WASHINGTON, UNITED STATES – The annual US Department of State report on the global status of human rights shows that under Taliban rule, there is widespread disregard for the rule of law and an “official impunity” for those involved in human rights abuses.
In its 2023 annual report on human rights practices in Afghanistan, released on Monday, April 22, the US Department of State highlighted a series of human rights abuses perpetrated by the Taliban throughout the year.
According to the report, significant human rights issues in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan include arbitrary killings, severe physical abuse, unjust detentions and abductions, and arbitrary or unlawful interference with privacy.
Other serious concerns noted in the report were the unlawful recruitment of children in armed conflicts, severe restrictions on media, religious freedom and political participation, widespread corruption, gender-based violence, and violence against ethnic minorities.
The report highlights a significant deterioration in women’s rights throughout the year, primarily due to edicts that restricted their access to education and employment. This resulted in Afghan women increasingly being confined to domestic roles.
For nearly three years since the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan, women and girls in the country have been subjected to severe repression of their rights and freedoms, which UN experts, legal scholars and activists agree amounts to a system of apartheid to deliberately subjugate them on the basis of gender.
Since then, the ruling regime has issued over 50 discriminatory decrees against women, effectively confining them to the corners of their homes.
“The Taliban’s edicts formalized discrimination and exclusion of women and girls from most aspects of society and at a nationwide level,” the report said.
The report underscored that despite a Taliban decree prohibiting forced marriage of women, child, early, and forced marriages remained prevalent across the country. Additionally, teenage girls deprived of education were particularly vulnerable to the “risk of child marriage,” as noted in the report.
“Societal pressures and the Taliban practice of arranging marriages for widows also forced women into unwanted marriages.”
Regarding the situation of ethnic groups, the report indicates numerous instances of the Taliban forcibly evicting or facilitating the forced eviction of Hazara families from their land across the country.
The report cited a prominent Hazara figure who said that at least 13 Hazara residents in central Uruzgan province had been killed in the past two years as part of a campaign to forcibly displace them from their native lands and homes.
The report also highlights the suffering of Hazaras in other provinces, as they endure the incursions of Pashtun nomads onto their lands, with the Taliban supporting the nomads in claiming Hazara’s lands and properties.
The US Department of State quoted its source, saying that the Taliban-backed Pashtun nomads warned Hazara locals in central Afghanistan with the statement, “the history of the Hazara people was over in the country.”
The report also revealed that despite the Taliban’s prohibition on child recruitment in the military, both the regime and the Islamic State affiliate in Afghanistan, IS-KP, reportedly continued to recruit children and employ soldiers younger than 12 years old during the year.
Citing a report from Equal Access International, the Department noted that bacha bazi (the sexual and commercial exploitation of boys), child soldiering, and child labor continued to be widespread under Taliban rule, with Taliban commanders being involved in bacha bazi.
“In August, during a wedding ceremony in Badakhshan Province, a dispute reportedly arose between two Taliban commanders over a boy associated with bacha bazi. The disagreement escalated to gunfire, resulting in the death of two Taliban members and injuries to four others,” the report said.
Despite the Taliban’s repeated claims of dismantling IS-KP in Afghanistan, the US Department of State revealed in its annual report that the terrorist group has continued to target the Hazara-Shia community and the Taliban members in Afghanistan during 2023.
Three days ago, IS-KP claimed responsibility for a terrorist attack in the western part of Kabul city, saying that it targeted Hazaras and killed and injured 10 people.
The Taliban quickly reacted to the US Department of State’s annual report, with its spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid, saying that the rights of the people of Afghanistan are defined and protected according to Islamic Sharia.
Mujahid argued that the concept of rights, as understood in the US, does not exist in Afghanistan. He urged the US and other countries not to impose Western culture on other nations.
