“The terrible thing about terrorism is that ultimately it destroys those who practice it. Slowly but surely, as they try to extinguish life in others, the light within them dies.”
-- Terry Waite 1939-- : In ‘Guardian’ 20 February 1992
Stoning of Afghan Adulterers: Some Go to Take Part, Others Just to Watch
By JOHN F. BURNS
Published: November 3, 1996
When the Taliban religious movement decided to stone to death a couple caught in adultery, it chose a blazing afternoon in late August.
The suffocating desert heat had pushed temperatures past 100 degrees, but those who were there remember how the townspeople came by the thousands to witness a spectacle not seen in the city of Kandahar for decades.
Long before the condemned couple arrived on the flatbed of a truck, their hands and feet tightly bound, every vantage point around the forecourt of Id Gah Mosque was taken. Still, according to the Muslim traditions of Afghanistan, space was made so that relatives of the condemned pair, including small children, could have a clear view of the type of justice imposed by the Taliban, who now control three-quarters of the country.
The condemned woman, Nurbibi, 40, was lowered into a pit dug into the earth beside the outer wall around the mosque until only her chest and head were above ground. Witnesses said she was dressed in a sky-blue burqa, the head-to-toe shroud with a gauze panel for the eyes that the Taliban require all women to wear are outside their homes.
Nurbibi's stepson and lover, Turyalai, 38, was taken to a spot about 20 paces away, blindfolded and turned to face the Muslim cleric who was their judge.
Those close enough to have heard said the cleric spoke briefly about the provisions for stoning adulterers in the Sharia, the ancient Muslim legal code imposed by the Taliban since they began their rise to power in Kandahar two years ago.
Then, those witnesses said, the judge, following tradition, stooped to pick up the first stone from one of two piles that had been prepared, one for each of the condemned pair.
The first stone, the witnesses said, was thrown at Nurbibi. Quickly, Taliban fighters who had been summoned for the occasion stepped forward and launched a cascade of stones, each big enough to fill the palm of a hand. One of the men who responded to Taliban appeals to step forward and join the stoning, Rahmatullah, 25, recalled that neither Nurbibi nor Turyalai had cried out.
Turyalai, he said, appeared to be dead after 10 minutes, but the killing of Nurbibi took longer, past the point where one of her sons, stepping forward to check, turned to the judge to say his mother was still alive.
''The son was crying,'' Rahmatullah said. ''I could see it.''
At that point, several witnesses said, one of the Taliban fighters picked up a large rock, advanced toward Nurbibi and dropped it on her head, killing her.
Toward dusk, when most of the crowd had dispersed, family members recovered the bodies and took them away for burial in two of the stony plots that serve as cemeteries.
Nurbibi, family members said, was laid next to her father, while Turyalai was buried beside his father, Nurbibi's husband, in a plot bounded by the rubble that is all that is left of much of Kandahar.
Among the score of people who gathered before the mosque to offer their recollections of the stoning, none expressed dismay. To the contrary, all -- men and boys, since women in Kandahar are forbidden by Taliban rules to linger in public or to speak to strangers -- spoke with enthusiasm of the killings.
''It was a good thing, the only way to end this kind of sinning,'' said Mohammed Younus, 60, a teacher.
Mohammed Karim, a 24-year-old Taliban fighter, picked up several stones and threw them in a re-enactment of the executions. ''No, I didn't feel sorry for them at all,'' he said. ''I was just happy to see Sharia being implemented.''
Court-ordered executions of adulterers by stoning have been reported occasionally in revolutionary Iran, and in the Sudan, but since World War II this punishment has been imposed only rarely in Afghanistan -- until the Taliban took power in Kandahar and imposed a harsh version of the Sharia, under which they have also ordered the amputation of hands and feet of thieves.
The Muslim cleric who led the investigation that resulted in the stoning of Nurbibi and Turyalai, Mohammed Wali, says the incident was at least the third stoning for adultery in the Kandahar Province, one of 33 in Afghanistan, since the Taliban took power. Others have been reported in several of the 20 other provinces under Taliban control, although none so far in Kabul, the capital, which the Taliban captured five weeks ago.
