Delegation arrested for photographing women

By Ahmed Rashid in Lahore

EMMA Bonino, the European Commissioner for Humanitarian Affairs, was among 20 Westerners who were arrested and held for three hours by the Taliban religious police in Afghanistan yesterday.

Ms Bonino, her European Union delegation, and several journalists were touring a women's hospital ward funded by the EU in Kabul when they were arrested. EU officials were slapped around the head by the heavily armed police before being taken to a police station for interrogation.

After being held for three hours, they were released and the Taliban issued a formal apology. Although the EU in Brussels tried to play down the incident, Ms Bonino was both shaken and angry. She told reporters: "This is an example of how people live here in a state of terror. I was just threatened with a Kalashnikov. I was really afraid. No one appeared to be in charge."

Taliban officials said photographers and television crews were taking pictures of women in the hospital ward. A blanket ban on photography and TV pictures of human beings was among the strict rules affecting daily life imposed by the Taliban after they took control of Kabul and three-quarters of the country.

Haji Haibullah, a security officer of the religious police, said: "They were arrested because they didn't have any letters from the authorities and they were taking pictures of women. It is the policy of the Taliban that no unrelated man may take pictures of women."

An EU spokesman in Brussels said Ms Bonino had received a full apology. "This incident does seem to be working itself out," he said. The EU, which has given £23 million for emergency aid to UN and other agencies in Kabul this year, is the single largest donor of humanitarian aid to Afghanistan.

Western diplomats said the Taliban's actions were damaging for their image. They said they would virtually eliminate what little enthusiasm there was left among the European countries for funding aid programmes in Afghanistan. The Taliban are also trying to gain Afghanistan's seat at the UN.

Ms Bonino was the highest ranking Western diplomat to visit Kabul since the city was captured by the Taliban last September. In the past she has been outspoken against human rights abuses carried out by the Taliban. "Millions of people (Afghans) have been driven back to the Dark Ages," she said last year.

The Taliban have enforced the strictest form of Sharia or Islamic law ever seen. Many Muslims have themselves criticised the Taliban for bringing Islam into disrepute.

The Taliban have banned women from work and any kind of schooling, restrict whom women can talk to or meet and enforced the burqa or head-to-toe veil for women at all times. Women are forbidden to wear make-up or high heels.

The Taliban have also frequently harassed Western aid agencies that employ Afghan women. Last week the Taliban declared that they would totally segregate hospitals.

There is only one all-women hospital in the city and medical facilities in the country are virtually non-existent. UN aid agencies have found it increasingly difficult to work in Taliban-controlled areas, even though more than half of Kabul's one million people depend on UN food handouts.

Three heads of UN agencies in the southern city of Kandahar were ordered to leave Afghanistan last week. They had protested after a female lawyer for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees was ordered to talk to Taliban officials from behind a curtain so that her face would not be visible.

The Taliban control three-quarters of the country and are trying to capture the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif, capital of the opposition Northern Alliance.