Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: L'angolo del buonumore

Afghanistan to reconstitute religious police
Karzai government insists new version will educate, not repress
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/08/19/MNGBGKLP871.D
TL&type=printable
- Jacob Baynham, Chronicle Foreign Service
Saturday, August 19, 2006
(08-19) 04:00 PDT Kabul, Afghanistan -- Nearly five years after the
ouster of the fundamentalist Taliban regime, President Hamid Karzai
plans to breathe new life into a strict Islamic institution that many
Afghans were happy to see die: the Amr Bilmaruf va Nahi az Mankar, or
literally, "Do the good, don't do the bad."
Last month, Karzai's Cabinet approved a proposal to re-establish the
agency also known as the Department for the Prevention of Vice and
Promotion of Virtue, whose police under the Taliban beat and imprisoned
Afghans for violating Shariah law. For many, the revival of religious
cops raises painful memories of ruffians zipping around Kabul in Datsun
pickups mainly in search of women and girls who refused to wear the
head-to-toe burqa, donned high heels, wore nail polish or walked down
city streets without a male relative. Men were cited for sporting short
beards, drinking alcohol, working during prayer time, playing chess or
listening to nonreligious music.
The department was banned after a U.S.-led invasion ousted the Taliban
in 2001.
Oais Omar, a young carpet salesman, said he was jailed for three weeks
on three different occasions for watching Indian "Bollywood" films.
When religious police caught him with videos tucked into his shalwaar
-- videos he had rented from a man toting a huge "rubbish" sack filled
with illicit entertainment -- they forced him to move rocks from one
room to another and live on bread and water.
The Karzai government, however, is adamant that the new religious cops
will be a kinder and gentler version, preferring education to coercion.
"The difference will be as great as that between the earth and the
sky," said Mohammed Sharif Robati, head of information at the Ministry
of the Hajj and Religious Affairs in Kabul.
Robati said the new police will explain Islamic principles "in a soft,
clear way. This one will not have a whip or a fist. When we see someone
smoking, we will shake their hands and tell them they are foolish for
wasting their money and hurting their health."
Robati said the new department will employ some 60 officials and work
closely with the media to deliver its message. "We will write
editorials on women's rights, narcotics and issues of Islam and send
those to the media," he said. "At the same time, we will invite
journalists to ask their questions, and then the people will know about
Islam."
But the government's announcement has been harshly condemned by critics
who say Karzai's goal is to placate domestic religious leaders,
especially those in the more conservative south, where the Taliban have
stepped up attacks in recent months.
"Creating this organization is only to bribe a certain group of
people," said Ustad Mofid, a Shiite cleric.
Omar Sharifi, director of the Open Media Fund in Afghanistan, a
nonprofit group dedicated to rebuilding professional local media,
agreed. "It's a way of sending a message to the fundamentalists in the
south," he said. "It's a green light for the Taliban, saying, 'Look,
we're not so different from you after all.' "
Women's groups fear that females once again will be beaten for ignoring
fundamentalist interpretations of Islamic law. Even though the
situation for women has greatly improved under Karzai -- they can work
outside the home, they are not required to wear burqas, and 68 members
of parliament are women -- their literacy rate is only 14 percent. Most
girls' schools have closed in the south and southeast because of
attacks and threats by Taliban fighters.
"This is a political, not a religious, move," said a statement from an
underground women's group known as the Revolutionary Association of
Women of Afghanistan. "It has nothing to do with Islam."
Meanwhile, even a prominent official at the Ministry of Health said
Karzai should focus on more pressing issues than reviving religious
police.
"We have corruption in the government," said Abdullah Fahim, director
of the ministry's department of health care and promotion. "We must
take care of that first, before we go and ask people how long their
beards are."

Karzai government insists new version will educate, not repress
Roba vecchia.  E ancora sono solo chiacchere.
-Stefano

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#_:)))))))
"Mutanda-di-seta" Karzai, le studia tutte;
pur di salvarsi il c... (oops !"il contenuto") e`disposto a cederle tutte ai
tale-(e-quale)-ban.
Giano