Taliban Justice

A few days ago horrific footage of an Afghan woman being shot dead by the Taliban was broadcast on television and the internet. Her alleged crime? Adultery. Whether she had any trial (or what kind of sordid excuse for a hearing this takes under Taliban law) is irrelevant.  Perhaps all that was required was for a bearded accuser to make an allegation?

There she knelt, or crouched, in a final pose almost too painful to watch, bent in the dirt and the heat before her merciless executioners. She was the wife of a local Taliban leader. Or something. It scarcely matters. Some of the turbaned heroes were caught on film, pitiless smiles, grinning. A crowd had gathered, perhaps in expectation of some light entertainment to relieve the monotony of another long, hot and pointless day in a world trapped in the intellectual dark ages.

A couple of Kalashnikov shots rang out. Footage swept quickly over a crumpled form, motionless in the grainy dust. Some more smiles and another execution. She was not the first by a long way. There will be many more.

It is quite difficult to describe the people who live by this sort of code where a defenceless, probably innocent woman, is shot for something only slightly more than sport. Without resorting to pointless expletives, they are despicable and barbaric. They are intellectually diseased. They are poisoned by a kind of viral psychosis, imprisoned in a twisted wicked philosophy that defies the modern world and which is frighteningly resilient. They have been bombed, shot, “droned” and hunted down. Yet, like some deadly tide, they wash back, like a mutating virus resistant to all attack, they reappear.

At roughly the same time a mega conference was being held in Japan about the future of Afghanistan. Deep pocketed worthies (or at least big talking worthies) pledged support to poor Afghanistan as it writhed in its agony of being torn between worlds that are centuries apart. The US Secretary of State pledged the US to stand side by side with its new best friend in the glowing future of the years ahead. What else could she say?

And with those fine words comes that horrible juxtaposition – the twisted body of an executed woman in the bloodied dust and the echoes of the fine words and ghostly platitudes of fading “friends”, heading for the exits.

Afghanistan will, once again be left to its fate. Its future, more likely than not, lies in its past. Once again, the long shadow of the dark ages prevails.

See earlier blog The long shadow of dark ages.