Taliban Undertake Speedy Overhaul of Afghanistan’s Justice System

·

Akmal Dawi
VOA News
September 28, 2023

In cities and villages across Afghanistan, men with no formal legal training but with membership in the Taliban and a rudimentary grasp of 8th-century Islamic jurisprudence wield unprecedented power over the fate of defendants and the resolution of civil disputes.

Under this summary judicial system, most cases are resolved swiftly, often receiving a verdict on the very first appearance before a tribunal. Plaintiffs and defendants make brief presentations, and a judgment is rendered.

Even in the most serious criminal cases, the absence of prosecutors investigating and presenting the facts to a jury or court means that thorough judgments are a rarity.

The Taliban dismantled Afghanistan’s attorney-general office in 2021, deeming it an unnecessary bureaucratic appendage that fostered corruption and inefficiency.

Under the new system, every aspect — from assigning cases to charging and sentencing — must be carried out in the presence of a judge without the involvement of public prosecutors, according to Abdul Malik Haqqani, the Taliban’s deputy chief justice.

“A judge cannot base his decision on a prosecutor’s investigations. This is our Sharia principles,” Haqqani told a local television channel this week.

Farid Hamidi, Afghanistan’s former attorney-general who now lives in the United States, described the dissolution of the attorney-general’s office as a mortal blow to justice in the country.

“A prosecutor’s only job is to help judges have all the facts before issuing a verdict on a case,” Hamidi told VOA. “This is a widely accept principle all over the world, which aims to ensure only justice is served.”

When the Taliban seized power in 2021, they not only dismantled the attorney-general’s office but persecuted former prosecutors who had previously built criminal cases against thousands of Taliban insurgents.

Thousands of prisoners the Taliban set free from jails across Afghanistan in 2021 have sought to carry out reprisals against prosecutors and judges resulting in the killings of more than a dozen former prosecutors, the U.N. human rights body reported in January.

Speed

What sets the Taliban’s justice system apart is its speed.

Unburdened by bureaucratic red tape, Taliban judges have resolved more than 200,000 cases in the past two years, including thousands that had been backlogged in the previous government’s judiciary.

However, critics argue that expeditious verdicts should not come at the cost of true justice.

“They are sacrificing justice for speed,” said Hamidi.

Afghans, who often complained about the sluggishness and bureaucracy of the former government’s courts, have praised the Taliban’s swift justice.

“Sometimes justice delayed is justice denied and sometimes it is most important to move incrementally and achieve a result based on better information,” Neal Davins, a professor of law at William & Mary Law School, told VOA.

The United Nations and human rights bodies have denounced the Taliban’s criminal justice system as brutally harsh.

While the Taliban defend public displays of corporal punishment as consistent with Islamic law, the U.N. deems them inhumane and violations of international conventions against torture.

The Taliban also claim effective enforcement of court orders, contrasting it with the reported shortcomings of the former Afghan government in implementing justice over powerful individuals.

In a bizarre event in November 2015, Khalilullah Ferozi, a banker sentenced to jail for financial crimes, walked out of his cell to sign a multi-million-dollar real estate contract with the Ministry of Urban Development.

In another widely reported incident in November 2016, a former vice president who was accused of detaining and sexually assaulting a tribal rival in Kabul brazenly bore no legal or penal responsibility.

Absolute monarchy

The Taliban have suspended Afghanistan’s constitution guaranteeing the political and administrative independence of the judiciary.

There is also no written document stipulating the appointment of judges, their authorities and judicial accountability.

“We are only accountable to our leader…matters related to authorities of Sultan and King are referred to our leader,” said Haqqani, the deputy chief justice.

There is no limit to powers of the mysterious Taliban leader.

That the judiciary is accountable only to the Sultan, according to Haqqani, is a testament to its independence from both internal and external interventions.

For decades, the Taliban fought the previous Afghan government, accusing it of being a puppet regime serving foreign interests.

While they claim total independence in the way they now govern Afghanistan, the Taliban have widely been reported as a proxy of the Pakistani military — accusations both Pakistan and the Taliban reject.

“The powers and limits of every public institution must be enshrined in a public document or a constitution. Without that the independence of judiciary has no actual meaning,” contended Hamidi.

The absence of written laws has left judicial verdicts open to varying interpretations of broad Islamic rules.

That legal ambiguity has led to serious human rights violations, such as the indefinite detention and torture of individuals without specified charges or the right to a court hearing.

The Taliban’s intelligence agency, for instance, has indefinitely detained and tortured individuals on charges not specified in any law without giving detainees a right to a court hearing, according to independent human rights organizations.

Matiullah Weesa, an activist for girls’ education, has been languishing in Taliban detention for about six months without charges.

