After seizing power, religious extremists and terrorists sensitive to people’s efforts to improve living conditions, modernize governance and promote civic education and culture, encounter a big problem in introducing an alternative. The ruling customs and culture that they promote in the course of insurgency and terrorist acts are all focused on the degradation of life, happiness, and work, and are rich in the sanctification of death, the glorification of jihad, and the justification of war, execution, and elimination. If a group of them seeks to maintain their power for political reasons and distance themselves from the war and terrorism background and turn to non-war literature suitable for governance in order to consolidate power, they will be embroiled in contradictions and create doubts among the supporters and fighters of the group, thus causing division and collapse of the main bases of the group’s military power. In any case, this confusion leads to a crisis, resulting in society suffering setbacks and irreparable troubles.
In the last two years, the Taliban have been endeavoring to introduce a regime that has minimal similarities with a typical government and some administrative and legal features necessary to run a country with millions of populations. Additionally, on one hand, they tried to deal with a world full of complexity and all kinds of economic, political, and diplomatic sophistication, on the other hand, they have been consistent to maintain group unity and exploit their rebel and terrorist background and create stratified empathy among stakeholders. In negotiations with foreigners and when they ask for money and support, expressions such as increasing customs revenues, developing exports, paying attention to attracting investment, signing contracts with companies, and even committing to forming an “inclusive government” are on their tongues. However, when they speak to Afghans and their domestic allies, they point to yellow barrels, suicide vests, tributes to the survivors of suicide bombers, census of life, and emphasis on “honorable” and “faithful” death that guarantees comfort after death. The glorification of death and the downplaying of life was an effective means of recruitment during wartime, and it is still an effective means of maintaining the tools of violence. However, this political-religious tool, when the Taliban group has usurped the administration of the country, has become a serious weakness of this group and will ultimately lead to its collapse and political failure.
Promoting death thoughts and shrugging off administrative and political responsibilities makes the crisis-ridden society devoid of facilities even more empty, passive, and prone to various social pandemics. As a result, the Taliban cannot build a government with a strong economy and army and implement the violent political model that they have in mind to maintain and sustain the monopoly of power and wealth. The Taliban have destroyed the economic and administrative foundations of the emirate by expelling tens of thousands of non-political experts who were willing to work with minimum privileges and freedom to keep the offices up and running and making thousands of teachers, university professors, and researchers unemployed, most of whom had no party and political affiliations. They destroyed themselves and paralyzed the institutions by recruiting mullahs and fighters unfamiliar with administrative work. Recently, Mawlawi Abdul Kabir, the Taliban Acting Prime Minister, also said that school graduates cannot handle administrative affairs. This statement indicates the Taliban officials have realized that by emptying the offices of experts and assigning their associates, they have contributed to dismantling their administration. The Taliban have taken advantage of the vacuum and stalemate caused by the transfer of power, and the administration that was moving before has continued to run by its remnants. At the same time, in the short term, formal changes in bureaucracy can be refreshing for people and meet their curiosity. Some superficial paintings and symbolic actions deceive some people, but there is no doubt that the system has collapsed, as there is no government. What is ruling is the black mafia-terrorist tyranny without a plan for education, work, and tranquility of the people, which is still benefiting from the last remnants of facilities and capacities created during the non-Taliban period and will last until there is the financial support of foreigners. But internally, everything is falling and collapsing. Not only the education and freedoms of the urban classes have been sacrificed, but the whole society has fallen on the path of regression.
Due to the suppression of freedom and censorship of media and information, there is less news disseminated about the plight of the people, but with minimum searching and precision, one can see signs of the deepening of the crisis. The suspension of social life has put millions of our countrymen under pressure to the point of mental collapse, and behind the walls of the houses, the screams of deprived women and children are always loud. Premature deaths, escape, influx, mental problems, and other complications of this terrible retreat are becoming more visible every day. The number of suicides has increased alarmingly, some of which are covered by the media.
This crisis is not only confined to the cities and regions where the influence of the Taliban was insignificant in the past but also in villages and remote areas such as Uruzgan and Zabul, the bitter signs of despair and social collapse have become more prominent. In the following, we will review the news of a few days from last week in order to observe some parts of the terrible times of the people under the domination of the death-minded and anti-life emirate:
On June 11, a 38-year-old man hanged himself in the Kharwari area of Qalat City though his identity and the motive for his suicide are yet to be known. This ambiguity is caused by the Taliban and the censorship of information, and many such events are not allowed to be published in the media at all. Suicide rarely occurs in rural areas and traditional societies, and the fact that a man hanged himself in Qalat may be due to excessive economic and social pressure on the residents of that area.
Suicide in other countries mostly occurs due to loneliness and personal failures in jobs, emotional relationships, and mental illnesses; however, in a place like Zabul, where families and social relations are still traditional and, in the culture, and religious beliefs, taking one’s life is considered nasty and a great sin, people may only commit suicide under very unusual psychological pressure and a social crisis such as the painful setback of the last two years. On the same day, it was reported in Herat that a young boy hanged himself in the Mahal-e Dasht area of Gozarah district.
Preventable diseases and pests also unusually claim lives in the “Emirate” of the Taliban. In the last two years, polio has returned to the country, pneumonia and tuberculosis and other such diseases that were largely controlled in the past in the areas under the control of the previous government, have now become part of the normal health duties of the people. Fahimullah Ludin, the spokesperson of the Logar Public Health Department in the Taliban administration, said on June 11, that the number of tuberculosis patients in that province in 2022 has increased by 20 percent compared to the previous year. He attributed this increase to the return of immigrants, but 2022 was not the year of the return of immigrants, while hundreds of thousands of people left the country in groups. It can be certainly said that the main reason for the increase in diseases is the reduction of services, the disruption of the living system, and the increase in poverty.
