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Taliban impose sharia in Hangu

* Women to stay home except for medical treatment
* Ban on TV, CDs and video centres
* ‘Taliban courts’ to resolve local issues

By Abdul Saboor Khan

HANGU: Taliban announced the enforcement of sharia in the Shakai, Sheikhan and Mulakhel areas of Hangu district in the NWFP on Friday.

The decision was made in a jirga and announced in mosques during the Friday sermons, and comes days after a similar decree in the bordering Orakzai Agency.

Women have been stopped from visiting bazaars, other than for medical treatment, and that too only if they are accompanied by an elderly male relative. TV, CDs and video centres have been banned.

Sources in the area said the Taliban had been using loudspeakers installed in mosques to ask people to bring their issues to the ‘Taliban Islamic courts’ to resolve them in accordance with Islamic law.

The Taliban also blackened the faces of three men and paraded them on donkeys in the area for alleged immorality, the sources said, but it was not clear when the incident took place.

Last week, Taliban had made a similar announcement of enforcement of sharia on 16 of Orakzai Agency’s 21 tribes.

They had set up complaint cells in Ghiljo and Kandi Mishti areas of Upper Orakzai and Mamoozai and Feroze Khel areas of Lower Orakzai.

Hangu borders Orakzai Agency in the north and Kurram Agency in the West. It shares its southern border with North Waziristan. NWFP’s Kohat and Karak districts lie to the east of Hangu.

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