Fury as Karzai plans return of Taliban's religious police

The Afghan government has alarmed human rights groups by approving a plan to reintroduce a Department for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, the body which the Taliban used to enforce its extreme religious doctrine.

The proposal, which came from the country's Ulema council of clerics, has been passed by the cabinet of President Hamid Karzai and will now go before the Afghan parliament.

"Our concern is that the Vice and Virtue Department doesn't turn into an instrument for politically oppressing critical voices and vulnerable groups under the guise of protecting poorly defined virtues," Sam Zia Zarifi of Human Rights Watch said. "This is specially in the case of women, because infringements on their rights tend to be justified by claims of morality."

Under the Taliban the Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice became notorious for its brutal imposition of the Taliban's codes of behaviour.

Religious police patrolled the streets, beating those without long enough beards and those failing to attend prayers five times a day. Widows suffered particular hardship because of the diktat that women be accompanied by a male relative when out of their homes, an impossibility for thousands of women widowed during decades of war.

The Ministry was also charged with the imposition of the Taliban's interpretation of sharia punishment. Executions at Kabul football stadium, which included female prisoners shot in the centre circle, did much to fuel the Taliban's international isolation.

However, the Minister for Haj and Religious Affairs, Nematullah Shahrani, defended the new body. "The job of the department will be to tell people what is allowable and what is forbidden in Islam," he said. "In practical terms it will be quite different from Taliban times. We will preach ... through radio, television and special gatherings."

He denied that the department would have police powers but said it would oppose the proliferation of alcohol and drugs and speak out against terrorism, crime and corruption. It would, he added, also encourage people to behave in more Islamic ways.

Nader Nadery, a spokesman for the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission, said: "It will remind people of the Taliban. We are worried that there are no clear terms of reference for this body."

Western diplomats have reacted with unease to the proposal. However, several told The Independent that they believed the move was partly designed to defuse Taliban propaganda which accuses the Karzai government of being un-Islamic.

"This is an Islamic republic and sharia is a part of the constitution," one diplomat said on condition of anonymity. "If it is constitutional and within the framework of the International Convention on Human Rights [to which Afghanistan is a signatory] then it could represent a public information victory for the government."

With the Taliban making considerable gains in the south the Karzai government has been keen to establish a more conservative Islamic profile and to appear more critical of Western military operations.

Over the weekend violence continued across southern Afghanistan with British, American and Canadian troops mounting their biggest combined operation since the Korean War. British paratroopers mounted a cordon and search operation in Sangeen on Saturday night. A British base in the town has been under daily attack for more than two weeks.

Afghan officials said 27 Taliban fighters were killed in the Helmand province during the offensive, with 18 wounded and 10 captured. Two British soldiers were injured but not seriously.

Forty militants were also said to have been killed in separate fighting in north Helmand and Uruzgan provinces on Saturday.

Another 35 insurgents were reported killed during operations in Helmand yesterday. In other parts of the country, six Afghan soldiers died in a roadside bombing in the west, while a suicide bomber killed four civilians and injured 23 others in Gardez in the south-east.