The news from Afghanistan gets more and more distressing as the days go by. First the news about the 10 medical AID workers killed, for absolutely no justifiable reason. People that were there, out of the kindness of their hearts, to help the Afghan population. If that wasn’t horrific enough, we get news today that Bibi Sanubar, a widow who happened to be pregnant at the time, was mercilessly whipped and killed in a public execution for allegedly having an affair. The man she was supposed to have had an affair with? Alive and well. Somewhere. Unpunished.
Bibi Sanubar, 35, was kept in captivity for three days before she was shot dead in a public trial on Sunday by a local Taliban commander in the Qadis district of the rural western province Badghis.The Taliban accused Sanubar of having an “illicit affair” that left her pregnant. She was first punished with 200 lashes in public before being shot, deputy provincial police chief Ghulam Mohammad Sayeedi told AFP.
“She was shot in the head in public while she was still pregnant,” Sayeedi said.
Although technically, being a widow, she could not have committed adultery, she was killed anyway. The Taliban and other hardline, extremist Muslims have often publicly flogged and stoned those who have committed adultery or had sexual unions outside of marriage,and I guess in their minds there is no distinction.
The fact that this woman was murdered is about the only thing that we know for sure, however, since her age differs from article to article. In one article it was said that she was 48, another that she was 35, and information from regions like that can never be fully trusted anyway, so who knows.
Even though everyone knows it was the Taliban, a spokesman for the butchers of Afghanistan categorically any responsibility for the woman’s death.
“We have not done anything like that in Badghis or any other province,” said Qari Yosuf Ahmadi, calling the report “propaganda” by foreigners and the Western-backed Afghan government.
But others are convinced they were totally responsible, and I would be more inclined to believe them than the Taliban, thugs.
Head of Badghis provincial council Mohammad Nasir Nazaari confirmed the execution and said the Qadis district was entirely under Taliban control.
The deputy head of the religious council for western Afghanistan, Mohammad Kabaabiani, said the execution ran counter to Islamic principles.
Head of the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission in western Afghanistan, Abdul Qadir Rahimi, condemned the killing.
“Any such trial is unacceptable and is a violation of human rights. All trials must take place in an authorised court observing every single measure of justice,” said Rahimi.
And though this has been the mainly published story about Sanubar’s cruel and heinous execution, I did find a small notice about her death at the end of an article about the 10 murdered aid workers:
In a Taliban-controlled area of northwest Afghanistan, a widow named Bibi Sanubar was fatally shot by militants Sunday — once in the head and once in the chest — for allegedly killing her newborn child to conceal illicit sex, Abdul Jabbar Khan, deputy police chief of Baghdis province, said Monday.
After investigating the report, the Taliban commander in the area, Mullah Yousef, ordered the woman killed, Khan said.
The international coalition issued a slightly different version of the incident, saying Sanubar was a pregnant widow, who was whipped 200 times and shot in public by a Taliban commander for alleged adultery.
Again, it’s hard to know who to trust and to know which of these stories is the truth. But say she did indeed kill her baby, which is a terrible crime in itself, but equally horrendous is the fact that she felt she had to kill her baby to save her own life because of these terrible religious laws. If they did not exist, she probably would never have taken her own child’s life. That’s if you believe that version of the story, which I am not inclined to do. And what about the law? Had she, indeed, killed her baby, she should have been tried in a court of law and punished accordingly.
But killing a pregnant woman for having illicit sex, is more in line with the Taliban mentality and is probably where the truth lies. It wouldn’t be the first time they have committed barbaric, vicious acts. I remember writing, last year, about a young couple who were shot dead, in cold blood, while trying to elope. If they can do that, I wouldn’t put it past them to kill a pregnant woman.
The way they treat women is despicable, and the fact that the man, who was equally responsible for having the affair and getting the woman pregnant, got away without being punished just shows how sick that way of thinking is.
