The latest move towards ethnic and religious segregation by the Taliban regime in Afghanistan has a resonance that sends a shiver down the spine. Citizens who are not Islamic have been requested to wear yellow identification tags on their garments - ostensibly for their own protection.
According to Mr Mohammed Wali, a spokesman for the regime, the tags will prevent non-Muslims from being compulsorily herded into Mosques by the religious police force under the direction of the Ministry for the Prevention of Vice and Promotion of Virtue. The "Virtue Police," an Orwellian title if ever there was one, regularly use lengths of cable to drive male citizens into religious services. They also measure the beards of worshippers to ensure they are grown to the prescribed length.
It is difficult to imagine that thumb-sized yellow patches will, in the heat of holy fervour, permit the virtuous drovers to distinguish believers from infidels. Sikhs are exempted from the order because their turbans distinguish them as foreign to the beliefs of the majority while women, regardless of their faith, must wear veils.
Women have, from the outset of Taliban rule, been subject to severely repressive legislation. Laws proscribing the education of females have been promulgated. Other, more recent moves, have included the banning of western hair styles and the destruction of ancient Buddhist statues of international artistic importance.
The compulsory wearing of tags to identify their wearers as members of minority groups may be new for Afghanistan but evoke memories of Nazi Germany's insistence that Jews wear the Star of David on their clothes. By coincidence, or otherwise, the obligatory colour, then and now, is yellow.
The reaction throughout the world to this ominous legislation has, with every justification, been one of horror. Most of Afghanistan's non-Muslim population has already fled the country leaving just a few thousand Hindus and Sikhs. According to reports, the country remains home to a solitary Jew for whom the latest edict must be particularly disconcerting.
The Taliban rulers have now moved on from the oppression of women, a scorn for democratic ideals and the destruction of art works to the singling out of minorities from the rest of the population. Even criticism from Pakistan, their most consistent ally, has failed to budge them from their fanaticism. There are enough historical precedents to indicate that the next stage in such an extremist progression may be too horrific to contemplate.