Mr. Wali heads the Taliban's religious police, the Office for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prohibition of Vice. Visitors encountered him relaxing with a dozen of his investigators under a mulberry tree in the Kandahar courtyard where the religious police maintain a dumping ground for smashed television sets, stereo systems and cameras, all banned by the Taliban. Mr. Wali, who is 35, is typical of many Taliban, having been educated in a religious school that offers little but years of studying the Koran. He stroked his beard for a few seconds when he was asked about the stonings, then said that they had given him great satisfaction.
''When I see this kind of thing, I am very happy, because it means that the rule of Islam is being implemented,'' he said.
The Taliban take care to see that foreigners, especially non-Muslims, are kept away from stonings and amputations, which Taliban leaders like Mr. Wali describe as religious occasions not to be witnessed by nonbelievers. But the executions of Nurbibi and Turyalai were openly discussed with the visitors outside the mosque and in the Id Gah Bazaar, just down the road, where Turyalai, after years as a guerrilla fighting the Soviet forces that occupied Afghanistan in the 1980's earned a living selling and repairing second-hand motorcycles.
But a first attempt by Western reporters to talk to the family of the victims was angrily aborted by the Taliban. Making their way to the Naido district of the city, an area where thousands live among rubble left when Soviet aircraft carpet-bombed the southern districts of Kandahar in 1986, the reporters found a small boy who led them up an alleyway to a heavy wooden door in a 10-foot-high mud wall.
Moments later, an elderly woman, Sidiqa, who identified herself as Turyalai's aunt, appeared at the door and, with neighbors, began to relate the story of the stoning.
But two young Taliban fighters who had been posted to keep watch on the district, one armed with a Kalashnikov rifle, quickly arrived, ordering the foreigners to leave. When they delayed, one of the fighters turned to the gathering crowd. ''Pick up stones,'' he said.
The visitors retreated, followed by angry youths throwing stones and rotting corncobs. But at dawn the next day, a visit to the family went unnoticed by the Taliban. Family members and neighbors appeared eager to talk, gathering around to speak of Nurbibi and Turyalai and how their relationship led to death.
By the family's accounts, the events that led to the stoning began 13 years ago, when Turyalai's father died of a stomach ailment. Nurbibi, the father's second wife, was more than 20 years younger than her husband, and was left with two young sons. She remained in her husband's home, with Turyalai, who was the son of her husband by his first wife.
Under Muslim tradition, any intimate relationship between Nurbibi and her stepson was forbidden, and in any event, Turyalai was married and had a growing family of his own.
Nazaneen, Turyalai's wife, who spoke from inside the family home through a half-opened door, said she had long known of the close relationship between her husband and Nurbibi but had not been concerned about it until recently.
''I knew that they were intimate with each other, but I felt it was the relationship of a mother and a son,'' she said. ''But then I became suspicious of them, and finally my suspicions were confirmed.''
''Of course,'' she added, ''I know that Turyalai was not in love with her, but some evil force must have drawn them together.''
Some neighbors hinted that the tip-off to the Taliban came from Nazaneen. But she appeared distressed at her husband's death, hurrying back into her house to fetch an old identity card with a faded passport-sized picture of him during his days as a guerrilla fighter. ''It is the only photograph we have,'' she said. But a man who said he was a cousin of Turyalai said the Taliban had been alerted by Nurbibi's two teen-age sons, Habibullah and Asmatullah, who were angered by their mother's infidelity.
''The two boys went to the Taliban and told them that their mother was having a sexual relationship with her stepson,'' he said.
A few nights later, several family members said, a group of men from the Taliban's religious police hid themselves on the roof of an adjoining house. In summer, many Afghans relax and sleep at night on the flat roofs of their homes, and Nurbibi and Turyalai were alone together on the roof when the Taliban sprang from their hiding place.
''They caught them red-handed,'' one man said. ''There wasn't any doubt about it.''
Under the Sharia, conviction for adultery requires four witnesses; in this case they were the men from the Taliban. Family members say the couple were imprisoned immediately and held for a month before the Thursday in August when they were taken out and stoned. Between them, Nurbibi and Turyalai left 10 children, and all of Turyalai's eight children were age 12 or under.
The oldest daughter, Gulalai, 12, stood listening to accounts of the stoning with her youngest brother, Nadirjan, 3 months, swaddled in her arms, then burst out with her own account.
''I saw it,'' she said. ''I was on a truck and I saw it.'' Then she turned, tears in her eyes, and fled into the house.
