EDITOR'S NOTE: Afghanistan's Taliban rulers have won worldwide attention with their tough code of Islam, highlighted by their destruction of statues of Buddha and their strictures on women's freedom. An AP reporter was recently allowed to join a religious enforcement squad on its daily rounds. By STEVEN GUTKIN
Associated Press Writer
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) -- It's prayer time in the Afghan capital and anxious young men tear out from dusty wooden stalls in the main market to escape the religious police, who are lashing merchants with leather whips.
"Close your shops, Muslim brothers! Everyone in the mosque for prayer!" a loudspeaker shouts.
The religious police -- the enforcement wing of the Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice -- are the cornerstone of the Taliban leadership's drive to establish "pure" Islam in the war- and drought-ravaged nation of 21 million people.
The ministry wields almost unlimited power in the 95 percent of Afghanistan controlled by the Taliban. Now, say those who know the country, it is being strengthened even further by growing tensions with the outside world.
The Taliban is angry about U.N. sanctions. It feels the world should congratulate it for eradicating opium-producing poppy crops, but instead focuses on denouncing the Taliban for destroying ancient statues of Buddha, banning women from schools and work places, and ordering the Hindu minority to wear yellow identifying badges.
The virtue and vice ministry has about 32,000 recruits, graduates of Islamic high schools who lead two kinds of enforcement: virtue squads to coordinate Islamic education, and vice squads to stamp out the evils contained in the Taliban's extraordinarily strict interpretation of Islam.
Vice squads make sure women cover themselves head to toe in the all-encompassing "burqa," and force men to pray and grow untrimmed beards. They ban music, television and gender-mixing, beating and jailing offenders.
Ahmad Farid, a 22-year-old bicycle repairman, failed to escape the leather whip at the market last week.
"I am a Muslim, so of course I know I should pray. But how can I go to a mosque with my hands and my shirt so dirty?" he said, extending his arms to reveal grease-blackened clothes. "A man should have clean dress when he prays."
"He should have washed his hands 30 minutes before prayer," explained Abdul Matin Saib Zaudah, deputy chief of the ministry's military division, when asked about the incident. "Because when you pray, you are talking with your God."
The concept of promoting virtue and preventing vice is not new to Islam. Saudi Arabia's similar "virtue and vice" agency patrols shopping malls and other public places. Iran's Headquarters for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice runs poster campaigns to encourage women to cover themselves and men to refrain from harassing women.
But the Taliban have gone to a new level, making the virtue and vice ministry "the supreme power of the land," Zaudah said.
In a rare move, the ministry allowed a foreign reporter to accompany one of its patrols at Khairkhana Pass, a checkpoint just north of Kabul and close to a pocket of resistance by the Taliban's northern-based opposition.
Assigned to ensure military compliance with Islamic law, the turbaned, whip-wielding police scoured soldiers' clothing and vehicles for prohibited materials such as music cassettes, hashish and tobacco -- and checked each fighter's beard for evidence of trimming -- a serious violation of the Taliban's code.
"Where are your cigarettes?" barked a policeman after finding a box of matches. "I swear I don't have any," responded a young Taliban fighter whose jeep with military markings was stopped at the roadblock.
Tobacco was recently banned for Taliban fighters, though it's still permitted for civilians.
A new decree from the virtue and vice ministry admonishes Afghans against wrapping food in newspapers in case they contain holy writings.
The decision on badges, not yet implemented, is meant to distinguish Hindus from Muslims. Taliban officials say it's to protect Hindus from religious police, but many countries have condemned it as a human rights violation.
A ruling issued last week requires the few foreigners in Afghanistan -- mostly relief workers -- to shun alcohol, pork and loud music.
Afghanistan has the world's worst refugee crisis, and aid organizations say harassment by vice squads is becoming a serious hindrance to efforts to help millions of people hit by drought and civil war.
"The hard-liners are in control ... and that means the religious police," said Arif Ayub, Pakistan's ambassador to Afghanistan.
The religious police are far more active in Kabul, a city of 1.5 million, than in conservative rural areas, where the Taliban emerged in the early 1990's as a ragtag group of fundamentalist students and clerics. In Kabul their activities tend to stir resentment, but they remain widely popular in the countryside.
Amin Tarzi, senior research associate at the Monterey (Calif.) Institute of International Studies, says punishments such as whippings have roots in antiquity, but were never codified into Islam and its holy book, the Quran.
"All this talk about pure Islam going back to the Quran -- it's not in the Quran," Tarzi, an American Muslim of Afghan origin, said in an interview.
He said the Taliban's regulations are a way of enforcing "their reign of terror," and "The only way for them to legitimize what they're doing is to say it's Islamic."
"Religion is in your heart," said Baryalai Yusefi, 23, who was standing outside an English-language school where the religious police had just arrested a man for trimming his beard. "It shouldn't be by force."
Zaudah, the Taliban official, said he agreed verbal persuasion was best, and said whippings were "a last resort when people don't listen."
AP-CS-06-14-01 1621EDT
Copyright 1996 Associated Press. All right reserved