Mohammad has worked at the sports stadium in Kandahar for nine years. Football, volleyball and basketball are played here now, but this used to be the scene of mass bloodshed.[h/t to The Emirates Economist].
Thousands of spectators once gathered regularly in the stands to quietly watch as men were beheaded, women got shot and thieves had their hands cut off.
Many among the crowd were forced to attend by the Taliban so they could see the fate awaiting them if they also broke the law.
“The people who were executed had done something bad to someone else, so we were happy with the executions. They stopped people from committing other crimes,” Mohammad said. ...
Mohammad said: “We don’t have democracy. They say we have democracy but there is no security here. If I want to drive a good car, I can’t. If I want to carry a lot of money with me, I can’t. So there is no democracy.” The main reason he has fond memories of life under the Taliban is not because he liked everything they did. It is because this city was a safer, simpler, place for many people in those days
If it is so effective in providing a deterrent, why don't we have more scope for cruel and unusual punishment in Western societies? For some discussion of why we don't make more use of cruel and unusual punishment, click here to see my paper with John Henderson on this topic. For our followup piece on crime, punishment, and deterrence, see this.