3 yıl önce

UN: Taliban hunting for Afghan targets in 'door-to-door visits'

Taliban insurgents are searching for people who worked with US and NATO troops, according to a UN document. A senior Taliban official blames the raids on internal miscommunication.

AFP

Taliban fighters patrol along a street in Kabul on August 17, 2021.

The Taliban fighters are going house-to-house searching for opponents and their families, according to an intelligence document for the UN that has deepened fears Afghanistan's new rulers were reneging on pledges of tolerance.

The Taliban have been conducting "targeted door-to-door visits" of people who worked with US and NATO forces, according to a confidential document by the UN's threat assessment consultants seen by AFP news agency on Friday.

After routing government forces and taking over Kabul on Sunday, August 15, to end two decades of war, the group's leaders have repeatedly vowed a complete amnesty as part of a well-crafted PR blitz.

Women have also been assured their rights will be respected, and that the Taliban will be "positively different" from their brutal 1996-2001 rule.

But with thousands of people still trying to flee the capital aboard evacuation flights, the report for the United Nations confirmed the fears of many.

Targeting NATO/US allies

The report, written by the Norwegian Center for Global Analyses, said the group was also screening people on the way to Kabul airport.

"They are targeting the families of those who refuse to give themselves up, and prosecuting and punishing their families 'according to sharia law'," Christian Nellemann, the group's executive director, told AFP.

"We expect both individuals previously working with NATO/US forces and their allies, alongside with their family members to be exposed to torture and executions."

The German public broadcaster Deutsche Welle also reported that the Taliban had shot dead the relative of one of its journalists while searching for the editor.

Taliban official admits some fighters breaking into homes

The Taliban has repeatedly said its fighters are barred from entering private homes.

Nazar Mohammad Mutmaeen, a senior Taliban official, insisted this remained the policy, though he conceded some of their fighters were breaking into homes.

"Some people are still doing this, possibly in ignorance," he said in a Twitter post.

"We are ashamed and have no answer for it."

The Taliban has also insisted women have nothing to fear under their new rule.

During its first stint in power, women were excluded from public life and girls banned from school.

People were stoned to death for adultery, while music and TV were also banned.

A video posted online by a high-profile woman journalist this week for a government-run TV station offered a different reality to the Taliban's new image of tolerance.

"Our lives are under threat," Shabnam Dawran, an anchor in state-owned broadcaster RTA, said as she recounted being barred from the office.

"The male employees, those with office cards were allowed to enter the office but I was told that I couldn't continue my duty because the system has been changed."

Isolated signs of opposition

There have been isolated signs of opposition to the Taliban in parts of Afghanistan this week.

Small groups of Afghans waved the country's black, red and green flags in Kabul and a handful of suburbs on Thursday to celebrate the anniversary of Afghanistan's independence — on occasion in plain sight of patrolling Taliban fighters.

Taliban fighters fired guns to disperse dozens of Afghans in Jalalabad who waved the flag on Wednesday.

Russia also emphasised on Thursday that a resistance movement was forming in the Panjshir Valley, led by deposed vice president Amrullah Saleh and Ahmad Massoud, the son of a slain anti-Taliban fighter.

"The Taliban doesn't control the whole territory of Afghanistan," Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said.

Holdout will struggle against Taliban

In the Panjshir Valley northeast of Kabul, Massoud, the son of Afghanistan's most famed anti-Taliban fighter Ahmad Shah Massoud, said he was "ready to follow in his father's footsteps".

"But we need more weapons, more ammunition and more supplies," Massoud wrote in the Washington Post.

But analysts say the fighters gathered there will struggle if the Taliban launches a full-scale attack.

"The resistance for the moment is just verbal because the Taliban have not yet tried to enter the Panjshir," said Afghan specialist Gilles Dorronsoro from Sorbonne University in Paris.

"The Taliban only need to lock down the Panjshir, they don't even have to go in there."

Abdul Sayed, an independent researcher based in Lund in Sweden, said he did not share Massoud's optimism for the chances of resistance.

"The Taliban surround Panjshir from all sides and I don't think Massoud's son can resist much more than a couple of months. For the moment, he does not have any really strong support," said Sayed.

Afghans trying to flee Kabul

Tens of thousands of people have tried to flee Afghanistan since the Taliban swept into the capital.

The United States said on Thursday that it had airlifted about 7,000 people out of Kabul over the past five days.

Chaos erupted at the airport this week, as frantic Afghans searched for a way to leave the country.

An Afghan sports federation announced a footballer for the national youth team had died after falling from a US plane he desperately clung to as it took off.

SOURCE: AFP