As the Taliban surge in Afganistan continues with the aid of the Pakistan military, residents of areas under their control are now beginning to feel bitter past as one of the first edicts issued by the Taliban in the form of a letter to the local imam is to find out girls above 15 and widows under 45 to be married to Taliban fighters.
The letter issued by the Taliban’s cultural commission reads, “All imams and mullahs in captured areas should provide the Taliban with a list of girls above 15 and widows under 45 to be married to Taliban fighters,”
The other Islamic instructions are that women can no longer go to the bazaar without a male companion, and men should not shave their beards. and they have also banned smoking and violators of the rules “will be seriously dealt with”.
The Taliban blitzing after the final withdrawal of foreign troops and have captured districts, seizing key border crossings, and encircling provincial capitals and are enforcing puritanical hardline interpretation of the Quran like it did when it ruled Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001 and the imposition of Sharia law.
Again the past has come to haunt the people of Afganistan as women have been ordered to stay indoors unless accompanied by a male relative, girls banned from school, and death by stoning for those found guilty of crimes such as adultery.
The Taliban now wants the daughters and widows under the age of 45 to be married off to its foot soldiers which is seen as an incentive to its fighters who are mostly young uneducated madrasa jihadis.
These edicts were issued by the Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice which can be called the religious police when the Taliban’s first came to power.
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