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Fury as Karzai plans return of Taliban’s religious police

Discussion in 'BBS Hangout: Debate & Discussion' started by tigermission1, Jul 22, 2006.

  1. tigermission1

    tigermission1 Member

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    Fury as Karzai plans return of Taliban’s religious police

    http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/story.jsp?story=698861

    By Tom Coghlan
    17 July 2006


    The Afghan government has alarmed human rights groups by approving a plan to reintroduce a Department for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, the body which the Taliban used to enforce its extreme religious doctrine.

    The proposal, which came from the country’s Ulema council of clerics, has been passed by the cabinet of President Hamid Karzai and will now go before the Afghan parliament.

    “Our concern is that the Vice and Virtue Department doesn’t turn into an instrument for politically oppressing critical voices and vulnerable groups under the guise of protecting poorly defined virtues,” Sam Zia Zarifi of Human Rights Watch said. “This is specially in the case of women, because infringements on their rights tend to be justified by claims of morality.”

    Under the Taliban the Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice became notorious for its brutal imposition of the Taliban’s codes of behaviour. Religious police patrolled the streets, beating those without long enough beards and those failing to attend prayers five times a day. Widows suffered particular hardship because of the diktat that women be accompanied by a male relative when out of their homes, an impossibility for thousands of women widowed during decades of war. The Ministry was also charged with the imposition of the Taliban’s interpretation of sharia punishment. Executions at Kabul football stadium, which included female prisoners shot in the centre circle, did much to fuel the Taliban’s international isolation.

    However, the Minister for Haj and Religious Affairs, Nematullah Shahrani, defended the new body. “The job of the department will be to tell people what is allowable and what is forbidden in Islam,” he said. “In practical terms it will be quite different from Taliban times. We will preach … through radio, television and special gatherings.”

    He denied that the department would have police powers but said it would oppose the proliferation of alcohol and drugs and speak out against terrorism, crime and corruption. It would, he added, also encourage people to behave in more Islamic ways. Nader Nadery, a spokesman for the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission, said: “It will remind people of the Tal-iban. We are worried that there are no clear terms of reference for this body.”

    Western diplomats have reacted with unease to the proposal. However, several told The Independent that they believed the move was partly designed to defuse Taliban propaganda which accuses the Karzai government of being un-Islamic.

    “This is an Islamic republic and sharia is a part of the constitution,” one diplomat said on condition of anonymity. “If it is constitutional and within the framework of the International Convention on Human Rights [to which Afghanistan is a signatory] then it could represent a public information victory for the government.”

    With the Taliban making considerable gains in the south the Karzai government has been keen to establish a more conservative Islamic profile and to appear more critical of Western military operations.

    Over the weekend violence continued across southern Afghanistan with British, American and Canadian troops mounting their biggest combined operation since the Korean War. British paratroopers mounted a cordon and search operation in Sangeen on Saturday night. A British base in the town has been under daily attack for more than two weeks. Afghan officials said 27 Taliban fighters were killed in the Helmand province during the offensive, with 18 wounded and 10 captured. Two British soldiers were injured but not seriously.

    Forty militants were also said to have been killed in separate fighting in north Helmand and Uruzgan provinces on Saturday.

    Another 35 insurgents were reported killed during operations in Helmand yesterday. In other parts of the country, six Afghan soldiers died in a roadside bombing in the west, while a suicide bomber killed four civilians and injured 23 others in Gardez in the south-east.
     
  2. Mr. Brightside

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    I used to not understand how strict the vice squad in Afghanistan was until I saw the movies "Osama" and "Kandahar." Both films were made right before the fall of the Taliban.
     
  3. FranchiseBlade

    Supporting Member

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    I wished we had really spent to the time, manpower, and money in Afghanistan to help give it a really solid start. There was so much promise there.
     
  4. glynch

    glynch Member

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    That might have been nice, but it is debatable that most of the people there really wanted us to take over the country and try to run it the way we see fit.

    I'm not saying that we did not have the right to go after Bin Laden, but that did not mean that we had take over and put in our guy to rule Afghanistan.

    Things are not going as the neocons hoped.
    ***********
    Afghanistan close to anarchy, warns general

    Richard Norton-Taylor
    Friday July 21, 2006
    The Guardian


    The most senior British military commander in Afghanistan today described the situation in the country as "close to anarchy" with feuding foreign agencies and unethical private security companies compounding problems caused by local corruption.

    The stark warning came from Lieutenant General David Richards, head of Nato's international security force in Afghanistan, who warned that western forces there were short of equipment and were "running out of time" if they were going to meet the expectations of the Afghan people.

    The assumption within Nato countries had been that the environment in Afghanistan after the defeat of the Taliban in 2002 would be benign, Gen Richards said. "That is clearly not the case," he said today....

    http://www.guardian.co.uk/afghanistan/story/0,,1826303,00.html
     
  5. tinman

    tinman 999999999
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    those chicks wouldnt have won the espy if we didnt take down the taliban.
    you want them to not read and do crap now?
     
  6. FranchiseBlade

    Supporting Member

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    I'm not talking about running it the way we see fit. I am talking about really spending the time, money and manpower to rebuild AFghanistan. Find ways whether it be through technological grants and training to allow them farm out IT work similar to what goes on in India, or develop agriculture on all of their opiate growing land, but help to build a way that Afghanistan could offer something to everyone else, and really sustain itself.

    The country has been destroyed by wars since before the Soviets went in. This was a chance to really rebuild, and help them.

    Talk about spreading democracy, and gaining allies in the region... That would have been a great way to do it.
     
  7. Rocket River

    Rocket River Member

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    It was just a staging ground
    nothing more

    it served its purpose. . it got us to Iraq

    Rocket River
     
  8. TracyMcCrazyeye

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    what if you're not islamic?

    i'm not sure how the newly formed foundation of afghanistan was built, but does it allow freedom of religion?
     

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