-- Terry Waite 1939-- : In ‘Guardian’ 20 February 1992
Stoning of Afghan Adulterers: Some Go to Take Part, Others Just to Watch
By JOHN F. BURNS
Published: November 3, 1996
When the Taliban religious movement decided to stone to death a couple caught in adultery, it chose a blazing afternoon in late August.
The suffocating desert heat had pushed temperatures past 100 degrees, but those who were there remember how the townspeople came by the thousands to witness a spectacle not seen in the city of Kandahar for decades.
Long before the condemned couple arrived on the flatbed of a truck, their hands and feet tightly bound, every vantage point around the forecourt of Id Gah Mosque was taken. Still, according to the Muslim traditions of Afghanistan, space was made so that relatives of the condemned pair, including small children, could have a clear view of the type of justice imposed by the Taliban, who now control three-quarters of the country.
The condemned woman, Nurbibi, 40, was lowered into a pit dug into the earth beside the outer wall around the mosque until only her chest and head were above ground. Witnesses said she was dressed in a sky-blue burqa, the head-to-toe shroud with a gauze panel for the eyes that the Taliban require all women to wear are outside their homes.
Nurbibi's stepson and lover, Turyalai, 38, was taken to a spot about 20 paces away, blindfolded and turned to face the Muslim cleric who was their judge.
Those close enough to have heard said the cleric spoke briefly about the provisions for stoning adulterers in the Sharia, the ancient Muslim legal code imposed by the Taliban since they began their rise to power in Kandahar two years ago.
Then, those witnesses said, the judge, following tradition, stooped to pick up the first stone from one of two piles that had been prepared, one for each of the condemned pair.
The first stone, the witnesses said, was thrown at Nurbibi. Quickly, Taliban fighters who had been summoned for the occasion stepped forward and launched a cascade of stones, each big enough to fill the palm of a hand. One of the men who responded to Taliban appeals to step forward and join the stoning, Rahmatullah, 25, recalled that neither Nurbibi nor Turyalai had cried out.
Turyalai, he said, appeared to be dead after 10 minutes, but the killing of Nurbibi took longer, past the point where one of her sons, stepping forward to check, turned to the judge to say his mother was still alive.
''The son was crying,'' Rahmatullah said. ''I could see it.''
At that point, several witnesses said, one of the Taliban fighters picked up a large rock, advanced toward Nurbibi and dropped it on her head, killing her.
Toward dusk, when most of the crowd had dispersed, family members recovered the bodies and took them away for burial in two of the stony plots that serve as cemeteries.
Nurbibi, family members said, was laid next to her father, while Turyalai was buried beside his father, Nurbibi's husband, in a plot bounded by the rubble that is all that is left of much of Kandahar.
Among the score of people who gathered before the mosque to offer their recollections of the stoning, none expressed dismay. To the contrary, all -- men and boys, since women in Kandahar are forbidden by Taliban rules to linger in public or to speak to strangers -- spoke with enthusiasm of the killings.
''It was a good thing, the only way to end this kind of sinning,'' said Mohammed Younus, 60, a teacher.
Mohammed Karim, a 24-year-old Taliban fighter, picked up several stones and threw them in a re-enactment of the executions. ''No, I didn't feel sorry for them at all,'' he said. ''I was just happy to see Sharia being implemented.''
Court-ordered executions of adulterers by stoning have been reported occasionally in revolutionary Iran, and in the Sudan, but since World War II this punishment has been imposed only rarely in Afghanistan -- until the Taliban took power in Kandahar and imposed a harsh version of the Sharia, under which they have also ordered the amputation of hands and feet of thieves.
The Muslim cleric who led the investigation that resulted in the stoning of Nurbibi and Turyalai, Mohammed Wali, says the incident was at least the third stoning for adultery in the Kandahar Province, one of 33 in Afghanistan, since the Taliban took power. Others have been reported in several of the 20 other provinces under Taliban control, although none so far in Kabul, the capital, which the Taliban captured five weeks ago.
Mr. Wali heads the Taliban's religious police, the Office for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prohibition of Vice. Visitors encountered him relaxing with a dozen of his investigators under a mulberry tree in the Kandahar courtyard where the religious police maintain a dumping ground for smashed television sets, stereo systems and cameras, all banned by the Taliban. Mr. Wali, who is 35, is typical of many Taliban, having been educated in a religious school that offers little but years of studying the Koran. He stroked his beard for a few seconds when he was asked about the stonings, then said that they had given him great satisfaction.
