[imagesource: EPA]

With the US having exited Afghanistan in the messiest of circumstances, the country has now fallen back under Taliban control.

That has dire and deadly consequences for its citizens, with a return to extreme public punishments already underway.

This past weekend, the Taliban displayed four bodies of alleged kidnappers, hanging one from a crane parked in a city square in the city of Herat.

According to a resident who was shopping in Mostofiat Square on Saturday, a loudspeaker announcement began calling for people’s attention.

More via Al Jazeera:

“When I stepped forward, I saw they had brought a body in a pick-up truck, then they hung it up on a crane,” he was quoted as saying…

Taliban officials initially brought four bodies to the central square in the western city of Herat, then moved three of them to other parts of the city for public display, said Wazir Ahmad Seddiqi, who runs a pharmacy on the edge of the square.

Taliban officials announced that the four were caught taking part in a kidnapping earlier on Saturday and were killed by police, Seddiqi said.

The Taliban’s notorious former head of religious police, Mullah Nooruddin Turabi, is now in charge of prisons.

He has stated that executions, as well as amputations, are “necessary for security”, although they might not take place in stadiums, as they have in the past.

Charlie Faulk, a journalist working in Afghanistan, shared this disturbing image:

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by Charlie Faulkner (@charlie.faulk)

A message reading “Whoever kidnaps others, will end up like this” was written in a note on the chest of the bodies.

Video footage has also been shared online, showing a body dangling from a crane while people gather below.

For Afghanistan’s women, the immediate future looks very bleak.

VICE reports:

Last week, Human Rights Watch warned that militants in Herat were “searching out high-profile women; denying women freedom of movement outside their homes; imposing compulsory dress codes; severely curtailing access to employment and education; and restricting the right to peaceful assembly.”

Image: Reuters

Such reports, along with Turabi’s statements, conflict with the resurgent Taliban’s claims of pacifism and their seeming attempt to present a more moderate face to the world.

Last month, Amnesty International said that Taliban fighters were also behind the massacre of nine members of the persecuted Hazara minority.

The Taliban had also requested that its new foreign minister be allowed to speak at the UN General Assembly in New York, which ends today.

That request is expected to be denied.

[sources:aljazeera&vice]