Afghanistan: Taliban Kill Wedding Guests for Playing Music, Deny Responsibility

Senior Taliban officials denied links this weekend to self-proclaimed Taliban jihadists who killed three and injured as many as ten people at a wedding in Afghanistan for playing music.

Taliban jihadists banned music during their first rule in the 1990s. This time, following their seizure of the country in August, Taliban spokesmen asserted that, while their interpretation of sharia prohibits making or listening to music, the terrorist organization would not enforce the ban.

The massacre reportedly occurred on Friday in a village of Nangarhar province after three armed men interrupted a wedding and violently demanded the guests shut off music playing at the event.

“I told them that they are young – let them play the music,” one of the relatives of those killed, identified as Noor Hazrat, told Afghanistan’s Tolo News, “but they dragged me back and opened fire, some of the boys were wounded and two others were killed.”

Another witness told Tolo News that the men “broke the musical instruments and then went out and then opened fire on approximately 50 people.” The family told Tolo News that the jihadists killed two people and left at least ten wounded; a Taliban spokesman confirmed three deaths. Some of those injured are reportedly children.

Relatives of the couple who attended the wedding identified the men responsible for the mass shooting as Taliban jihadists responsible for manning a local checkpoint. Senior Taliban officials in Kabul denied that they had anything to do with the killing or that they had implemented a ban on music.

“At the wedding of Haji Malang Jan in Shamspur Mar Ghundi village of Nangarhar last night, three people used the name of Taliban and demanded to stop playing music,” Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid confirmed on Saturday via Twitter. “At least three people were killed and several others were injured.”

“Two suspects have been arrested in connection with the incident and one has escaped and is being pursued. The perpetrators of the incident, who used the name of the Islamic Emirate [the Taliban] to carry out personal feuds, were handed over to sharia,” he asserted.

The Afghan agency Khaama Press similarly got another Taliban spokesman on the record, Bilal Karimi, saying that the Taliban had apprehended the shooters and would subject them to sharia punishment.

“The three gunmen arrested are not Taliban fighters and they had personal problems with the hosts of the wedding,” Karimi claimed. While the witnesses speaking to Tolo News appeared to know the men, they identified the attackers as Taliban checkpoint operators and did not mention any history of hostility between them and their victims.

Mujahid – a spokesman recently promoted to deputy information minister – discussed the Taliban’s prior ban on music in August shortly after the Taliban seized control of Kabul.

 

“Music is forbidden in Islam, but we’re hoping that we can persuade people not to do such things, instead of pressuring them,” Mujahid told international media. He similarly insisted the Taliban would allow women to continue going to work and girls to continue going to school – both of which the Taliban banned in the 1990s.

In reality, widespread reports of bans on women in public and on the broadcast of music have surfaced since August 15, the day the Taliban stormed into Kabul. Less than a week later, the Afghan outlet Pajhwok cited local sources in Ghor province sharing the news that the Taliban there had imposed a ban on music and women’s and girls’ voices on radio and television.

“The head of culture information of the Islamic Emirate [the Taliban] in Ghor asked us not to publish music in our programs, not to hire female employees,” Maroof Saeedi, the director of the regional Ghorbeh Border Radio, told the outlet, “and even the listeners who call in our programs should not publish the voices of girls and should not be published in commercial messages.”

The Taliban denied the story and pressured Pajhwok not to publish any news stories if the source of the story was anyone but Mujahid.

Mujahid and other spokesmen have urged the Afghan people to be patient with the terrorist organization. In late August, Mujahid said at a press conference that the jihadists intended to allow women their rights “within the sharia,” but that all women should remain imprisoned their homes indefinitely as a safety measure because lower-ranking Taliban jihadists had yet to receive orders to respect girls and women.

“We are asking women to stay home at the moment,” Mujahid announced at the time. “There are security concerns and once we have that under control, our sisters will be able to return to work.”

Mujahid said senior Taliban officials were still teaching jihadist group members “how to deal with women.”

Neither Mujahid nor other Taliban officials have lifted the soft ban on women in public at press time. Women in Kabul have nonetheless regularly defied it, organizing protests demanding the group allows them to return to work and warning that many are starving and forced to beg on the streets because they cannot return to their jobs. Taliban members have responded to the protests by beating the women.

Musicians have been among the thousands struggling to flee the country to preserve their lives in light of the Taliban takeover. In October, a group of 101 students from Afghanistan’s top musical institute managed to escape, according to the Associated Press, including a significant number of women. The group fled to Doha, Qatar, another Islamist state.

The Taliban took over Afghanistan after the U.S.-backed government collapsed in August. Former President Ashraf Ghani fled the country that month after jihadists launched a national campaign to seize power in April – a response to President Joe Biden extending the U.S. war in Afghanistan that month and violating a previously brokered agreement with the group.

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