Taliban impose 'harsh' limits on Afghans' religious freedom -U.S. panel

FILE PHOTO: Afghans pray at a main market in Kabul, October 30, 2009. REUTERS/Bruno Domingos (AFGHANISTAN POLITICS SOCIETY)

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Conditions for religious freedom in Afghanistan have "drastically deteriorated" since the Taliban seized power last year as the last U.S.-led foreign troops pulled out after 20 years of war, a bipartisan U.S. commission said on Tuesday.

The Sunni Muslim extremists' "harsh enforcement" of their hardline version of Islam "violates the freedom of religion or belief" of a wide range of Afghans, said the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom.