The Taliban have staged three public executions in the past week, marking a sharp jump after months of inactivity in an act clearly intended to intimidate the Afghan people, an expert told Fox News Digital. 

“Our understanding of the situation just decreases daily; however, I would say the Taliban are interested in asserting their dominance over the Afghan people,” Bill Roggio, the Founding Editor of “The Long War Journal,” said. 

“We have to remember their primary reason for existence is to impose sharia, or Islamic law, on the Afghan people,” Roggio added. “They view that as a number-one priority, and executions for various crimes – theft, or adultery or other crimes – that is a means for them to impose Sharia.”

“I don’t believe anything they’re doing here is to send a message externally,” Roggio stressed. “This is the Taliban asserting their control over the Afghan people.”

Authorities shot the man with an assault rifle used by the victim’s father. Hundreds of spectators and many top Taliban officials – some who had traveled from the capital Kabul to western Farah province – witnessed the execution.

Taliban ex-fighters (L) from Southern Afghanistan’s countryside, now based in Kabul and studying in religious school, look at perfume in a shop located in Wazir Akbar Khan, a neighborhood of central Kabul, on February 4th, 2024. Over two years after taking the Afghan capital, some former fighters have found the city of 4.4 million and urban life a disappointment, while others have quickly embraced the advantages.  (Elise Blanchard for The Washington Post via Getty Images)

The government carried out only one further execution in the following year – another murderer who had killed five people in two separate incidents. Again, the executioner used a gun owned by the son of one of the victims. 

Roggio explained that the Taliban seemingly reserved public execution for convictions of murder, but could also extend to theft, adultery and other act perceived as “crimes against the Taliban state.”

“I haven’t seen any visual confirmation, but I see no reason not to believe it,” Roggio said. “If you go back to the 1990s, the Taliban were executing women, burying them to their heads and stoning them and things like that in soccer stadiums and stadiums in Kabul.”

“The purpose of the arena, again, is a public display of execution: It helps promote a message, so if they’re not hiding this, they don’t want to hide these executions,” Roggio argued. “They want the public to see that the Taliban is upholding their version of Sharia law.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.