Backed by the United States, the former Afghan government had a progressive constitution, which, although symbolic and marred by allegations of violations, sought to distribute power democratically with equal rights for all citizens, regardless of gender.

“A constitution is only as good as the people who interpret/enforce it. It typically serves a useful purpose in constraining government and protecting individual rights — but only if it is treated with respect,” said Davins.

Like other parts of the Taliban’s government, women are excluded from work at the judiciary and there are not any female judges to address disputes among female plaintiffs and defendants.

Called the world’s only gender-apartheid regime, the Taliban definitely claim they have given Afghanistan a better justice system than the one built with large international support.

Pakistan’s Plan to Expel Illegal Afghan Migrants Alarms UN

·

Ayaz Gul
VOA News
September 28, 2023

ISLAMABAD — Pakistan’s caretaker Foreign Minister Jalil Abbas Jilani confirmed Thursday that his government has decided to force out all Afghans and other foreign nationals living unlawfully in the country.

The move will likely affect about 1 million Afghans, including those who took refuge in the country after the hard-line Taliban swept back to power in neighboring Afghanistan two years ago.

The United Nations is alarmed by the plan because it could affect Afghans in need of international protection. Their lives or freedom would be in danger if they were forcefully repatriated, a U.N. official cautioned in background discussions with VOA.

“The new policy approved by the cabinet does not pertain only to Afghans; it is about all those people from different countries who are illegally residing in Pakistan,” Jilani told a news conference in Islamabad.

He explained that officially registered Afghan refugees and those living lawfully would not be asked to leave Pakistan. “But those who have come here illegally, whether Afghans or nationals of any country, will have to go back to their respective countries. We will strictly implement the policy.”

The spokesperson for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees in Islamabad told VOA that his agency was “seeking clarity” from Pakistani counterparts about the new policy.

Qaiser Khan Afridi noted that Pakistan’s role as a “generous refugee host for decades” has been acknowledged globally, but more needs to be done to match this generosity. “Any refugee return must be voluntary, without any pressure to ensure protection for those seeking safety,” he said.

“UNHCR stands ready to support Pakistan in developing a mechanism to manage and register people in need of international protection on its territory and respond to particular vulnerabilities,” Afridi added.

Until the Taliban returned to power in August 2021, Pakistan officially hosted nearly 2.7 million Afghans. That included 1.3 million registered refugees and 880,000 officially documented economic migrants; the rest were declared unlawful migrants.

The Taliban takeover of Kabul triggered a fresh influx of refugees, bringing more than 700,000 Afghans to Pakistan.

An estimated 200,000 have since flown to the United States and European countries under special resettlement programs for their services to U.S.-led international coalition forces, which all chaotically withdrew two years ago after almost two decades of presence in Afghanistan.

Most of the remaining Afghans have either crossed the border into Pakistan unlawfully, or their visas have expired, according to Pakistani officials.

The Taliban have imposed their strict interpretation of Islamic law in Afghanistan since regaining power, placing sweeping restrictions on women.

Girls are not allowed to receive a secondary school or university education. Most female government employees have been ordered to stay home, and female aid workers are forbidden from joining humanitarian groups. Women cannot visit public places, such as parks, gyms and bathhouses, and undertaking long road trips requires the presence of a male guardian.

The restrictions on women are a primary deterrent for Afghans sheltering in Pakistan — particularly women and girls — from returning to their homeland, according to displaced family members.

AFJC: Taliban Restrict Access to Information with 13 Directives

·

8am: The Afghanistan Journalists Center (AFJC) has reported that over the past two years, the Taliban have issued 13 directives systematically limiting media freedom and access to information in the country. On the occasion of the International Day for Universal Access to Information,” this organization released a statement on Thursday, September 28, asserting that the Taliban demonstrate indifference towards Afghanistan’s Access to Information Law. Click here to read more (external link).

Related

Over 18,000 Afghans Contracted COVID-19 Since Start of 2023

·

Tolo News: The Ministry of Public Health of the Islamic Emirate said that more than 18,000 people in Afghanistan have contracted COVID-19 since the beginning of 2023, but said the number of COVID-19 patients has fallen down during the last two months. Based on the statistics of the Health Ministry and World Health Organization, 225,000 Afghans have contracted COVID-19 while 7,800 others have died due to the virus since 2020. Click here to read more (external link).

ODI World Cup 2023: Warm-Up Match 2, Afghanistan vs South Africa

·

Ariana: Afghanistan and South Africa will lock horns in a warm up match on Friday, September 29, at the Greenfield International Stadium in Thiruvananthapuram in India, as both teams head into the eagerly anticipated ODI Cricket World Cup. While Afghanistan recently wrapped up a forgettable Asia Cup campaign, South Africa won their most recent challenge, the five-match home series against Australia, 3-2. Click here to read more (external link).

