Screenshot: AP Photo
Since the Taliban returned to power in Afghanistan, it has begun to return to its late 1990s antics with more and more gruesome acts that can be viewed in the public eye.
On Saturday, the terror group that rose to power in the war-torn Middle Eastern country hung a body on a crane in the western city of Herat, and then moved three others around town, putting them on public display.
The Taliban publicly announced that the four men were caught kidnapping a father and a son, and were killed by police after exchanging gunfire.
After Aug. 15, when the Taliban overtook Kubal, the capital of Afghanistan, the world waited to see whether or not the group would return to public humiliation techniques such as public stonings and limb amputations in front of crowds in public stadiums.
In an interview with the Associated Press last week, one of the Taliban’s founders said it plans to carry out the public executions and amputations. Meanwhile, the U.S. State Department said that it “was a clear violation of human rights,” and that “the United States would “stand firm with the international community to hold perpetrators of these — of any such abuses — accountable.”
Even as the Taliban have started to embrace western technology such as cell phones and the internet, it remains clear that the country will return to a more conservative, hard-lined view of the world.
Meanwhile, Afghanistan, under Taliban rule, has moved further and further away from the western world. Representatives from the country didn’t show up to meet with the United Nations General Assembly in New York on Monday after the original ambassador for the country — who was ousted by the Taliban — withdrew his name.
The move comes after Ghulam Isaczai, the ambassador that was scheduled to give the speech, and the Taliban, who have been competing for the country’s U.N. spot New York, couldn’t come to an agreement about who was speaking for the country. In turn, Isaczai withdrew his name from the scheduled meeting.
Afghanistan’s U.N. mission in New York Tweeted that Isaczai decided not to speak “to preserve the national interests, preserve the seat of Afghanistan in the United Nations and to continue long-term cooperation with the United Nations and Security Council on main issues.”
תגובות