Fears of Taliban revenge grow

Group searches door-to-door for Afghans who worked with foreign forces

Kabul, Aug. 20: The Taliban are going houseto-house searching for opponents and their families, according to an intelligence document for the UN that deepened fears on Friday Afghanistan’s new rulers were reneging on pledges of tolerance.

After routing government forces and taking over Kabul on Sunday to end two decades of war, the hardline Islamist movement'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.

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, according to reports.

The report, written by the Norwegian Center for Global Analyses, said militants were 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, said.

“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.

“The killing of a close relative of one of our editors by the Taliban yesterday is inconceivably tragic, and testifies to the acute danger in which all our employees and their families in Afghanistan find themselves,” DW

director general Peter Limbourg said.

The Taliban have repeatedly said their 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.” —

— AP A porter pushes a wheelbarrow carrying an elderly Afghan man as he enters into Pakistan through a border crossing point in Chaman, Pakistan, on Friday.