Other Afghan Cricket News

Exiled Afghan Professors Say No Return Without Women In Universities

·

Nadeem

By Khujasta Kabiri
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
September 27, 2023

When the Taliban seized power, it soon launched a purge of Afghanistan’s universities in a bid to promote its radical Islamic values.

Now, facing a severe shortage of qualified university teachers, the hard-line Islamist group is trying to convince exiled educators to return to their homeland.

The Taliban’s education minister, Neda Mohammad Nadim, announced this week that the group had “sent different delegations to various countries so those who are good instructors and are living abroad return.”

But professors who left when the Taliban seized power over two years ago say there is little to come back to.

“Being a professor at a university is not only about income and career, what is important is independence, critical thinking, and freedom of expression,” Sami Rasakh, an educator who left Afghanistan for an undisclosed country, told RFE/RL’s Radio Azadi.

“We do not have these rights under such a government [the Taliban],” Rasakh said, concluding that “professors who went to more advanced countries will not return.”

Despite the Taliban’s recruitment effort, educators remain subject to significant restrictions on what they can teach and to whom. The denial of higher education to girls and women, which forced many women teachers out of their profession or led them to leave the country, is a major sticking point.

Obaidullah Wardak, a former mathematics professor at Kabul University, says the Taliban must first provide girls and women the right to attend universities before the group can expect to convince professors to return. “Professors should not be expected to teach like machines,” Wardak told Radio Azadi, saying the right to education for all must be protected.

“The professors want to see if there are [improvements] in place,” said Wardak, who resigned from his position and moved abroad. “As a first step, we demand that the gates of the universities be opened again for girls.”

The Taliban has fired scores of university professors, particularly women, replacing them with Taliban clerics. Dozens of other professors have resigned from their positions to protest the group’s severe restrictions on education.

Another hitch in the re-recruitment drive is the Taliban’s continuing purge of universities as it tries to impose its hard-line values on all aspects of Afghan life.

The Taliban has vowed to root out all forms of the modern, secular education that thrived in Afghanistan after the U.S.-led invasion in 2001 toppled the Taliban’s first regime. Since regaining power, the militants have converted scores of secular schools, public universities, and vocational training centers into Islamic seminaries, leading to a surge in the number of madrasahs in the country.

Multiple professors told Radio Azadi that the very same Education Ministry that wants them to return to the classroom had ordered the institutions where they taught to replace them with unqualified members of the Taliban government.

“On the one hand, it is ordered that I be removed, on the other, I will be invited [to return]?” Noorullah Shad, a former professor of Pashto literature at Kabul’s Sheikh Zahid University, told Radio Azadi from abroad.

“If a professor returns, what guarantees are there that no one will be imprisoned again, my human rights will be protected, my dignity will be protected? Shad asked.

Who Believes Taliban’s Promises?

Upon seizing power in August 2021, the Taliban gave assurances that it would not return to the infamously brutal rule it employed while first in power from 1996 to 2001.

In an effort to reverse the damage from the loss of government bureaucrats, military personnel, doctors, and other professionals, the Taliban called on Afghans to return to their former positions to help rebuild the country.

As a carrot, the Taliban pledged to respect girls’ and women’s right to education and offered amnesty for soldiers and police who worked for the previous Afghan government.

But rights groups have recorded scores of cases in which former military and police personnel were targeted and killed, while the global community has expressed outrage at the Taliban’s refusal to live up to its promises when it comes to the rights of girls and women.

Some university professors, meanwhile, have been imprisoned for criticizing the Taliban’s restrictions on girls and women attending university. In December, the Taliban doubled down by barring girls and women from campuses entirely.

The end result, according to the United Nations mission to Afghanistan, is that the Taliban has established “the most repressive country in the world regarding women’s rights.”

The Taliban’s education minister, Nadim, nevertheless has claimed that some professors have returned to resume teaching in Afghanistan.

Rasakh, the exiled university professor, conceded in his interview with Radio Azadi that “professors who are down on their luck in [neighboring] Iran and Pakistan would maybe accept the Taliban’s pitch out of necessity.”

Multiple professors who have returned and spoke to Radio Azadi supported Rasakh’s argument, saying they had to come back after experiencing financial problems and difficulties in obtaining legal documents to stay abroad.

Written by Michael Scollon based on reporting by Khujasta Kabiri of RFE/RL’s Radio Azadi

Copyright (c) 2023. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave NW, Ste 400, Washington DC 20036.

