On Friday, the Taliban publicly executed four men across Herat, Ghor, and Logar. In any functioning justice system, such acts would be met with due process, transparency, and accountability. But in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, justice is not delivered; it is displayed. These public executions are a deliberate show of dominance, a return to medieval terror under the thin veil of religious jurisprudence.
This is not a one-off. According to UN reports, hundreds of people have faced public lashings and executions since the Taliban’s takeover in 2021. Women have been erased from society. The media has been muzzled. Civil liberties, crushed. Yet, amid these violations, the international community has chosen the path of silence. Condemnations, when they come, are sterile, bureaucratic, and devoid of action. No sanctions with teeth. No diplomatic pressure that holds the regime accountable. Just passive hand-wringing while Afghanistan sinks deeper into a humanitarian and moral abyss.
And who bears the burden of this failure? Pakistan.
We are the ones left to manage the fallout, hosting millions of Afghan refugees, combating cross-border militancy, and struggling to shield our youth from the ideological contagion seeping through a destabilised frontier. While Western powers distance themselves, citing engagement fatigue, Pakistan is expected to mop up the mess of a war we didn’t start and a peace we weren’t invited to shape.
Let’s be clear: the Taliban’s brutality isn’t just an Afghan problem but a regional threat. A destabilised Afghanistan means a volatile Pakistan. It means more pressure on our economy, our security forces, and our already strained social fabric.
Yet, we’re handed sermons on “restraint” and “constructive dialogue” while the global order plays politics with Afghan lives.
It’s time we stop waiting for the international community to grow a conscience. Pakistan must take a principled stand. We must demand human rights guarantees as a condition for any regional cooperation. We must amplify Afghan voices, especially women and civil society leaders, who are risking everything to resist this oppression. And we must call out the hypocrisy of global powers that fuelled this crisis only to walk away when it mattered most.
Because if we don’t speak now, we become complicit. And Pakistan has always stood taller than that. *