Taliban fighters on a Humvee near the Company roundabout in Kabul, Afghanistan on August 15, 2021. Photo / Jim Huylebroek, the New York Times
The International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants today for two leaders of Afghanistan’s Taliban regime, alleging that the Afghan government’s persecution of women and girls constitutes crimes against humanity.
The warrants are for Haibatullah Akhundzada, the Supreme Leader of the Taliban, and Abdul Hakim Haqqani, Chief Justice of the Taliban.
A spokesman for the regime said the Taliban did not recognise the ICC, which is based in The Hague, the Netherlands, and would not abide by its orders.
The Taliban, a group that espouses an extremist version of Islam, has imposed increasingly severe restrictions on women since taking power in Afghanistan in August 2021.
Within weeks of toppling the United States-backed previous regime, the Taliban abolished the Ministry of Women’s Affairs and banned women from receiving a secondary education or attaining most jobs. The group also imposed a rule barring women from travelling outside without a male chaperone.
The Taliban’s gender policies “resulted in severe violations of fundamental rights and freedoms of the civilian population of Afghanistan, in connection with conducts of murder, imprisonment, torture, rape and enforced disappearance”, the ICC said in a statement.
“We do not recognise any entity under the title of the ‘International Court,’ nor do we acknowledge any obligation toward it,” Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said in a social media post.
“The leadership and officials of the Islamic Emirate have established unparalleled justice in Afghanistan based on the sacred laws of Islamic sharia.
“Labelling the laws of Islamic sharia as oppressive or against humanity … is a clear expression of enmity and hatred toward the pure religion of Islam and its legal system.”
Afghanistan has the second-worst gender gap in the world, according to a report released last month by the United Nations that cited major gender disparities in areas relating to heath, education and financial inclusion.
“What we are seeing in Afghanistan is a systematic attempt to erase all women from public life, from being outside, from getting an education, from working and earning their living,” said Zahra Nader, the editor in chief of Zan Times, a newsroom covering women’s rights in Afghanistan.
“In a country where more than half of the population don’t have anything to eat, the one [group] that’s most hit is women.”
Afghan women have also faced soaring rates of domestic and sexual violence, including at the hands of the Taliban. Women detained by the Taliban have reported being raped and tortured in prison.
The 125 nations party to the ICC are bound by law to detain the Taliban leaders if they set foot on their soil, though the likelihood of an arrest is slim.
Akhundzada and Haqqani could simply refrain from travelling to countries that recognise the court’s authority or avoid leaving Afghanistan entirely.
Member states of the ICC have previously declined to make arrests.
Despite an ICC arrest warrant issued for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in November, Hungary, a member state, did not detain the Israeli leader when he visited in April.
Mongolia also declined in September to arrest Russian President Vladimir Putin, accused by the ICC of the war crime of unlawfully deporting and transferring Ukrainian children to Russia.
The United States is not a member state of the ICC.
During the first Trump Administration, the White House sought to impose sanctions against the court for investigating alleged war crimes committed by US military personnel in Afghanistan. The US placed new sanctions on the court’s judges in June over the ICC’s warrants targeting senior Israeli officials.
In a first for international law, the court also accused the two Taliban leaders of persecuting “other persons non-conforming with the Taliban’s policy on gender, gender identity or expression”.
The case is “the first international criminal proceedings involving targeting of LGBTQI+ individuals, individuals who do not conform to the gender expectations of an autocratic regime”, said Beth Van Schaack, the US ambassador at large for global criminal justice during the Biden Administration.
“It’s a huge step from the perspective of international criminal justice, in terms of opening up a line of prosecution and potentially creating a really important precedent.”
The Taliban Government remains isolated from much of the world. Last week, Russia became the first country to diplomatically recognise the Taliban as the legitimate ruling power in Afghanistan.
“The fact that many high-level individuals have been indicted for extremely serious international crimes really should give pause to any other administrations that might be tempted to say, ‘What can we do? They’re already in power, we might as well just recognise them,’” Van Schaack said.
The ICC Office of the Prosecutor previously applied to issue arrest warrants for the Taliban leaders in January. ICC judges must approve the prosecutor’s request for arrest warrants to be issued.
Though the specific contents of the warrants remain sealed, the proceedings probably draw on the work of newsrooms and civil society groups that collected testimony from women in Afghanistan.
Many of these organisations, including Zan Times, have been hit hard by the Trump Administration’s funding cuts. The White House is looking to further reduce financial support for war crimes investigations, Reuters reported last month.
Nader said her group works with journalists on the ground to be “able to bring those violations to the light”.
She added: “However, with lack of funding, that work has become much more difficult for us to do. They’re creating a perfect situation for the Taliban to commit crime.”