The Afghan Crossroads

Taliban leader Nooruddin Turabi.Felipe Dana / AP

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• A Taliban leader announces that Afghanistan will once again practice executions and amputations

Not a month has passed since the culmination of the chaotic withdrawal of the United States and its allies from Afghanistan, and the most pessimistic omens regarding the theocratic tyranny imposed on the Afghan population, and especially on women, have already been fulfilled.

The announcement made by the Taliban government of a return to executions and other physical punishments, such as amputations, is nothing more than confirmation of the pre-modernity that guides a fundamentalist regime in which religious faith submits to civil law. The assertion of the Minister of Prisons, Nooruddin Turabi, that "cutting hands is very necessary for security", in addition to being inhumane, would cause astonishment if it were not because it has happened before, specifically between 1996 and 2001. Now the discussion between the new lords of the country, also with the argument of the "results", is whether the executions should be a public spectacle or be reduced to the scope of prisons. All this in the 21st century.

Gone are evidently the statements of the Taliban leadership that Afghans, and women in particular, had nothing to fear and suggested to the thousands of people desperately trying to get to the Kabul airport to go home. These days, women have been confined to their homes, fired from their jobs and beaten in the middle of the street when some of them, in an overwhelming gesture of courage and dignity, came out to protest before a single-colored male government. Important female figures, such as judges, politicians or teachers, among others, are forced to change their refuge every few days before the human hunt dictated by the Taliban. And not only. The artists are burying or destroying their works before the terror installed on the least addicted population.

Meanwhile, the Taliban regime has demanded a seat at the United Nations and its representative has asked to address the General Assembly. Although there is no answer yet, getting there requires taking a position before a regime that challenges the founding principles of the organization that it intends to use as a speaker and justification for its atrocities. The second question refers to the humanitarian aid that the Afghan population needs. International organizations have warned that the next six months will be critical. If the donors put too strict conditions to disburse the promised aid, it will be difficult to meet the needs on time.The crossroads is between reestablishing some kind of palliative contact with the Taliban government that facilitates the arrival of aid and the attenuation of the inhuman conditions of existence or abandoning the Afghans to their fate and, this time cruelly, the Afghans.