Those who have left the country are facing multiple challenges as their compatriots inside the country, with some having been killed while migrating to other countries, and some working hard in factories and workshops of neighboring countries with very poor conditions and few benefits. Those who have reached the West are also faced with the problems of resettlement due to leaving their homeland. On the same day, June 11, the news about the troubled situation of Afghan immigrants in Britain was published. Hasht-E Subh Daily, quoting the Guardian newspaper, wrote that thousands of Afghan refugees in Britain are facing the risk of homelessness.
The sad news about the situation of immigrants in Iran and Pakistan and the deaths of passengers on the long and dangerous smuggling route from Afghanistan to Iran, from there to Turkey, and then to Europe have continued in these two years, with thousands of people having been killed, injured and missing on this route, or have suffered severe psychological injuries.
This week, reports on the situation of children in Afghanistan said that millions of children are struggling to survive in very difficult conditions, starving, being abused, and doing hard labor. Aid agencies report that more than half of the country’s population is hungry, and it has been said that 20 million people are suffering from malnutrition or are on the verge of suffering from malnutrition. Children are the main victims of this collective hunger. This situation leaves irreparable effects on their physical and mental education. UNICEF has announced that 20% of Afghan children are engaged in hard labor, though this figure is probably optimistic and the actual number of working children is much higher.
As abovementioned, unfortunately, suicide deaths are increasing every day. In the past month, the suicide of 27 individuals, who were mostly young, was reported by the media. Almost every day there is at least one suspicious death or suicide news. In one of the latest cases on June 13, Besmillah, a 26-year-old youth hanged himself in Lalakhel village in the center of Bamyan. Taliban also kill people for various reasons. Apart from those who are officially tortured and shot by the Taliban, the news of mysterious murders is spreading from all over the country. Pay attention to the following incidents during one day on June 22: A teacher named Ahmad Shah was murdered “mysteriously” in Kabul. “Unknown gunmen” killed two shopkeepers in Farah. A student was stabbed to death by unknown individuals in Takhar province. In Herat province, a pregnant woman was stabbed to death “by her son”. Male family members of the young woman who was accused of not wearing a hijab were warned by the Taliban. On June 13, the Taliban applied qisas to three individuals for the crime of murder and rape. It is stated in a report that those three accused were the ones who raped a woman and then killed her with her two children. The kangaroo court of the Taliban and the rape of those three people are parts of the same picture.
In recent decades, the Taliban and their regressive counterparts have labeled the people’s lives and the administration of the government with jihad, they have brought destruction and hunger, burned schools, and killed teachers. For the last time in the twenty years of the Islamic Republic, with the worst types of violence and terrorism, they destroyed the signs of life and settlements, destroyed the roads, operated on water dams, killed civilians in mosques, schools, and stadiums, and set fire to commercial shipments. And in the areas where they had influence, people were deprived of education and freedom. As a result, society has been ruined and its souls are dominated by the Taliban, with horrific news such as gang rape and murder of the victim and kangaroo court coming to the media.
On one of the days full of death news last week, some photos and videos were published of a grave where a pipe was connected and the relatives of the one sleeping in that grave were waiting for their loved one’s reaction from under the ground next to the grave. In a brief interview, a boy standing a few steps away from the pipe said that they had buried a girl in that grave who was believed to be alive, but had been ordered to be buried by the local Mullah. Some people called it a living example of burying the girl and wrote on social networks from the girl’s relatives that the local Mullah told her family that delaying the burial is a sin and they should not wait until the family’s doubts about the girl’s death and life are resolved.
In a non-Taliban environment, the Mullah and the government administration cooperate with the family to ensure death or the possibility of signs of life, transfer the injured person to the hospital, perform professional examinations, and if at least vital signs are seen in that person, they try to him. And only if the experts declare that the person is no longer alive, they bury him. Because the medical facilities are limited in the villages of Afghanistan, it was probably not possible to transport the girl who was said to have been injured by lightning to a city and a well-equipped hospital.
If the Taliban had not been there, the family and relatives of that girl could have not buried the girl as long as they saw signs of life in her, or maybe they would have transferred her to a hospital instead of the cemetery. Only in a tyrannical and violent society like the Taliban “Emirate” can things go to the point where people put an air and contact valve in their buried dear’s grave, and wait there for hours and maybe days for a reaction, lest she wakes up and screams, but they remain unaware.
This is not an accident. The Taliban and their backward groups aligned with those who run politics with the tool of death and deceive the people by romanticizing death and the afterlife, with the return of the “black empire” of death thought, have unprecedently promoted the business of death through the media, mosques, forums, and gatherings. They make people afraid of death, by emphasizing death they demean people’s desires for a better life and more prosperity, they consider the many sufferings they have imposed on people as a test and transfer the rewards to the other world.
With such deception and relying on the free means of death, thousands of people are recruited to fight (kill and be killed) with minimum wages and sometimes even without wages. They rank dying for the deluded youth and make the most violent death (suicide) the highest and “a bonus” so that people compete to reach it. The members of the suicide squad are the “top elected” of the Taliban Emirate. It has been heard many times from the words of uninformed fighters that they have tried very hard to prove their “worthiness” to the commanders and leaders of the death dealers in order to reach the “martyr’s position” and register in the list of young people waiting for the bloodiest death.
