Horror stories continue to be told in the war torn cities of Afghanistan as the country’s capital has fallen into the control of the Taliban Sunday. The Taliban were in control of Afghanistan after President Ashraf Ghani fled the country and conceded the insurgents had won the 20-year war.
Thousands of Afghans have fled via the capital’s international airport with the US and European embassies evacuating their staff.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Taliban leaders have publicly assured government officials, military troops and Afghanistan citizens that they have nothing to fear. But as terrified civilians pour into Kabul, many who are still in Taliban-held areas say they have witnessed unprovoked attacks on people as well as captured soldiers being executed.
Taliban commanders have earlier demanded communities to submit a list of unmarried women including girls as young as 12 years old to become wives for their fighters.
In a report, female Afghan politician Shukria Barakzai wrote of incidents such as that of a woman’s eyes being gouged out in front her family, young girls forcibly taken from their weeping mothers, and men punished or even killed for simple offenses such as listening to music, are just some of the all too familiar scenarios happening in Taliban-controlled areas.
Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid however has denied the group killing prisoners, as this he said violates the Taliban’s principles. He also said that allegations of women being forced into marriage were false because it violates their cultural tradition and the rules of Islam.
The streets of Kabul are teeming with petrified locals and thousands of refugees pouring in with little to no more than the clothes they are wearing. They have camped in parks and abandoned warehouses without provisions for food, water and sanitation.
Barakzai, who survived a suicide bomber attack in Kabul back in November 2014 recalled how women in the early 1990’s were largely treated as equals in the Afghan society. Cities which were opened up to the world, provided education for women who wanted to pursue careers.
But as the Taliban began to sweep over Afghanistan in 1996, civilians faced draconian restrictions and women mostly paying the heaviest price.
Barakzai said the female population was largely marginalized as their rights to education, a job and a social life were all taken away. Women were prohibited to work outside of their homes. Should they have the need to step out of the house, they were required to wear burqas and had to be escorted by a male relative.
As anxious citizens brace for full Taliban control and the return of Sharia law in the country, a radio station in Kandahar has been seized by the Taliban. A Taliban fighter who took to the airwaves announced the take over, renaming the station as the Voice of Sharia. All employees were said to be present at the time and from then on will broadcast news, political analysis and recitation of the Quran.
The Biden administration meanwhile made a last minute decision to send 3,000 US troops to Afghanistan whose mission is limited to assisting in the partial evacuation of the US embassy personnel and Afghan allies. The mission is expected to be completed by the end of the month, which coincides with US President Joe Biden’s deadline for fully withdrawing US combat forces in the region.
