The Taliban’s Terrorist Tactics, by Ike Willie-Nwobu

In 2021 it may have become inevitable that the West, particularly the United States, would pack up and leave Afghanistan to its fate under the Taliban. Speaking then shortly before the United States left the country, President Joe Biden declared that he could no longer justify America’s participation in another country’s internal war.

Immediately the US withdrew its troops which had helped to maintain a fragile peace since 2001, the Taliban took over a country described as the ‘graveyard of empires’ for the way many have tried and failed to conquer the country.

If the Taliban missed anything about ruling the country, it was its oppression of women. During its first time in charge of the country, the group placed many restrictions on women.

Since returning to power, it has continued its campaign against women with one bizarre restriction after another. For example, girls that are twelve years or older are banned from attending school in the country, as well as restricted from private and public sector jobs. In August, the Taliban banned women in country from singing, reciting poetry or speaking aloud in public and mandating them to keep their faces and bodies covered at all times.

The latest in the long line of restrictions oppressing women in Afghanistan was recently announced by Mohammed Khalid Hannafi, the Taliban minister for propagation of virtue and prevention of vice, who declared that women must refrain from reciting the Quran aloud in the presence of other women.

An interconnected world today increasingly means that suffering has become universal, this includes the suffering of Afghan women under a terrorist group that is corrupt, morally bankrupt, and outrightly murderous.
True legitimacy comes from the people and is freely given. Anything which calls itself legitimacy but which has its provenance elsewhere can never pass for legitimacy.

The world owns every Afghan women and child the duty to relentlessly pile unceasing pressure on the Taliban until it recognizes the equality of women in the country, abrogates every obnoxious law and grants them full rights.

In a world where women are increasingly showing that they are peace builders, Afghanistan is simply an unacceptable anomaly.

The Taliban prides itself as a group for men where women are not accepted, but it is nothing more than a corrupt and bloodsucking terrorist group whose antediluvian methods have no place in the modern world.

Cracking down on dissent, subjugating women under ridiculous and ludicrous laws have never conferred legitimacy anywhere. If anything, they are the telltale signs of illegitimacy.

The world may have left the long-suffering people of Afghanistan to contend with the forces of history and national destiny all by themselves, but the reality is that the country has become a conclave for terrorism.
To propagate virtue and prevent vice as a matter of state policy and target women for repression is a tacit act of terrorism. To ban women from speaking to each other; to forbid girls from learning, is terror in its full and terrifying trajectory. To impose impossible conditions on women reminds that terrorism in any form has always been about oppressing women.

It is a tragedy that in a world which has come to the shattering conviction that chains in every guise and manner must be broken, terrorists form the government of one of Asia’s most iconic countries.

The solidarity of suffering means that what is happening in Afghanistan is resonating everywhere else. Besides, the fact that the Taliban has served to embolden other militant Islamist groups terrorizing countries from Asia to Africa is a call to action for the world.

After the Taliban swept to power, many terrorist groups around the world celebrated what they considered a victory. The Taliban has since become a problem the world must solve.
What people the world over want is to live in peace and prosperity. Any government that considers vice and virtue a state affair to an extent that it appoints a minister for that isn’t ready for the serious matter of governance.

Such a government is one that must be opposed with every available means.

Ike Willie-Nwobu,
Ikewilly9@gmail.com