Just before I started writing this introduction, I Googled 'Afghan woman executed yesterday' and got a verbal description, photographs, and a roughly shot video of the public execution of a woman identified only as Zarmeena, mother of seven children, who after a 'family dispute' had beaten her husband to death with a steel hammer as he slept (http:// www.rawa.org/murder-w.htm). Under Taliban law, she was to be killed by a relative of the man she had killed. In the back of a pickup truck, held there by two other women in deep blue burqas, Zarmeena was driven to a sports arena filled with 'thousands', including mothers and children. Zarmeena herself was covered so completely in a parachuteblue burqa that it seemed she couldn't see at all. The two female guards helped her down from the truck, led her to the center of the arena, and forced her to sit, after which a turbaned man put a Kalashnikov rifle to the back of her head and shot three times. Someone tugged her burqa over the legs of her dead body, and then everyone walked away, leaving a motionless, pale-blue heap (See Figure 1 on next page). Conventional criminology would have difficulty explaining the meanings of these images of Zarmeena's death. The images tell us that the Taliban have power over life and death in the areas they control, and that their justice system is fearsome and harsh. From the images we learn that men-who judged and executed Zarmeena-have the power of life and death over women. From the story we might surmise that in Taliban-controlled areas of Afghanistan, domestic violence is not an excuse for murder, or even a mitigating factor. We might also be tempted to surmise that in these areas, parents may use an execution to teach values to their children; but I think that is a misreading, for according to the accompanying news story, One woman in a burqa, who did not give her name, but was running quickly toward the stadium seats pushing her small children ahead of her, said: 'This is the first time a woman has been killed. I want to see.'
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