Taliban ‘executing’ Afghan fighters
Taliban commanders are hunting down and killing former members of the defeated Afghan army despite its promise of general amnesty, a special forces officer has said.
The commando, who is in hiding, told the BBC that Taliban gunmen had tracked down at least 12 of his colleagues to their homes before summarily executing them in recent days.
The alleged killings in Kandahar and Jalalabad are the latest accusations of retribution, amid growing reports of reprisals against senior former officials.
Nine former members of the Afghan security forces were reported to have been shot dead after they surrendered to the Taliban in a separate incident in Khedir district of Daikundi province.
Soon after their takeover, the insurgents’ chief spokesman called on Afghans to “restart your routine life with full confidence.”
The special forces officer said: “The Taliban’s promise of amnesty is not true. A few days ago, they killed 12 special forces personnel in Kandahar and some soldiers in Jalalabad. They were my close friends. I was in touch with them. The Taliban took them out of their homes and shot them.”
A senior Pakistan defence source said it was not clear if the reprisals had been ordered from the top, or were the work of individuals seeking revenge.
As the Taliban tighten their grip, they have issued new rules in Kandahar banning radio stations from playing music or using female announcers.
In Kabul, shops and restaurants have also stopped playing music. Many radio stations took the precaution of changing the programming — in some cases pre-empting orders from local Taliban officials to ban female announcers and music.
“It’s not that the Taliban ordered us to change anything, we have altered the programming for now as we don’t want the Taliban to force us to close down,” Khalid Sediqqi, a producer at a private radio station in the central city of Ghazni, said to Reuters.
Meanwhile, the U.K. government is being threatened with legal action over its failure to give visas to a female judge and a female MP from Afghanistan whose lives are at risk from the Taliban.
Both women are still in Afghanistan and are being assisted by a team of lawyers in Britain who are acting for free.
The female judge is said to be at “extreme risk” because of her work protecting women’s rights, including the sentencing of those who committed domestic abuse against their wives.
According to the lawyers, she was placed on the Foreign Office’s “exceptional risk” list and also put forward for a visa. She and her close family, also at risk, were expecting to be called forward to board an evacuation flight out of Afghanistan but this never happened.