Taliban Publicly Executes Woman Near Kabul. EVEN WITH U.S. AND NATO INVOLVEMENT, DO YOU THINK MUSLIM FUNDAMENTALISTS LIKE THE TALIBAN WILL EVER GIVE WOMEN FAIR RIGHTS UNDER ISLAMIC LAW?

A Taliban member shot dead a woman accused of adultery in front of a crowd near Kabul. This shows signs that the austere Islamist group still dictates law, even near Afghanistan's capital. In a Reuters video, the turban-clad man approaches a woman kneeling in the dirt and shoots her five times at close range with an automatic rifle, to cheers of jubilation from the 150 or so men watching in the Parwan Province. "Allah warns us not to get close to adultery because it's the wrong way," a man said as the shooter got close to the woman. "It is the order of Allah that she be executed." Such rare public punishment was a painful reminder to Afghan authorities of the Taliban's period in power, and it raised concerns about the treatment of Afghan women eleven years into the NATO-led war against Taliban insurgents. When the unnamed woman, most of her body tightly wrapped in a shawl, fell sideways after being shot several times in the head, the spectators chanted, "Long live the Afghan mujahideen!" (Or "Islamist fighters," a name the Taliban uses for themselves.)

Afghan women have won back basic rights in education, voting and work since the Taliban was toppled by the U.S.-backed Afghan forces in late 2001. But fears are rising among Afghan women, some lawmakers and human rights activists that such freedoms could be traded away as the Afghan government and the U.S. pursue talks with the Taliban to secure a peaceful end to the war. Violence against women has increased sharply recently. Activists say there is waning interest in women's rights on the part of President Hamid Karzai's government, which claims to have made so much progress in women's rights.

Two Taliban commanders were sexually involved with the woman in Parwan Province, either through rape or romantically, and decided to torture her and then kill her to settle a dispute between the two of them. Earlier last week, a 30-year-old woman and two of her children were beheaded in Afghanistan by a man police said was her divorced husband, the latest of a string of so-called "honor killings." Some Afghans still defer to Taliban courts for settling disputes, viewing government bodies as corrupt.EVEN WITH U.S. AND NATO INVOLVEMENT, DO YOU THINK MUSLIM FUNDAMENTALISTS LIKE THE TALIBAN WILL EVER GIVE WOMEN FAIR RIGHTS UNDER ISLAMIC LAW?