Taliban an Ash under Fire
By Sitara
In 2001, no one thought that the Taliban would come back after 20 years with a surprised success that would shake the world and bring the veteran politicians to their knees. Capital Kabul was the last and the main province that fell to Taliban last week and the corrupt, racist president alongside his head of the security and VPs had fled and left the country in crisis and ruined the peace process.
Taliban sized Kabul without any resistance from Afghan security forces unlike in 1996 when the extremist Taliban movement captured Kabul they had been welcomed by the people with flowers, while this time people are panicked and attempting to run out of the county without any targeted place. They just want to leave the country, Afghanistan has been turned to a hell for them.
Apparently, the Taliban movement has changed and this time they come with big differences and show the people a kind and new face from themselves. As the Taliban declared they have no issue with women’s education and work outside. Taliban urged the respect of women’s rights in the framework of Islamic Sharia and human rights but who knows what they really believe in what they are saying and would not change later?
Though, the Taliban encourages the people plus women to attend their workplace and continue their ordinary life but no one has the courage, especially women, to go to work because women have not forgotten the Taliban’s barbaric behavior and acts during their previous rule. Women still hear the Taliban lash’s tone.
On the first day when I heard through the media that Taliban entered Kabul, I was frustrated and totally broke down. Thousands of women like me are disappointed. It seemed life has come to the end. The entire city has silent streets. I barely had courage to see outside the windows. There was no woman on the streets since then I only see women on TV screen with a tired and scared face presenting the news or rushing to the airport to run away without knowing where. I talked to some of my colleagues and friends on social media and they had the same condition — disappointed and pessimistic about future, I was told they are scared from the Taliban’s long hair, red eyes savage faces and dress style and expecting to hear when a woman would be lashed on the street.
Although, the Taliban has pursued a gentle policy in Kabul so far as they allowed women civil protest in front of the presidential palace who were calling “we are not turning to the past.” Even the women police have been called back to continue their jobs. They have not imposed the Burqa on women. While Taliban has been very strict with women in some provinces they banned the girls schools and applied Sharia law. Furthermore, there are rumors that Taliban searched people’s houses and killed some top officials of the security forces in Khandhar and Herat provinces.
The Taliban extremist group is not trustable. They may show their original face after they officially declare their fundamental Islamic government as they’ve confirmed they’ll apply Sharia’s strict law. Obviously, there are many religious school students who have an extremist interpretation of Islam. They neither believe in women’s rights nor other minority groups’ rights. How could is it possible that these religious school students would change after being brought up with extremist ideas and violence — who have been only taught to kill infidels in order to go to paradise and see women as child birth machines. Taliban is an ash under fire that will gradually show their real face, a brutal and cruel face which doesn’t have any mercy.
As a politics and history student I have experienced history constantly repeating in Afghanistan due to lack of sincere honest and smart leaders and politicians who have never been thinking about their country and devoting their life to the people but to their personal interest. Since the establishing of Afghanistan, Afghanistan has never experienced long term stability, peace and unity and its politicians have never been completely willing or determined to serve Afghanistan. If we go back 30 years, the same thing happened as today. The Soviet Union left Afghanistan the same as US. After a while President Dr Najeebullah fled, destroyed the UN peace process and dragged the country to civil war, which ended with the appearance of fundamentalist groups of Taliban and turned Afghanistan into Al-Qaeda heaven.
