KABUL, Dec 26, 2021 (BSS/AFP) - The Taliban have dissolved Afghanistan's
election commission, a panel that supervised polls during the previous
Western-backed administration, a spokesman for the Islamist government said
on Saturday.

   "There is no need for these commissions to exist and operate," Taliban
government spokesman Bilal Karimi said, referring to the Independent Election
Commission (IEC) and the Independent Electoral Complaints Commission.

   "If we ever feel a need, the Islamic Emirate will revive these
commissions."

   The Taliban swept to power in August as a Western-backed government
imploded in the final stages of a US military withdrawal.

   Established in 2006, the IEC was mandated to administer and supervise all
types of elections, including presidential, according to the commission's
website.

   "They have taken this decision in a hurry... and dissolving the commission
would have huge consequences," Aurangzeb, who headed the panel up until the
fall of the previous regime, told AFP.

   "If this structure does not exist, I'm 100 percent sure that Afghanistan's
problems will never be solved as there won't be any elections," said
Aurangzeb, who like many Afghans goes by only one name.

   Halim Fidai, a senior politician in the previous regime, said the decision
to dissolve the electoral commission shows the Taliban "do not believe in
democracy".

   "They are against all democratic institutions. They get power through
bullets and not ballots," said Fidai, who was governor of four provinces over
the past two decades.

   Before the Taliban takeover, several electoral commission officials were
killed by extremist groups.

   Karimi said the authorities had also dissolved two government departments
this week -- the ministry of peace, and the ministry of parliamentary
affairs.

   The deeply conservative Taliban had already shut down the former
administration's ministry of women's affairs and replaced it with the
ministry for the promotion of virtue and prevention of vice.

   That ministry earned notoriety during the Taliban's first stint in power
in the 1990s for harshly enforcing religious doctrine.

   The Islamists are pressing the international community to restore billions
of dollars in suspended aid and have pledged a more moderate rule this time
around.