Since the Taliban’s return to power in Afghanistan, the group’s system of governance has taken shape not based on a codified constitution grounded in the public will, but through a patchwork of directives, decrees, and, most notably, penal codes. Adopting a legal, historical, and critical approach, this article demonstrates that the Taliban’s current codes, particularly in the criminal sphere, do not constitute a legitimate legal order. Rather, they function as a systematic instrument for repressing society, suppressing dissent, and preserving absolute autocratic rule.
In contemporary legal systems, constitutions and criminal laws are meant to safeguard rights, ensure justice, and uphold human dignity. Under the Taliban’s structure, however, the absence of a constitution and its replacement with uncodified, unaccountable “codes” has produced a profound crisis of legal legitimacy. The Taliban’s penal code is neither the outcome of a transparent legislative process nor grounded in the principle of legality of crimes and punishments. Instead, it consists of a set of ideological decrees enforced arbitrarily and without oversight.
Although Taliban authoritarianism had already become an enduring nightmare for the Afghan people from the outset of the group’s takeover, the drafting and enforcement of these codes represent a deliberate effort to cloak existing oppression and despotism in legal legitimacy. By giving repression the appearance of law, the Taliban seeks to project a manufactured image of legal order. In reality, these mechanisms amount to nothing more than the continuation and institutionalization of the same authoritarian rule. Far from marking a step toward legality, these codes are an integral component of the Taliban’s broader project of domination, repression, and the consolidation of absolute power.
The Taliban’s penal code is presented as being rooted in Islamic sharia, yet in practice, sharia is interpreted selectively and instrumentally. The exclusion of credible ijtihad, the disregard for the diversity of Islamic jurisprudential schools, and the monopolization of religious interpretation by a narrow circle have resulted in punishments imposed not based on justice, but according to a logic of fear and obedience. Within this framework, criminal law has been transformed from a means of ensuring justice into a tool for instilling public terror and silencing society.
The repressive nature of the Taliban’s penal code is clearly reflected in both the type and the manner of punishments imposed. Harsh, public, and humiliating penalties are carried out not to achieve social reform, but to demonstrate power and entrench domination. These punishments, particularly those targeting women, civil society activists, media workers, and intellectual minorities, serve as a deterrent to social participation and function as instruments to suppress any form of civic resistance.
The systematic suspension of citizens’ fundamental rights is a direct consequence of this penal framework. The rights to education and work, freedom of expression, freedom of assembly, and political participation have effectively been criminalized or suppressed through the threat of penal sanctions. In this context, criminal law does not guarantee legal security for citizens; it operates as a mechanism for stripping them of their most basic rights, a condition that stands in clear violation of customary international law and peremptory norms of human rights.
Undoubtedly, women are the primary victims of the Taliban’s penal code. Under Taliban rule, women are not recognized as rights-bearing citizens but are instead defined as objects of control and discipline. The deprivation of women’s access to education, employment, and social participation is reinforced through the threat of criminal punishment, underscoring that the repression of women is not a byproduct but a central pillar of the Taliban’s project to maintain authoritarian control.
The absolute concentration of power and the absence of any independent judicial oversight have created unlimited opportunities for the abuse of the penal code. The lack of separation of powers, denial of access to fair trials, and the enforcement of punishments by decree have turned the Taliban’s criminal framework into an instrument for entrenching absolute authority and eliminating the rule of law. In such a system, law does not constrain power; it serves as the executive arm of despotism.
Overall, the Taliban’s current framework, particularly in the criminal domain, cannot be regarded as law in the legal sense of the term. Rather than serving justice, it constitutes a mechanism for repression, fear-mongering, the eradication of rights, and the preservation of political and ideological authoritarianism. The continuation of this framework deprives Afghan society of any meaningful prospect of justice, participation, or development, trapping it in a cycle of structural violence and systematic human rights violations. Confronting this reality requires a clear recognition of the repressive nature of these codes and a rejection of any legal or political legitimization of them.
In conclusion, an examination of the Taliban’s governance and penal codes reveals that this framework is not a legal system but a law-like construct designed for organized repression and the consolidation of autocracy. The absence of popular legitimacy, the lack of a constitution, the suspension of fundamental human rights principles, and the instrumentalization of sharia have turned the Taliban’s codes into tools for structural violence and social control. In this order, law is not a guardian of justice but an instrument of fear, rights eradication, and the silencing of all forms of civic resistance. The systematic repression of women, in particular, demonstrates that these codes are built on the negation of human dignity and the exclusion of half of society. The persistence of such a structure keeps Afghanistan trapped in a cycle of injustice, violence, and social disintegration, and any attempt to normalize or legitimize it amounts to indirect complicity in authoritarianism and systematic human rights abuses.
You can read the Persian version of this analysis here:
