Ten and a half months have passed since the Taliban took Kabul, but their supreme guide waited until yesterday to make the first public appearance in the capital of his Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan.
Haibatulah Ahundzada has reason for caution. Three rockets were fired in Kabul on the eve of his arrival, and two gunmen preparing an attack were killed in a rooftop shootout.
One of the rockets was about to hit the bedroom of some of the three thousand clerics and elders who focus political attention these days. At the Polytechnic University, where what has been called the Grand Assembly of Ulema takes place, under the protection of 1,200 Taliban.
Since returning from his long exile in Pakistan, Ahundzada had only been seen in public in two acts in Kandahar, where he lives. Then, like yesterday, she did not leak any images, although the official Taliban agency distributed recordings of her speech, which this time has also been broadcast.
In it, the Taliban emir celebrates what he calls “victory for all Muslims” and recalled “the martyrs who fought the invaders.” Among these, one of his children, who died killing, in a kamikaze attack.
“Thank God, we are now an independent country,” said Mullah Omar’s second successor, who lamented that, despite the general amnesty granted to collaborators of the previous government, they continued “conspiring from abroad.”
In this three-day assembly, which ends today, there are even more invisible faces. It is about women, who have not been invited to this discussion about the direction of Afghanistan.
For the great absentees, in addition, Ahundzada himself decreed the chador a month ago, which covers the entire body except the face. Presenters of news programs and series with actresses discovered are the latest victims of the misogynistic and puritanical crusade of the regime.
Although the 400 districts of the country have sent two clerics and one elder equally, criticism continues for the lack of transversality of the Government of Kabul, Pashtun as well as Taliban in its entirety.
The only two voices that have so far spoken out in favor of sending adolescent girls to school come from Balkh and Bamiyan, non-Pashtun regions. A Taliban spokesman has already clarified that this decision is in the hands of the emir.
He has shown that he is not in a hurry and yesterday he predicted that external pressure will grow “as our Islamic courts deliver justice.” But “even atomic weapons won’t make him accept foreign orders,” he exclaimed.
Another even more fundamentalist participant called “cutting off the heads of the enemies of the emirate”.
But this is not the image that Haibatulah Adjundzada wants to project, for whom “the emirate has restored peace and security. Our neighbors have nothing to fear.” However, the shortage is looming, which is why he also called on the entrepreneurs who fled to “come back to invest.”
Decades of war have turned Afghanistan into a country of widows and women’s marginalization from work is leading to hunger in 90% of households where they are heads of households, according to the UN.
The High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, yesterday denounced the “institutionalized oppression of women and girls.”
Ahundzada entered the auditorium while Interior Minister Sirajuddin Haqqani was speaking. Another member of the Government, the Defense Minister, asked the oracle of clerics “how should we act to obtain international recognition, which even Muslim countries deny us.”
A pertinent question, when not even the earthquake of a week ago, with 1,150 deaths, has revoked the isolation of the regime. Although it has opened some cracks. For one, India, which has long sought a return to Kabul, has been forced to contain Pakistani influence.
While in China, the landing of its huge plane loaded with humanitarian aid has been compared to the takeoff of the last US plane.
Finally, the Taliban emir has warned his followers that the survival of his emirate will depend “on the ability to eradicate corruption and administer justice.” Two areas in which the previous government failed miserably.
