KANDAHAR, AFGHANISTAN – With the removal by force of the Taliban now nearly five years past, some officials in Afghanistan are considering the reestablishment of one of the Taliban’s signature tools of social control: the Ministry for the Prevention of Vice and the Promotion of Virtue or MPVPV.Despite experiencing the heaviest fighting since the ouster of the Taliban in late 2001, the region of Kandahar is now rife with porn, illicit drugs, and booze, according to reports published by the Reuters news service.
Reuters reports that at least one satellite service is now available in Afghanistan offering foreign porn channels such as EuroticTV, AllSex, 247Sex and Transex, as well as religious programming, including “the God Channel and the Church, Miracle and Hope channels.”
While the Christian channels are doubtlessly just as offensive as porn to many in Afghanistan (where the act of converting from Islam to Christianity is punishable by death), the Christian channels are not as great a source of concern to local officials, because they are not as popular as the porn stations, according to Reuters.
“Pornography is a problem,” the new provincial chief, General Asmatullah Alizai, conceded to Reuters. “According to our Islamic rules and beliefs, people cannot accept this kind of thing. I don’t want people to see this kind of film.”
General Alizia also told Reuters that the spread of porn, drugs and alcohol emphasizes the need to support the plan proposed by President Hamid Karzai to reconstitute the MPVPV to combat social ills throughout Afghanistan.
“We should use any means possible,” Alizia contends.
The Taliban’s harsh social edicts, enforced by stick-wielding agents from the MPVPV, ranged from the tragic to the sickly comic, as chronicled in the excellent book Holy War Inc., written by CNN terrorism analyst (and former reporter/producer) Peter Bergen.
As observed in Holy War Inc., one of the more bizarre laws under the Taliban was an ordinance requiring that homeowners paint their house windows black, lest someone accidentally catch a glimpse of a female resident’s face, inside the home.
It’s not surprising, therefore, that a clear view of other female body parts, not to mention graphic sex acts, might not sit too well with many Afghans, particularly more conservative members of the Pashtun culture (also known as Pashtu and/or Pathan).
Under the Taliban, the leadership of which was almost entirely Pashtun, if there was any pornography to be found in the country, it was very unlikely to be found openly for sale, under any circumstances. According to Reuters, as soon as the Taliban was kicked out of power, porn arrived, although it was initially “confined to the back rooms of teahouses.”
Now, with satellite subscription services beaming porn into the home of any Afghan with the resources and desire to receive it, and DVDs being sold by the occasional street vendor, more conservative Afghans, Pashtun in particular, are waxing nostalgic for the rule of the MPVPV.
Thus, the growing popularity of porn in Afghanistan is running headlong into another trend; the reassertion of Taliban power in the southern provinces, especially Kandahar.
At issue is not acceptance of Islamic law, or sharia, but the application and focus of Islamic law within the new “democratic” Afghanistan. While many Pashtun may be ready to embrace the return of a Taliban-style decency police, or even the Taliban itself, other ethnic groups in the country have long favored a “looser” social code – they just haven’t been allowed to put that code into practice for a long time.
Long before the Taliban’s reign and before the Soviet invasion that set the country ablaze with warring factions that have never truly ceased their fighting in the years since, Kabul was a common tourist destination.
As noted by Japanese author Masatoshi Konishi in his 1969 book Afghanistan: Crossroads of the Ages, the Afghans in Kabul at the time, which included Hazaras, Uzbeks, Tajiks, Turkmen, and Baloch, in addition to the majority Pashtun, favored a more European style of dress and enjoyed vibrant musical and artistic communities.
Women from more restrictive countries, like Pakistan to the east, could dress as they pleased in Kabul at the time, as the country did not then require women to wear even a chadris (veil) much less the complete coverage of the burqa, as was later required under the Taliban.
The looming specter of a return by the MPVPV, which enforced its rule largely through beatings delivered with thin, whip-like sticks, may not strike as much fear into residents of the Kandahar province as the other means by which Taliban supporters are already reasserting power in the area, if the Reuters reports are accurate.
According to Reuters, more people are turning to insurgent forces in the region, “partly out of frustration at the lack of jobs and a non-drugs economy, partly for money and partly because in some areas the Taleban (sic) imposes a rough order where the government cannot.”
In furtherance of imposing stronger social control, Reuters reports that Islamist hardliners have started burning down schools in southern provinces that admit girls as students and executing teachers in front of their students in order to drive home their point.
The head of Kandahar’s provincial Women’s Affairs Department, Rona Trena, says of pornography “it’s not a good habit to have,” and suggests that although only a small percentage of Afghan men use pornography, eliminating it entirely is worth enduring the harsh enforcement practices of an organization like the MPVPV.
“Seeing women like this is not normal,” Trena added.
Seeing them under the cover of the burqa and with their house windows painted black – just in case – is, however, apparently normal.
