Another massive setback for Afghan women's rights; Taliban says it will publicly flog them to death

The plight of women in Afghanistan is expected to get worse. The Taliban regime has vowed to “start public stoning of women to death”, an act that the group’s Supreme Leader, Hibatullah Akhundzada, claims is “in the name of God”.

Taliban, who took control of the country in 2021, have already been carrying out public floggings and executions. These brutal punishments are doled out even for crimes like thefts and robberies.

Now, Akhundzada, in an audio message, has said that women committing adultery will be stoned to death. In the message, released by the Taliban-run state media, he addresses the West, saying, “We will soon implement the punishment for adultery. We will flog women in public. We will stone them to death in public. These are all against your democracy, but we will continue doing it.”

According to The Telegraph, he compared the West with the Devil and said, “We both say we defend human rights – we do it as God’s representative and you as the Devil’s.”

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He further asserted that the Western notion of women’s rights goes against Islamic Sharia law.

“I told the Mujahideen that we tell the Westerners that we fought against you for 20 years and we will fight 20 and even more years against you…It did not finish [when you left]. It does not mean we would now just sit and drink tea. We will bring Sharia to this land[…]we will now bring Sharia into action,” Akhundzada said.

Under the guise of acting as God’s representatives and implementing the Sharia law, the Taliban have rolled back women’s rights and has severely curtailed their educational and employment opportunities. Within weeks of coming into power three years ago, it banned girls and women teachers from secondary education. Around the same time, the Taliban banned women from most workplaces and introduced male guardianship beyond 72 kilometres from their homes.

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Then, in May 2022, under the Taliban’s puritanical interpretation of Sharia, women were ordered to cover themselves from head to toe. In November 2023, women were barred from parks and, a month later, women’s university education was suspended.

Rights groups and advocates blamed the plight of Afghan women on the international community’s silence. Human Rights Watch (HRW) researcher Sahar Fetrat told The Telegraph that the Taliban was emboldened to make such a decision because of the international community’s inaction. The world did not hold Taliban accountable for its curtailment of women’s rights over the past two years, she said.

Fetrat said that “They tested their draconian policies one by one, and have reached this point because there is no one to hold them accountable for the abuses. Through the bodies of Afghan women, the Taliban demand and command moral and societal orders. We should all be warned that if not stopped, more and more will come.”