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The last U.S.-led foreign forces left Afghanistan last year as the country’s conditions for religious freedom “dramatically deteriorated,” according to a bipartisan U.S. commission’s report released on Tuesday.
The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom claimed that a variety of Afghans’ rights to freedom of religion or belief are violated by the Sunni Muslim extremists’ “severe implementation” of their strict interpretation of Islam.
The Taliban took control of Kabul one year ago today, nearly 20 years after the U.S.-led operation that toppled them in 2001. Nine days later, the congressionally-appointed commission released its report.
According to the report, the Taliban promised to defend all ethnic and religious groups.
But it added that due to the terrorists’ strict interpretation of Islam, “tough limitations on all Afghans” had once again been imposed, severely deteriorating the country’s religious freedom conditions.
According to the research, individuals who are negatively impacted include religious minorities, Afghans “with divergent interpretations of Islam,” women, the LGBTQ community, and people who have no religious affiliation.
According to the report, the Taliban killed scores of Hazaras, a minority ethnic group that practises Shiite Islam, and failed to defend them from attacks by the local affiliate of the Taliban adversary Islamic State.
They reinstated a ministry that includes morality police who have targeted women by enforcing a stringent code of clothing and behaviour, including covering their faces, and have restricted their mobility, education, involvement in sports, and right to work, it claimed.
Sufis, who practise mystical Islam, have been attacked by both the Taliban and the Islamic State, the report claimed.
The Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan “has caused a rapid decrease and near extinction of the already small Afghan Hindu and Sikh communities,” and they deny “the existence of a Christian community,” forcing them to practise their religion in secret, according to the report.
