The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom criticized the State Department’s refusal to add Taliban-led Afghanistan to the U.S. government’s “countries of particular concern” list in its new report detailing the repression of worship in countries worldwide.
The commission’s 2023 annual report, released on Monday, called upon Secretary of State Antony Blinken to “designate Afghanistan under the de facto rule of the Taliban as a ‘country of particular concern’ for engaging in systematic, ongoing, and egregious violations of religious freedom.” USCIRF made the same recommendation in its 2022 annual report — to no avail.
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President Joe Biden’s April 2021 announcement of a full U.S. military withdrawal ended with the Taliban’s return to power, a chaotic evacuation, and hundreds of Americans and thousands of Afghan allies left behind in August 2021. The Aug. 26 deadly ISIS-K suicide bombing killed 13 U.S. service members and nearly 200 Afghans at the Kabul airport, as the United States led evacuation operations at the Hamid Karzai International Airport while the Taliban, including Haqqani Taliban faction forces, provided security outside the airport.
Blinken named a dozen nations as “countries of particular concern” related to their attacks on religious liberty in November 2022, including prominent foreign adversaries such as China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea. Burma, Cuba, Eritrea, Nicaragua, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan also made the State Department list, but Afghanistan did not, although the State Department has listed the Taliban as among the “entities of particular concern.”
USCIRF Vice Chairman Abraham Cooper, also the director of global social action for the Simon Wiesenthal Center, said late last year that the commission “is disappointed that the State Department did not include Afghanistan as a country of particular concern this year” and that “while it did re-designate the Taliban as an entity of particular concern, that does not reflect the reality that the group is the de facto government” of Afghanistan.
“In 2022, religious freedom conditions in Afghanistan continued to deteriorate, as they have since the Taliban seized control of the country in August 2021,” USCIRF said Monday. “In contrast to its pledges for change and inclusivity upon its seizure of power, the Taliban has since ruled Afghanistan in a deeply repressive and intolerant manner — essentially unchanged from its previous era in power from 1996 to 2001.”
The new report detailed the Taliban’s repression of Shi’a Muslim members of the ethnic Hazara community, Ahmadiyya Muslims, Baha’is, nonbelievers, Sikhs, Hindus, and Christians.
The commission assessed that “members of these groups are unable to express their faiths or beliefs openly because they face dire consequences, including death, if discovered by the Taliban or ISIS-K.” The Taliban “has been unable or unwilling to provide religious and ethnic minorities safety and security against radical Islamist violence,” the report said, “particularly in the form of attacks” by ISIS-K and factions of the Taliban.
Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX), the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, has argued since late 2021 that the Biden administration has been stonewalling his investigations into the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan.
Afghan special inspector general John Sopko said during House testimony in April that the State Department was blocking his investigations into how U.S. aid money was currently being spent in Afghanistan.
“Unfortunately, as I sit here today, I cannot assure this committee or the American taxpayer that we are not currently funding the Taliban, nor can I assure you that the Taliban are not diverting the money we are sending from the intended recipients, which are the poor Afghan people,” Sopko said.
The USCIRF said Monday that the State Department did not designate Afghanistan as a country of particular concern “likely due to its nonrecognition of the Taliban as the de facto governing authority” but also “did not designate ISIS-K as an entity of particular concern due to the group’s lack of territorial control — its horrific campaign of violence against Afghan religious minorities notwithstanding.”
The commission also warned “religious freedom conditions in China further deteriorated” in 2022, including because Beijing continued to “vigorously implement” its “sinicization of religion” policies and its demand that “religious groups support the Chinese Communist Party’s rule and ideology.”
The USCIRF noted that China officially recognizes Buddhism, Catholicism, Islam, Protestantism, and Taoism but that “groups with perceived foreign connections — such as Uyghurs and other Muslims, Tibetan Buddhists, underground Catholics, and house church Protestants — are especially vulnerable to persecution.” The commission pointed to China’s Measures for the Administration of Internet Religious Information Services, which took effect in March, “banning religious content on the internet and further constricting the narrow space for religious groups.”
In Russia, religious freedom conditions also “continued to decline,” the commission said, and Kremlin authorities “increasingly prosecuted members of religious minority communities using a range of legal mechanisms.”
The USCIRF said Russia’s vague laws continued to give authorities “broad powers” to outlaw religious groups, prosecute people based on religious speech or activities, and ban religious literature deemed “extremist.” The commission added that Moscow “continued to fine Protestants, Catholics, Muslims, Old Believers, and others for illegal missionary activities and other violations of various restrictions.”
The commission assessed that “religious freedom conditions in Iran sharply deteriorated” in 2022, noting that “following the death of Mahsa Zhina Amini after her arrest and torture by police for wearing an ‘improper hijab,’ Iran repressed nationwide protests with lethal force, detained and killed children, sexually assaulted and raped detained protesters, and engaged in other gross violations of human rights, including executions of protesters without due process.”
The commission detailed Iran’s repression tactics also targeting Sunni Muslims, Baha’is, and Christians and said that Tehran “continued targeting Iranian religious minorities abroad, and in one case, forcibly repatriating dissidents.”
And in North Korea, the commission found that religious freedom conditions “remained among the worst in the world” in 2022. The USCIRF noted that “North Korea’s ruling ideology, known as Kimilsungism-Kimjongilism, forbids competing ideologies — including religious ones — and treats religion as an existential threat” and said that North Korea’s “Ten Principles for the Establishment of a Monolithic Leadership System” demands “absolute loyalty” to the nation’s dictator.
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The commission said that North Korea’s government “actively enforces the Ten Principles at all levels of government and across society, monitors and controls religious belief and activities, and systematically denies North Korean citizens the right to religious freedom.”
The Washington Examiner reached out to the State Department for comment.
