No role in photojournalist Danish Siddiqui’s death, says Taliban

“We are not aware during whose firing the journalist was killed. We do not know how he died,” said Zabiullah Mujahid, the Taliban spokesperson, expressing regret over the Reuters journalist Danish Siddiqui’s death in Kandahar.

“We are sorry for journalist Danish Siddiqui’s death. We regret that journalists are entering war zone without an intimation to us. Any journalist entering the war zone should inform us. We will take proper care of that particular individual,” the Taliban’s spokesperson told CNN-News18 on Friday.

Danish Siddiqui was killed by Taliban on Friday while covering a clash between Afghan security forces and Taliban fighters near a border crossing with Pakistan, an Afghan commander had earlier said.

Apparently, Taliban’s claim of not killing the Muslim journalist isn’t any different than those of the intellectual media figures who either believe every terrorist is a poor headmaster’s son or that Danish Siddiqui was killed by a “gun.”

While we condemn what happened in Kandahar, Afghanistan Friday afternoon, what really killed the Reuters journalist is not an individual, community or a state but an ideology. The ideology that has killed and is continuing to kill many across the world in the name of “Jihad,” “Allah,” and is the face of radical Islamic Terrorism. While these extremely violent religious extremists represent a minority view, their threat is real.

Taliban-Afghanistan War

Tracing back to early 1990s, the Taliban’s decision to create a society of its own liking became a cause of great concern.

While the government insisted that its policies were strictly in accordance with scriptural Islam and therefore, it had a legitimate right to introduce and implement them, Islamic liberals were pained to emphasize that its policies were an affront against basic human values.

From a liberal perspective the Taliban’s claim to authority was suspect on two counts. First, its interpretation of Islam was flawed. Second, the Taliban did not represent the legitimate national will in Afghanistan. Yet, it held power over a large part of the country between 1996 and 2001 and enforced its strict interpretation of the Sharia, or Islamic law.

Since then, the Taliban’s ideology evolved into becoming a combination of the Sharia and militant Islamism. On July 9, 2021, Taliban officials claimed that they had taken control of 85 percent of Afghanistan’s territory. Their ability to achieve this so quickly was bolstered by some Afghan soldiers retreating.

And if the war continues at this pace, the Afghanistan government could collapse merely in six months after the United States military withdraws from the war-ravaged country by August 31, 2021.