''When I see this kind of thing, I am very happy, because it means that the rule of Islam is being implemented,'' he said.
The Taliban take care to see that foreigners, especially non-Muslims, are kept away from stonings and amputations, which Taliban leaders like Mr. Wali describe as religious occasions not to be witnessed by nonbelievers. But the executions of Nurbibi and Turyalai were openly discussed with the visitors outside the mosque and in the Id Gah Bazaar, just down the road, where Turyalai, after years as a guerrilla fighting the Soviet forces that occupied Afghanistan in the 1980's earned a living selling and repairing second-hand motorcycles.
But a first attempt by Western reporters to talk to the family of the victims was angrily aborted by the Taliban. Making their way to the Naido district of the city, an area where thousands live among rubble left when Soviet aircraft carpet-bombed the southern districts of Kandahar in 1986, the reporters found a small boy who led them up an alleyway to a heavy wooden door in a 10-foot-high mud wall.
Moments later, an elderly woman, Sidiqa, who identified herself as Turyalai's aunt, appeared at the door and, with neighbors, began to relate the story of the stoning.
But two young Taliban fighters who had been posted to keep watch on the district, one armed with a Kalashnikov rifle, quickly arrived, ordering the foreigners to leave. When they delayed, one of the fighters turned to the gathering crowd. ''Pick up stones,'' he said.
The visitors retreated, followed by angry youths throwing stones and rotting corncobs. But at dawn the next day, a visit to the family went unnoticed by the Taliban. Family members and neighbors appeared eager to talk, gathering around to speak of Nurbibi and Turyalai and how their relationship led to death.
By the family's accounts, the events that led to the stoning began 13 years ago, when Turyalai's father died of a stomach ailment. Nurbibi, the father's second wife, was more than 20 years younger than her husband, and was left with two young sons. She remained in her husband's home, with Turyalai, who was the son of her husband by his first wife.
Under Muslim tradition, any intimate relationship between Nurbibi and her stepson was forbidden, and in any event, Turyalai was married and had a growing family of his own.
Nazaneen, Turyalai's wife, who spoke from inside the family home through a half-opened door, said she had long known of the close relationship between her husband and Nurbibi but had not been concerned about it until recently.
''I knew that they were intimate with each other, but I felt it was the relationship of a mother and a son,'' she said. ''But then I became suspicious of them, and finally my suspicions were confirmed.''
''Of course,'' she added, ''I know that Turyalai was not in love with her, but some evil force must have drawn them together.''
Some neighbors hinted that the tip-off to the Taliban came from Nazaneen. But she appeared distressed at her husband's death, hurrying back into her house to fetch an old identity card with a faded passport-sized picture of him during his days as a guerrilla fighter. ''It is the only photograph we have,'' she said. But a man who said he was a cousin of Turyalai said the Taliban had been alerted by Nurbibi's two teen-age sons, Habibullah and Asmatullah, who were angered by their mother's infidelity.
''The two boys went to the Taliban and told them that their mother was having a sexual relationship with her stepson,'' he said.
A few nights later, several family members said, a group of men from the Taliban's religious police hid themselves on the roof of an adjoining house. In summer, many Afghans relax and sleep at night on the flat roofs of their homes, and Nurbibi and Turyalai were alone together on the roof when the Taliban sprang from their hiding place.
''They caught them red-handed,'' one man said. ''There wasn't any doubt about it.''
Under the Sharia, conviction for adultery requires four witnesses; in this case they were the men from the Taliban. Family members say the couple were imprisoned immediately and held for a month before the Thursday in August when they were taken out and stoned. Between them, Nurbibi and Turyalai left 10 children, and all of Turyalai's eight children were age 12 or under.
The oldest daughter, Gulalai, 12, stood listening to accounts of the stoning with her youngest brother, Nadirjan, 3 months, swaddled in her arms, then burst out with her own account.
''I saw it,'' she said. ''I was on a truck and I saw it.'' Then she turned, tears in her eyes, and fled into the house.
1 comment:
Scary and terrifying. Who needs Halloween. What kind of Godly teaching is this?
gl
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