Reports have emerged that Taliban gangs are targeting children as young as 12 during their hunt for sex slaves since they took over Afghanistan. As per a report published in The Sun, women and girls are among the most at-risk Afghanis under the new Islamist regime. Notably, when the group ruled Afghanistan during the 90s, women and girls were often brutalised and oppressed under the regime. Public executions were common during that period.
From demanding lists of women and girls in different regions to forcing marriages on young girls, reports of the Taliban’s atrocities are making headlines. The unmarried and widowed women and girls between the ages of 12 to 45 are termed as “qhanimat” or spoils of the war by the Taliban. They are reportedly being divided among the members of the group.
However, the Taliban officials have denied the enforced sexual slavery and claimed it is against the rule of Islam. The claims came to light despite the fact that it was only last month when the Taliban officials had published a notice ordering local leaders to provide lists of widows and young girls under the age of 45 in their areas.
The Sun quoted one Afghan national, Faiz Mohammed Noori, whose family left their home in Baghlan and sought refuge in Kabul. However, soon Kabul fell, and at that time, Noori told NBC, “Kabul is also not safe. If they take over Kabul, they’re taking your daughters, your wife, they don’t care.”
Taliban is conducting a door-to-door search for girls
According to Shukria Barakzai, Afghan politician and journalist, the stories of the Taliban’s atrocities against women and girls are horrifying. She wrote in The Daily Mail, “The gouging of a woman’s eyes in front of her terrified family; girls as young as 12 wrenched from the arms of their weeping mothers to become sex slaves for Taliban ‘warriors’; men punished or even killed for ‘offences’ as simple as listening to the ‘wrong’ music, or for daring to be ‘educated’.”
She further said that in some villages, Taliban members conducted door-to-door searches looking for young girls to forcibly marrying them and pushing them into a life of sex slaves. She added, “So determined are they that no virgin will escape their clutches that they check drawers, wardrobes and even suitcases in homes where desperate mothers deny they have young daughters to ensure they are telling the truth.”
Killing women in the name of Islam
Recently, reports emerged that they had killed a woman for wearing tight clothes. Another woman was killed for not wearing a burqa. Unverified reports suggest that a woman was stoned to death in Samangan.
The history of atrocities against women
When the Taliban was ruling Afghanistan in the 1990s, such reports of atrocities against women were common. Some of the widely covered reported included the beheading of a woman who went shopping alone. Another report that surrounded the death of a woman who was stoned to death in a shallow grave for having sex with her boyfriend had shaken the world. In 1999, a woman named Zarmina was executed in the middle of a football stadium in Kabul.
Earlier in 2021, an undated video showed an unnamed woman being whipped by the Taliban for talking to a man on the phone. These unforgettable atrocities have pushed the residents of Afghanistan to flee the country seeking refuge in other nations. Several countries, including the US, Canada, some European countries, India and Uganda, are among the countries that are accepting refugees as per their regulations.
