The Taliban has continued to turn Afghanistan into a living hell for those who remain under its rule. The country is being brought back to “the days of Islamic Sharia law rule” reports The Foreign Desk.
Since the Taliban regained power, strict and authoritarian rules have been implemented, such as “prohibiting women from traveling alone, stipulating specific grooming requirements for men, prohibiting access to foreign media, and obtaining complete control of public areas.”
Parks will also be segregated by gender and the Taliban recently banned hairdressers in the Helmand province of Afghanistan from “shaving or trimming men’s beards, arguing that it breaches their interpretation of Islamic law.”
The terms of the order stated that women would only be permitted to visit public parks three days every week, whereas men had the remaining four days, including members of the Taliban. The order for sex-segregated parks also bans couples and families from being allowed to spend time in parks together.
The Taliban has also started blocking ordinary Afghans’ ability to various media outlets that are completely or partially funded by Western governments.
News sources like Voice of America (VOA), the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), and others have been barred from airing on Afghan television because of restrictive orders from the Taliban.
When asked how the U.S. should respond to the Taliban’s recent actions, director and senior analyst for homeland security and counterterrorism at the Council for Security Policy, Kyle Shideler, explained that “ideally, the U.S. should keep the Taliban as isolated as it was before the U.S. invasion after 9/11, but realistically that is not going to happen.”
Shideler further explained that “America’s top priority needs to be keeping the Taliban from using its territory to facilitate the growth of international jihad terrorism, and even that is likely to be a heavy lift, given the dilapidated state of U.S. deterrence.”
“The people of Afghanistan will continue to pay the price for the U.S. government’s refusal to understand the nature of the enemy they were fighting in the Global War on Terror,” he said.