A Toxic Legacy: What America Left Behind In Afghanistan

·

Undark: America’s 20-year military occupation devastated Afghanistan’s environment in ways that may never be fully investigated or addressed. American and allied military forces, mostly from NATO countries, repeatedly used munitions that can leave a toxic footprint. These weapons introduced known carcinogens, teratogens, and genotoxins — toxic substances that can cause congenital defects in a fetus and damage DNA — into the environment without accountability. Local residents have long reported U.S. military bases dumping vast quantities of sewage, chemical waste, and toxic substances from their bases onto land and into waterways, contaminating farmland and groundwater for entire communities living nearby. They also burned garbage and other waste in open-air burn pits — some reported to be the size of three football fields — inundating villages with noxious clouds of smoke. Click here to read more (external link).

Taliban Arrest 200 Anti-Pakistan Militants in Afghanistan

·

Ayaz Gul
VOA News
September 27, 2023

ISLAMABAD — Afghanistan’s Taliban says it has captured 200 suspected militants for staging deadly cross-border attacks against Pakistan and has implemented other “concrete steps” to “neutralize” the terrorist activity, VOA learned from Pakistani officials privy to the process.

The de facto Afghan rulers shared the details about the crackdown on the outlawed Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP, in bilateral talks they hosted last week in Kabul with a high-level delegation from Islamabad.

The dialogue came two weeks after hundreds of heavily armed militants assaulted two Pakistani security posts in the northern border district of Chitral. The September 6th raid killed four soldiers and 12 assailants, with the TTP claiming responsibility.

The Taliban “arrested 200 TTP cadres returning from the Chitral attack. They are now behind bars,” said an official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to publicly interact with the media. He added that de facto Afghan authorities were in the process of relocating other TTP members away from the border with Pakistan.

“But we have to wait and see the outcome of these steps before drawing any conclusions. So, you have to give them some time to consolidate these measures,” the official remarked.

The Taliban did not immediately react to the reported TTP crackdown.

Monday, the Taliban’s chief spokesman reiterated that his government does not allow anyone to use Afghan soil against Pakistan.

“This is our stated policy. This is central to Afghanistan’s national interest in promoting peace and reconciliation,” Zabihullah Mujahid said in comments aired by Taliban-run state television.

“We can only help Pakistan with its internal security issues according to our capacity. Pakistanis also understand our limitations; we cannot help them at borders because that is their responsibility,” Mujahid stated.

Pakistan’s special representative on Afghanistan, Asif Durrani, led the delegation to Kabul, with senior military officials also accompanying him. Officials in Islamabad at the time described as “promising” their “extensive” discussions with Taliban Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi and his team.

“We are not here to judge the intentions of that de facto government,” Anwaar-ul-Haq Kakar, the caretaker Pakistani prime minister, told a Turkish television channel Monday when asked whether the Taliban were sincere in their intentions to curb TTP activities on Afghan soil.

“Yes, we have a concern because groups like TTP do reside on Afghan soil. There are training camps on their soil, which is a point of concern for us. But whether it is intentional [or] enjoys the patronage of that government remains to be seen. We don’t want to complicate that relationship,” Kakar stated.

The TTP, known as the Pakistani Taliban, is designated a global terrorist organization by Pakistan, the United States. and the United Nations.

The militant group emerged in Pakistan’s border areas in 2007, pledging allegiance to the leadership of the Afghan Taliban and supporting them in mounting insurgent attacks on U.S.-led NATO troops in Afghanistan until the foreign forces withdrew in August 2021after nearly two decades in the country.

Taliban supreme leader Hibatullah Akhundzada has forbidden his forces from launching cross-border attacks against Pakistan, calling them haram or un-Islamic.

Akhundzada has also ordered Afghans not to collaborate with or give donations to the TTP for its so-called jihad against Pakistan and barred the militants from running donation collection campaigns in Afghanistan, Pakistani officials with knowledge of the recent discussions in Kabul told VOA.

Pakistani officials said following the TTP attack in Chitral that scores of Afghan fighters had also participated in it, and the evidence was promptly shared with Kabul authorities to demand action against them. An internal TTP communication later emerged on social media, warning its fighters against recruiting Afghans into their ranks, suggesting the group had come under pressure from the Taliban government.

Officials in Islamabad, while sharing their assessment with VOA, believe that the Taliban are “consciously distancing” themselves from groups aligned with them during the insurgency but which are now involved in criminal activities in Afghanistan, such as extortion, kidnapping for ransom, and terrorism.

They remarked that Taliban leaders know they have a greater responsibility to address these issues because they are now in control of the country and must demonstrate to the world that they no longer act like an insurgent group as they seek recognition for their government.

Other Pakistan-Afghanistan News