fatwas will be issued from time to time by someone like the late Mullah Omar on various matters ( e.g. banning internet and movies, prohibiting wearing western dress like jeans, shirts, skirts, etc or Indian dress like saris, smoking cigarettes, pipes or cigars, singing publicly or hearing Western or Indian music ) which must be obeyed or else dire consequences will follow..
So Afghans will have a nice time in their dar-ul-Islam !
The advent of the Taliban in Afghanistan will certainly have this effect in neighbouring Pakistan : The North Western province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa will soon introduce the same brutal and inhuman measures as will be introduced in Afghanistan by the Taliban. This will in all likelihood also be done in many other parts of Pakistan too. So a large section of Pakistan society will also come under the sway of religious bigots, and even the little liberalism and modernism which exists in Pakistan today will cease to exist.
