Taliban victory could bolster other Islamist terrorist groups
The Taliban’s victory in Afghanistan, soon after the withdrawal of the US and NATO forces, could bolster other Islamist terror groups like ISIS in Mozambique. This is according to Hameed Hakimi, an Afghan national and Research Associate at Ruhr-University Bochum, Germany. Hakimi says he has family in Kabul who have not been able to leave their home since the Taliban took over.
Afghans with any ties to the US are being shot and women’s movements are completely restricted. Hakimi calls on Western powers to impose sanctions on the Taliban government before it’s too late. “I think the international community should really quickly respond to this challenge because the longer it takes, the more difficult it would be to handle,” he says. “The Taliban are far more dangerous than they were two decades ago because now they have access to high technology and new weapons from the US. It’s not only a problem for Afghanistan – now it’s a global threat.”
The humanitarian situation was in its worst form even before the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan. There were thousands of people who fled from north Afghanistan, from the south, and all the parts were occupied by displaced families and individuals.
So this crisis was already there and now that the US has left and the president, Ashraf Ghani, escaped from Afghanistan… No one can define… it is terrible. It’s a complete disaster now. And with the people who are trying to flee, they are mostly [people who] have worked with the government and they were like employed by international organisations. They had worked with the US forces, and their lives are in complete danger. I have contacts in Kabul because my family is in Kabul and I talk to them regularly, like every two hours, and a lot of my relatives say [the] Taliban have started door-to-door hunting and they are like catching, trying to search for people who have worked with the US and they have killed so many people. Just the day before yesterday, they killed four people – I think they were in the intelligence, like with the government, and they were killed by the Taliban. So it’s happening.
They have a completely different interpretation of Sharia law, like what they say – it’s completely against Sharia law. Sharia law has defined rights for women, for children, for girls, for men, for everyone. Like everyone has the right to educate themselves. They have the right to, like, do what they want. But the way they interpret Sharia law, it’s completely false. What they are doing, it’s not Sharia law. It’s something they have defined for themselves.
They are making false promises that they don’t have to do anything with the people, but I think their main aim was to stabilise themselves, you know, get settled in the government and then, like, reorganise themselves. Then, once everything is calm, they can start their atrocities and oppressing people. People have the experience of living under Taliban’s government and they know how the Taliban are. For them, I believe it was just to get the situation calm and they stabilised themselves and then [they can] do what they are good at.
The Taliban are far more dangerous than they were two decades ago because now they have access to high technology and new weapons from the US. I mean, when they were taking control of different provinces, they were taking all the weapons. There were depots of weapons and everything, so they have access to far more dangerous weapons and they want to have these helicopters and jets. So I can see it’s not only a problem for Afghanistan, but now it’s a global threat.
Source: Biznews
