ICC Complicates Case Against Taliban By Focusing on Gender Identity

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Michael Hughes: Restrictions on gender expression are, sadly, a daily occurrence in most countries around the world, including the United States. President Donald Trump, in fact, in an executive order on his first day in office declared the U.S. government would only recognize the sex assigned to a person at birth. Tragically, this is where many Americans and the Taliban can find common ground.

Hence, I was disappointed with the over-emphasis of “gender” in the ICC’s impractical arrest warrants against Taliban leaders. I think alluding to gender in general as an area that needs improvement would have sufficed. But the term is mentioned seven times in the statement issued by ICC prosecutor Karim Khan, a British lawyer, who unveiled the warrants on January 23.

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Afghans Laud ICC Arrest Warrants Over Taliban’s Repression Of Women

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Karim Khan

By RFE/RL’s Radio Mashaal and RFE/RL’s Radio Azadi
January 24, 2025

Afghan rights groups have applauded the International Criminal Court’s announcement that it is seeking arrest warrants for two top Taliban officials for allegedly persecuting Afghan women and girls, an accusation the Taliban-run Foreign Ministry called “baseless.”

ICC prosecutor Karim Khan said in a statement on January 23 that he has requested warrants for the Taliban’s supreme leader, Mullah Haibatullah Akhundzada, and the head of Afghanistan’s Supreme Court, Abdul Hakim Haqqani.

Khan said based on evidence collected thus far in an investigation reopened in October 2022 there are reasonable grounds to believe Akhundzada and Haqqani “bear criminal responsibility for the crime against humanity of persecution on gender grounds.”

He said his office had concluded that they are “criminally responsible for persecuting Afghan girls and women, as well as persons whom the Taliban perceived as not conforming with their ideological expectations of gender identity or expression, and persons whom the Taliban perceived as allies of girls and women.”

“This is a prestigious international institution, and their decisions and actions have strong consequences…. This is a big threat to the Taliban,” Mir Abdul Wahid Sadat, head of the Afghan Lawyers Association, told RFE/RL’s Radio Azadi.

The alleged crimes were committed from August 15, 2021, when the Taliban seized power as U.S.-led international forces withdrew from the country, until the present day.

The Taliban-run Foreign Ministry said in a statement that the arrest warrants lacked a “legal foundation” and that it “strongly condemns and rejects these baseless accusations.”

“This is a major step. The people of Afghanistan have been facing a culture of impunity for over five decades,” according to Shaharzad Akbar, an Afghan rights campaigner who headed the former Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission and now runs the independent advocacy organization Rawadari.

The government has previously said it was working on a strategy and creating a suitable environment for girls’ education. But it has not reported how much progress has been made or said when girls would be allowed to go to school beyond grade six.

After returning to power, the Taliban banned teenage girls from education. Since then, the Islamist group has imposed draconian bans on women’s work, education, and mobility despite domestic opposition and a global outcry.

The arrest warrants came a day before International Education Day, which the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) said should be noted with “a profound sense of regret and deep concern for the millions of Afghan girls who continue to be denied their fundamental right to education.”

“It is a travesty and tragedy that millions of Afghan girls have been stripped of their right to education. No country has ever thrived by disempowering and leaving behind half its population. The de facto authorities must end this ban immediately and allow all Afghan girls to return to school,” added Roza Otunbayeva, the UN secretary-general’s special representative for Afghanistan.

Khan said in the statement that the applications for arrest warrants “recognize that Afghan women and girls as well as the LGBTQI+ community are facing an unprecedented, unconscionable, and ongoing persecution by the Taliban.”

The alleged persecution entails “numerous severe deprivations of victims’ fundamental rights” that are contrary to international law, the statement said. This includes the right to “physical integrity and autonomy,” free movement, free expression, free assembly, and education.

Human rights groups applauded the ICC move.

Liz Evenson, international justice director at Human Rights Watch, said the Taliban’s “systematic violations of women and girls’ rights, including education bans, and the suppression of those speaking up for women’s rights, have accelerated with complete impunity.”

The warrant requests offer a pathway to accountability, Evenson said in a statement.

Khan said the requests were the first applications for arrest warrants to arise out of the investigation into the situation in Afghanistan, adding that his office soon will file further applications for other senior members of the Taliban.

A decision on whether to issue arrest warrants following requests from the prosecutor typically takes around four months.

Copyright (c) 2025. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave NW, Ste 400, Washington DC 20036.

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Book Bans Common Practice In Many Countries, Says Taliban Official

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Afghanistan International: Hayatullah Mohajir Farahi, the Taliban’s Deputy Minister of Information and Culture, defended the group’s ban on the distribution and publication of dozens of books, saying that banning books is a “common practice” in many countries. Farahi added that the Taliban has banned some books in order to build a “single nation” in Afghanistan. Click here to read more (external link).

Ali Reza Asahi, two-time world bodybuilding champion, dies at 49

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Amu: Afghanistan’s Ali Reza Asahi, a two-time world bodybuilding champion, on Thursday died due to an illness. He was 49. The National Bodybuilding Federation confirmed Asahi’s death in a statement, adding that his funeral is scheduled for Friday in the Omid Sabz township in Kabul. A celebrated figure in the sport, Asahi won back-to-back gold medals in 2023 and 2024 in the global bodybuilding championships, competing in the Masters category. Click here to read more (external link).

ICC Prosecutor Seeks Arrest Warrants Against Taliban Leaders

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Mullah Hibatullah Akhundzada

Afghanistan International: The International Criminal Court’s chief prosecutor on Thursday said that he was seeking arrest warrants against senior Taliban leaders in Afghanistan over the persecution of women, a crime against humanity. Karim Khan said that there were reasonable grounds to suspect that Taliban’s Supreme Leader Hibatullah Akhundzada and the group’s Supreme Court’s chief justice Abdul Hakim Haqqani “bear criminal responsibility for the crime against humanity of persecution on gender grounds”. Click here to read more (external link).

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Taliban flog 12 Afghans, including women, for adultery, eloping

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Ayaz Gul
VOA News
January 23, 2025

Islamabad — Taliban justice officials in Afghanistan said Thursday that 12 people, including two women, had been publicly flogged this week after being tried and charged with adultery, sodomy, eloping, and having “illicit relations.”

The regime’s Supreme Court announced the punishments, saying they were carried out in the southeastern Khost and northern Parwan provinces, with members of the judiciary, administrative staff, and ordinary citizens present as onlookers.

Each of the twelve defendants received the maximum of 39 lashes and prison terms ranging from eight months to three years. The top court acknowledged that the sentences were imposed by provincial courts and implemented only after its approval.

At least 35 Afghans have been publicly flogged in this month alone, according to the Supreme Court data.

Hundreds of men and women have been flogged in packed sports stadiums across Afghanistan, while six people have been publicly executed under what the Taliban described as the Islamic concept of retributive justice, known as qisas.

The United Nations and global human rights organizations have persistently decried the floggings and other forms of corporal punishment as contrary to Afghanistan’s international human rights obligations, demanding the Taliban cease the practice.

Taliban leaders, who regained power in 2021, defend their criminal justice system and governance at large, saying they are based on their strict interpretation of Islamic law, or Sharia.

Authorities have banned Afghan girls from pursuing secondary and university-level education and prohibited women from seeking employment in most public and private workplaces. Women must also publicly cover their faces and travel with a male guardian.

No country has officially recognized the Taliban as legitimate rulers of Afghanistan, mainly over their harsh treatment of women and other human rights concerns. China and the United Arab Emirates have acknowledged a Taliban ambassador without recognizing the Afghan government.