Taliban Flog, Execute Pregnant Woman in Afghanistan

Time magazine's cover, featuring a young Afghan woman whose nose and ears were chopped off by her Taliban husband for dishonoring him, has sparked plenty of outrage from folks who should be rising to the young woman's defense. Time's cover, and the accompanying article, is seen as a propaganda ploy to keep the U.S. in Afghanistan for humanitarian reasons. But detractors of the article fail to realize that Time accurately presented what will happen, on a large scale throughout Afghanistan, if U.S. forces pull out before the Afghan government and military is prepared to handle security.

Take today's report from Badghis province in northwestern Afghanistan. The Taliban publicly murdered a pregnant woman after first torturing her. The crime of the woman, a widow: she got pregnant out of wedlock. The Taliban wasn't pleased with just killing her, they had to flog her first:

Taliban insurgents publicly executed an Afghan woman for alleged adultery, a police official said Monday, in a reminder to the era when the militant group ruled Afghanistan.

The 48-year-old widow was given dozens of lashes before being shot dead on Sunday in the remote Qades district, held by the militants in northwestern Badghis province, said Abdul Jabar who serves as a senior officer in the province.

Just a few years ago, Badghis province wasn't considered a security problem. But over the past three years, the Taliban have slowly taken control of districts in Badghis and have implemented their brutal version of sharia, or Islamic law, that made them infamous for their cruelty in the 1990s.

Make no mistake: This is exactly what the Taliban has in store for all women in Afghanistan. That isn't a statement on internal U.S. politics, it is the reality of the situation on the ground in Afghanistan. Just recall the images of Taliban atrocities against women during their rein from 1996 – 2001. Remember images of women executed at the soccer field in Kabul? Or women buried in the ground up to their heads? The Taliban has made a sport of murdering women in such manner. As today's execution in Badghis shows, little has changed since the Taliban was ousted from power in 2001.