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NEIGHBOURS: AFGHANISTAN
Growing Paranoia
Accused of spreading Christianity, western aid agencies
are the Taliban's latest targets in its drive against religious minorities.
Eight foreigners are already behind bars.
By Rory McCarthy in Kabul
It may not be the
grandest building in Kabul but the former government's half-derelict computer
office in the city centre houses Afghanistan's most feared militia-the
Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice, the force
responsible for imposing the Taliban's hard version of Islam. Nearly a
month ago, the ministry's soldiers raided the offices of a Christian aid
agency, Shelter Now International, and arrested 24 staff members-eight
foreigners and 16 Afghans. Accused of trying to convert Muslims to Christianity,
they were immediately jailed.
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IN SEARCH: The mother of
one of the arrested aid workers with a visa consular
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Relatives and diplomats were allowed to see the
foreigners for the first time last week, but no one outside the Taliban
regime has seen the Afghans or even knows of their whereabouts. The arrests
are the latest in the Taliban's sweep against religious minorities. In
January, nearly 200 Shia Muslims in villages around Yakaolang in central
Afghanistan were massacred. Two months later, the two towering Buddha
statues at Bamiyan, the greatest symbol of Afghanistan's long pre-Islamic
history, were destroyed. This was followed by the Taliban ordering all
Hindus to carry identity cards. Now Christians are their latest victims.
Towards the back of the decrepit ministry, in
a modest, carpeted room sits the minister, Maulvi Mohammad Wali. Dressed
in a white salwar kameez and a black turban, he warned in a rare interview
that other agencies are now on the ministry's list. "There are some
organisations doing the work they promised but there are others involved
in religious activities," he said. "The investigation is still
going on. When we get the evidence, they will be arrested." It is
not clear as yet which agencies are being targeted, but the Taliban's
Foreign Minister, Wakil Ahmed Muttawakil, named the UN World Food Programme
(WFP) as a suspect early in the inquiry because it provided food to Shelter
Now for use in the agency's humanitarian projects. WFP promptly told the
Taliban to stop its "baseless allegations". Wali said the evidence
that Shelter Now staff was proselytising was "as clear as the sun".
"We have sufficient evidence. That is why they have been arrested,"
he said. Soldiers found copies of the Bible in Farsi and Pashto, CDs and
cassettes and a timetable for Christian teaching, he said.
For its part, Shelter Now denies that its staff
was trying to convert Afghans. "There might be some material for
private use but what they are accused of, that they are distributing hundreds
of Bibles and Christian literature and are trying to persuade people to
convert to Christianity, is nonsense," said Esteban Witzemann, Shelter
Now's programme director in Peshawar, Pakistan.
The Taliban operates an orthodox system of justice
with brutal punishments, including amputation of hands and feet for theft,
stoning for adultery and public execution for murder. Suspects don't get
legal representation. And Taliban ministers have made no secret of the
fact that the movement's reclusive, one-eyed leader, Mulla Mohammad Omar,
who rarely leaves his base in Kandahar in southern Afghanistan, will decide
the Shelter Now case himself. The Taliban has said the aid workers will
be put on trial. "After the investigation, the court will decide
according to Shariat (Islamic) law," said the foreign minister. The
ruling will then be sent to Omar for the final say.
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