MADRID, 15 (EUROPA PRESS)
Taliban leader Heibatullah Akhundzada has ordered ministers and other officials to stop using the term "interim" in their respective positions, a symbolic step intended to highlight the consolidation of the Islamic Emirate on the fourth anniversary of the extremist group's return to power.
Akhundzada stressed this Friday that the current leadership will continue to pursue "prosperity and peace" for the people in strict compliance with Sharia and Islamic law, under which the Taliban have justified all types of human rights violations over the past four years.
Every August 15, the regime commemorates its "great victory" and the "liberation" it claims to have achieved from the "occupation" of the United States and its allies, as the top leader recalled in a message reported by the Pajhwok news agency. Now, in Akhundzada's words, Afghanistan has achieved "total peace" thanks to Islamic doctrine.
This view contrasts with that of independent observers, who have warned of all kinds of abuses through edicts and decrees, to the point of undertaking what United Nations rapporteurs have described as "a relentless and escalating assault on fundamental rights and freedoms."
"The Taliban implement an institutionalized system of gender repression, crush dissent, exact retribution, and muzzle independent media while showing total disregard for human rights, equality, and non-discrimination," these experts warned in a message released on the anniversary.
Women and girls have been victims of this system and have been excluded not only from the main centers of political power, but also from any type of public space, without the possibility of accessing, for example, higher education.
Reporters Without Borders (RSF) estimates that 80 percent of women journalists have stopped working, while those who remain do so in fear and under constant threats or censorship. Any act of disobedience, regardless of the context, can cost them their lives.
PUBLIC PUNISHMENTS
During this time, the Taliban have reintroduced public executions and corporal punishment, part of a repressive system that has seen cases of arbitrary arrests, enforced disappearances, and torture. The judicial and prison systems now operate under laws tailored to the most radical Islamists.
"After four years of Taliban rule, what remains is an extremely opaque and coercive legal system that prioritizes obedience over rights and silence over truth," lamented Amnesty International's regional campaigner, Samira Hamidi, in a statement.
The local population, however, is refusing to accept the idea of regaining at least some of the freedoms gained in the 20 years Afghanistan lived without the Taliban. A UN Women survey indicates that 40 percent of the female population still envisions "a future where change and equality are possible."
The agency's representative in Afghanistan, Susan Ferguson, stressed that this show of hope "is a lifeline and a political strategy," "a personal act of resistance" in a country that now serves only the interests of the small political group that controls it from Kabul.
