KABUL, Afghanistan (CU)_The assassination of two supreme court judges in the capital city of Kabul a couple of weeks ago, follows months of increased violence in Afghanistan.
The two female judges, Kadria Yasin and Zakia Herawi, were traveling to work, when their killers wrenched open the car doors and launched bullet after bullet, hitting Yasini at least five times, while beside her, Herawi was shot in her face, neck, and chest.
The assassins then leapt on a motorbike and sped away, punching the air, shouting “Allahu Akbar”, leaving two of the most eminent women in the country sprawled in blood in a central Kabul street.
Although the murders caused outrage, it follows months of increased violence in the South Asian country, as Afghanistan’s educated elite continue to be slain in a campaign of assassination, likened to a purge by many.
The two judges joined a rather lengthy list of other intellectuals and prominent figures, including MPs, journalists, human rights activists and civil society leaders, who have been killed in dozens over the past few months, often by pistol-carrying motorbike assassins.
With little over 4 months left before the last 2,500 US troops are due to be withdrawn, although the Taliban is seated at peace talks hosted in Qatar, in the Afghan capital however, their hit squads are busy killing and terrorising those who speak out against any return of an Islamic Emirate.
After 20 years of Western involvement, with billions of dollars spent and thousands of lives lost, and the last tranche of Western troops due to leave, the murder of these two women appeared to be a dark reversion to the horror of a previous era.
Zakia Herawi’s brother, Haji Mustafa Herawi, rushed from his house at the sound of gunfire, to find his sister slumped dead just yards from where their father had been killed three decades ago.
“As a young man I ran into this street and collected my dead father’s brain from the tarmac,” he said. “Thirty years later I ran out and found my sister dead in the car in the same place… the wounds of the past came back again.”
Meanwhile, it is reported that educated men and women are leaving the country in fear of the Taliban’s return, as applications for Afghan passports have reached record levels.
“The effect of all these killings is to silence greater civil society and public debate,” Shaharzad Akbar, the chairwoman of Afghanistan’s Independent Human Rights Commission, said.
“People are leaving. Those that remain are becoming too afraid to speak out. Public debate on the peace process is being silenced.”
The tempo of the wave assassinations which rocked the country accelerated dramatically over the past few months, with 91 civilians and 64 police and security personnel being killed in and around the capital, within just over 100 days. Intelligence sources say since the terms of accord formed between the US and the Taliban last year limits the Taliban’s scope for large-scale urban bomb attacks, they have therefore trained teams of assassins instead, to terrorise progressive civil society as a means of paving the way for their return.
“There are ultra-sensitive and spectacular assassinations which shake society, and the killing of these two women was one of them,” said Afghanistan’s vice-president, Amrullah Saleh, who has asked for those responsible for the murders be hanged.
“The aim of these targeted attacks is simple, yet strategic: to humiliate the government and to target the strata of society — civil society, the media, and women — that the Taliban see as an obstacle to their return,” he added.
In a background where terror groups and insurgents trade with mafia cartels and drug gangs to get killing done, there’s little suspicion that the Taliban are behind the purge.
Following the recent murder of the two judges, Afghan social media was flooded by posts supporting the vice president’s call for the judiciary to start hanging those convicted of involvement in the assassinations. However, the Taliban responded with threats of their own, which in turn triggered alarm among western allies, mainly the UN, US and NATO diplomats, who have expressed concerns regarding the possibility of rising public outrage causing a deadlock in the already slow peace talks, as it is believed that if the talks collapse the country could slide into the full embrace of civil war.
As dozens of activists, journalists and prominent figures are being killed by these hit squads, few doubt that groups other than the Taliban may be involved to help to silence the educated elite.
It is also unfortunate how these assassinations have a chilling effect on the strata of society best able to take the country forward.
“My brother was killed because he worked for transparency in this society,” said a brother of one such victim who was the chairman of an independent body working to bring greater transparency and accountability to governance.
“Yet now even the word ‘democracy’ is understood by our society either as a target, or as business to be sold for different people to benefit from… all of these killings are undermining faith in what democracy actually means here, or what place it has in our future.”
