Why are thousands of Afghans trying to flee Taliban rule? Because of the Taliban’s track record. One of the most chilling track records on the planet.
Hafiz Sadiqulla Hassani, a former member of the Taliban’s secret police, reported that he received the following instructions from his boss, the secret police commandant:
“You must become so notorious for bad things that when you come into an area people will tremble in their sandals. Anyone can do beatings and starve people. I want your unit to find new ways of torture so terrible that the screams will frighten even crows from their nests and if the person survives he will never again have a night’s sleep.”
During their last period in power, from 1996 to 2001, the Taliban stripped women of their jobs and rights, required that they cower in their homes wrapped in black with their windows curtained and painted over, wear no shoes that a man might hear, and possess no reading material outside of pamphlets promoting official religious views.
Ladies of learning and skill who transgressed were beaten with rifle butts in the streets.
Even men were allowed an education in only one subject: the Taliban version of the Koran.
The Taliban’s Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and Suppression of Vice–modeled on Saudi Arabia’s religious police–was known for its stonings, its amputations, its hangings from mobile cranes so a body could be paraded high above a city’s roofs, and a long list of other “divinely-ordered” atrocities.
Citizens deemed guilty of perjury had their tongues cut out. Amnesty International reported that the Taliban forced a father and brothers to shoot their own family member before an audience of 30,000 gathered in a stadium. Toppling walls to crush victims alive was a means of execution for those deemed guilty of sodomy–homosexuality. In the opinion of Amnesty International, none of the accused were given access to a true court proceeding, hence their alleged crimes were highly questionable.
Using the slogan “film and music leads to moral corruption,” the Taliban Ministry of the Fostering of Virtue ordered that Afghanistan’s citizens destroy their televisions, VCRs, satellite dishes, and other devices of depravity.
Meanwhile, Taliban troops pursued a war of extermination against heretics, specifically the Hazara Shiites in their northern territories. The slaughtered were victims of Allah’s order to eliminate unholiness. Human Rights organizations reporting on this murder of women and children saw it differently–they called it simple genocide.
______
The official website for Howard Bloom may be found at https://www.howardbloom.net
From the book Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind From the Big Bang to the 21st Century, by Howard Bloom
References:
Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. “Background Paper on Refugees and Asylum Seekers from Afghanistan.” UNHCR Centre for Documentation and Research, Geneva, June 1997.
United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. “Humanitarian Report 1997: Gender issues in Afghanistan.”
Shadaba Islam. “International campaign for Afghan women.” Dawn, Pakistan Herald Publications, Ltd. November 1998
Amnesty International News Service. “Afghanistan: Public executions and amputations on increase.” AI INDEX: ASA 11/05/98 21 May 1998.
Howard Bloom has been called the Einstein, Newton, and Freud of the 21st century by Britain’s Channel 4 TV. He has appeared on Saudi and Iranian TV over 60 times. One of his seven books-Global Brain—was the subject of a symposium thrown by the Office of the Secretary of Defense including representatives from the State Department, the Energy Department, DARPA, IBM, and MIT. His work has been published in The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Wired, Psychology Today, and the Scientific American.