Provincial Military Courts

The Taliban have established a parallel military justice system in addition to their ordinary Sharia courts. One of its least understood components is the network of provincial military courts (محاکم نظامی ولایتی).
 

Overall structure

According to decrees issued after the Taliban returned to power in August 2021, the military judiciary consists of three levels:
 

1. Military Court (Supreme Military Court) in Kabul
2. Zonal (regional) military courts
3. Provincial military courts in the individual provinces. 

This system is separate from the ordinary judicial hierarchy (district courts, provincial appeal courts and Supreme Court).
 

Jurisdiction

Official Taliban statements indicate that provincial military courts hear first-instance cases involving personnel of the three principal security institutions:

• Ministry of Defense
• Ministry of Interior
• General Directorate of Intelligence (GDI)

Typical matters include:

• complaints against security personnel
• disciplinary offences
• abuse of authority
• corruption
• criminal acts committed by members of the security forces
• petitions filed against commanders or officials. 

Unlike many Western military courts, they are not primarily intended to prosecute civilians, although civilians may appear as complainants or witnesses.
 

Position within the Taliban command system

The military courts are directly linked to the Taliban leadership.

Judges are appointed through decrees approved by:

• the Supreme Leader (Amir al-Mu'minin)
• the Supreme Court leadership

rather than by an independent judicial council. This reflects the Taliban's highly centralized governance structure. 
 

Judges

Available information suggests that judges are generally:

• religious scholars (mawlawi, mufti, sheikh)
• educated in Taliban-aligned madrassas
• specialists in Hanafi Islamic jurisprudence

rather than career military lawyers or graduates of secular law faculties. 
 

Procedure

Very little procedural information is public.

Available evidence indicates:

• proceedings rely primarily on Taliban interpretations of Hanafi Sharia;
• there is no publicly available criminal procedure code comparable to former Afghan law;
• defendants have limited access to independent legal counsel;
• hearings may be closed;
• appeals move upward through the military judicial hierarchy. 
   

Relationship with commanders

One reason these courts were established was to reinforce discipline inside Taliban security forces.

Examples reported by Taliban media include cases involving:

• theft
• corruption
• misuse of government property
• unlawful violence
• misconduct by commanders

In several highly publicized cases, Taliban leaders announced severe punishments—including imprisonment or, in some instances, implementation of hudud or qisas penalties after judicial review—although independent verification of individual cases is often difficult. 
 

Provincial distribution

The Taliban have appointed judges in all 34 provinces, but little is publicly known about the staffing of provincial military courts.

There is no public roster showing:

• numbers of judges
• annual caseloads
• conviction statistics
• budgets
• internal regulations

Some provinces likely have only a single military judge supported by clerical staff, while larger provinces with substantial Taliban military formations—such as Kandahar, Helmand, Nangarhar, Balkh, Herat, or Kabul—are believed to have more developed military judicial offices, although reliable official staffing data are unavailable.