Nine months after it captured power, Afghanistan’s de-facto rulers, the Taliban, has dissolved key state bodies, including the Human Rights Commission, arguing they were no longer needed in the country. Although the dissolution comes when the group announced its annual budget, these organizations had long stopped functioning since the regime change last year.

Last week, when the Taliban announced an annual budget of almost $500 million deficit, the ultra-conservative group made no allocations for a number of state organizations founded by the erstwhile US-backed Afghan government.

Many of these organizations were created to hold powerful accountability and increase transparency in the government.

"Because these departments were not deemed necessary and were not included in the budget, they have been dissolved," Innamullah Samangani, the Taliban government's deputy spokesman, said.

Among those organisations dissolved are the High Council for National Reconciliation (HCNR), the National Security Council, and the commission for overseeing the implementation of the Afghan constitution.

Significantly, the country’s Interior Ministry headed by the chief of the Haqqani Network, Sirajuddin Haqqani, released a separate order disbanding the operations of private security firms in the country. 

The ministry also ordered companies to hand over their weapons, operation information, contracts signed in the last two decades, and a list of the people and organizations they guarded so far. Importantly, a number of firms were also providing security to foreign embassies and international aid groups operating in the country. 

It was not immediately known how many people would get rendered unemployed by this disbanding and how these people were proposed to be rehabilitated.

Last year, soon after taking power, the Taliban also disbanded the Ministry of Women and converted it into the Ministry For Propagation of Virtue and Prevention for Vice, an infamous body known for enforcing moral policing, mainly restricting the rights of women.

(SAM)