Badge of shame
UK Times Editorial 5/23/2001
Afghanistan is going down the Nazi path of intolerance
 
The edict by Muhammad Wali, the Taleban religious police minister, forcing Hindus in Afghanistan to wear labels on their clothing to distinguish them from Muslims is repulsive and also revealing. Anyone with more sense of history than the blinkered and self-righteous Islamic extremists ruling Kabul would see the awful echoes of the Nazi decree forcing Jews to wear a yellow Star of David. Little wonder that not only Europe and America have reacted with horror; India swiftly denounced the proposal as deplorable and patent discrimination against minorities.
It is more than that. It is a clear indication that Taleban zealotry is moving down the same murderous and intolerant path as National Socialism. Like the Nazis, the group that swept to power with the pledge of ending the corruption and mismanagement of the warlords now maintains itself in power by intimidation. Its extremism, masking as religious fervour, was directed first at its political enemies, then at women and all those suspected of ideological opposition, and now is turned on the most vulnerable group of all, the beleaguered non-Muslims. The Taleban has already had its Kristallnacht, smashing the religious symbols and historical artefacts of its perceived enemies; now it has passed its Nuremberg Laws, institutionalising discrimination.

Luckily, there are few minorities left in Afghanistan to suffer such humiliation. Most Hindus have fled, and there are not many Christians or Jews in Afghan cities. The Taleban leadership maintains that its proposed fatwa on dress will guarantee the protection of minorities. But far from recognising different religious practices, the edict will force Hindu women to veil themselves like Muslims. In fact, it is another sign that as conditions in the country deteriorate, hardliners are taking ever more extreme positions to deflect blame, to cow a desperate population and take advantage of political divisions.

Drought has brought much of Afghanistan to the brink of starvation, and refugees are pouring into Pakistan. Much of the turmoil is Taleban-made, however. The ban on women working has left thousands of war widows imprisoned in their homes; the closure last week of the bakery funded by the United Nations has cut off one of the few outlets for subsidised bread; and the storming of the new 120-bed hospital by the religious police has shut one of the few places where victims of 21 years of war could seek treatment.

The hardening of the Taleban stance is dictated largely by the regime's near-total isolation. UN sanctions are hurting, but pride and paranoia have sabotaged any attempt to extradite the Saudi terrorist Osama bin Laden or to get peace talks going. Taleban policy is to boycott the UN, step up the ideological war and prepare the population for a new spring offensive against the Northern Alliance that still has a toehold in the north-west. Containment has become the only viable policy to deal with this loathsome regime; but, as with Nazi Germany, that offers little protection to the minorities within its borders.