Another Afghan Freedom Gone

The Taliban, the militantly fundamentalist Islamic organization that controls Kabul and most of the rest of Afghanistan, has now decreed that it is a crime for Afghans to watch television or videocassettes. While this is by no means the harshest restriction the Taliban has placed on personal freedoms, it does mark one more major step toward isolating 24 million Afghans from outside influences and imposing total government control over their lives.

Afghanistan’s sole television station was shut down by the Taliban in 1996. Now Afghans have 15 days to get rid of their TV sets, VCRs and the satellite dishes that allow them to pick up broadcasts from the world beyond Afghanistan’s borders. The Taliban has denounced video recorders and TVs as “the cause of corruption in our society.” Like other authoritarian regimes that through history have burned people and books in an effort to suppress ideas and control behavior, the Taliban is likely to find that what it regards as corrupt behavior will still be there long after the last TV set has been smashed.

The religious zealotry practiced by the Taliban recalls H.L. Mencken’s definition of puritanism: the haunting fear that someone, somewhere may be happy. Afghanistan hasn’t known much happiness, but misery has reigned since the triumph of the Taliban. None have felt it more severely than women and girls. In the last two years girls have been forbidden to attend school. Women have been banned from working outside the home and can venture out only if accompanied by a close male relative.

Only religious music can be played. Men who trim their beards can expect to be seized and beaten by the religious police. Attendance at the mosque is mandatory.

The Taliban came to power by force of arms. Except for a few nearby Islamic countries, no state recognizes its legitimacy. It has moved relentlessly to impose Islamic law, as it interprets it, over an unwelcoming society. Day by day, the Taliban is dragging its nation back into ignorance and obscurantism. Armed religious rebels elsewhere--in Algeria, most notably--would do the same in their countries if given a chance. Afghanistan has supplanted Iran as the model of a theocratic state at its worst.