Ghulami legal: Taliban divide society into four classes, make mullahs untouchable

Afghanistan's Taliban's newly issued Criminal Procedure Code has triggered alarm among rights groups about dividing Afghan society into rigid classes, where religious elites (mullahs) will enjoy near-immunity from punishment for crimes. Critics say the Taliban have revived slavery-like legal categories and given legal sanctity to violence.

The Taliban-administered Afghanistan's new "Criminal Procedure Code for Courts", a document intended to guide judicial processes, has sparked outrage among human rights bodies, officials of the older regime, and international observers, over its contents. The Taliban Code, which divides citizens into four unequal classes, legitimises slavery (referred to as "ghulami" or "ghulam") through explicit references to slaves as a legal category, say human rights groups. It also makes mullahs or clerics immune to trials for crime.

The new Taliban Code's Article 9, divides Afghan society into four classes, where the top spot is occupied by religious scholars. If the mullahs (religious scholars) commit any crime, they would merely be advised, while those at the bottom would suffer both incarceration and corporal punishment, according to Rawadari, the human rights body founded by activists, many of whom were forced into exile following the Taliban's return to power in August 2021.

Punishments for the same offence in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan will now vary based on the offender's class.

What is striking is that the code bans only specific forms of physical violence that result in "bone fractures" or the "tearing of the skin", reported the Afghan International, a London-based Afghani news outlet.

The Taliban is infamous for its long-standing Islamic jurisprudence and inhuman violent policies used as a tool of control. Such spectacles were common during the Taliban's first regime and have resurfaced after 2021. They are now backed by courts and decrees sanctioned by supreme leader Hibatullah Akhundzada. What has changed is the formalisation, where human rights violations are increasingly embedded into law and judicial process.

Earlier this month, Akhundzada signed and distributed a new "Criminal Procedure Code for Courts," a 119-article document meant to guide judicial processes in Taliban-ruled Afghanistan.