The Department for the Prevention of Vice — redux

July 24, 2006

In [tag]Afghanistan[/tag], freedom is also on the march — including the freedom to be harassed by a government agency that the Taliban used a little too effectively.

Under the [tag]Taliban[/tag], officials from the [tag]Department for the Prevention of Vice[/tag] and [tag]Promotion of Virtue[/tag] struck fear into women’s hearts, beating those who let a glimpse of wrist or ankle peek out from beneath their burqas. The hated religious police were disbanded when the hard-line Islamic regime fell in 2001. But President Hamid Karzai is planning to resurrect them, much to the alarm of human rights groups, parliamentarians and Western diplomats.

During the Taliban’s reign, the religious police would beat women who were seen on the street without a male relative — an impossible demand to meet for the millions of women widowed by the civil war — and would thrash men who did not pray five times a day or keep their beard at the proper length. Afghan officials have said the new department — which was approved by the cabinet last month and is pending approval by parliament — would be a kinder, softer version of its Taliban predecessor and would not enforce such harsh penalties for moral transgressions.

So, we’re talking about Taliban-lite? Is this the Middle Eastern progress the White House is so anxious to boast about?

It’s not at all encouraging. Shukria Barakzai, a Member of Parliament and analyst, said the new department is a “symbol of the past” and worries that even if it is staffed by competent people, it would be difficult to monitor in coming years. “The president could appoint people who are good today, but what about tomorrow?” she said. “It could be the same as the Taliban, and allow people to deliver violence against women, against freedom of speech.”

The fact that Afghanistan didn’t even bother to change the name of the morality-enforcing agency from the Taliban days is not a good sign.

This ‘Department’ is pretty common in most Muslim countries, from what I can tell.

In America, we call it the “Motion Picture Association of America Ratings Board”. Supposedly, it’s voluntary. Partically, it’s a “Department for the Prevention of Vice and Promotion of Virtue”.

I wouldn’t expect the Bushites to actually complain about (or stop) this new Afghan Government agency, as they want to redefine democracy to have a rather more authoritarian flavor.

  • I don’t like to draw too close an equivalence between actions of a totalitarian religious state and our own, but I guess we would have to look at what would happen if a woman ventured out topless here. A matter of degree.

  • I hope someone contacts all the women who were making a big deal out of the fact that Afghan women could wear what they wanted, and go to school, etc. a few years ago. People like Laura Bush, IIRC. Then ask them what they think of this and get it on camera.

  • And, let’s hope that the leaders there don’t decide to remember back a few months or years ago and make a mental list of all the women who have been breaking these rules since 2002 or so. Some retro-punishment, which I wouldn’t put past them, would be cruel and a reminder, again, of the failed US policies/intervention.

    Is the MSM covering this? I have the CNN on-screen headline: “The Rise and Fall and Rise of the Taliban”

  • It’s impossible to have a “Taliban-lite”. Once you admit that a small group of people have the right to dictate behavior for everyone else — once you decide that a small group of people is “good” and all the rest are “evil” — you have a full-blown Taliban (or Nazi Party or Salem Witch Trials or Catholic Inquisition, etc.). The reason is that there are no limits. Good v. Evil admits no compromise, the basis of our system of balancing selfish interests. Ever since January 20, 2001 our nation’s leadership has subscribed to the Good v. Evil view of the world. We can, and hopefull will, survive the next 911 days with our Constitution intact, though for the life of me I don’t see how.

  • The extremist views of the Wahabi surfacing again. This is a way of life in Saudi Arabia and many other regions of the Middle East. We will hear that name more and more filling in the political vacuums our misleader created in his errant mission of spreading democracy and looting oil.

  • This would be of interest if Hamid Karzai’s government had a reach past the first corner outside the main entrance of the presidential outhouse.

    Further evidence, if evidence was necessary, that “Global War On Terror” is a synonym for FAILURE.

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