Taliban killed 100 ex-Af govt officials: UN
The report paints a picture of worsening living conditions for Afghan people under Taliban rule, despite an end to combat
UNITED NATIONS: The Taliban and their allies have killed more than 100 security and civilian personnel linked to the former US-backed Afghan government since seizing power in August, according to a new United Nations report.
The report describes severe curtailing of human rights by Afghanistan’s fundamentalist new rulers. Taliban officials on Monday rejected the claims, insisting that the reported deaths were linked to “personal enmity” cases and were under investigation.
“The Islamic Emirate has not killed anyone since the amnesty was announced,” the interior ministry said on Twitter.
The UN report said that, in addition to the political killings, women’s freedoms and the right to protest had also been curbed.
Despite the Taliban’s promise of general amnesties, the United Nations Assistance Mission for Afghanistan “continued to receive credible allegations of killings, enforced disappearances, and other violations”, the report said.
The UN said its Afghan mission had received more than 100 reports of killings that it deems credible. More than two-thirds were “extra-judicial killings committed by the de facto authorities or their affiliates”.
Additionally, “human rights defenders and media workers continue to come under attack, intimidation, harassment, arbitrary arrest, ill-treatment and killings” it said.
The report also detailed a government clampdown on peaceful protests, as well as a lack of access for women and girls to work and education.
“An entire complex social and economic system is shutting down,” UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres said.
Afghanistan is in the grip of a humanitarian disaster made worse by the Taliban takeover, which prompted Western countries to freeze international aid and assets worth billions of dollars held abroad.
Guterres’ report to the UN Security Council paints a picture of worsening living conditions for Afghanistan’s 39 million people despite an end of combat with the group’s August victory.
Biden calls on Taliban to release US hostage
US President Joe Biden on Sunday called on Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers to release a US civil engineer who was abducted two years ago and is believed to be the last American hostage held by the Taliban.
Mark Frerichs, a 59-year-old US Navy veteran from Lombard, Illinois, who worked in Afghanistan for a decade on development projects.
He was kidnapped a month before the February 2020 US troop pull-out deal was signed and was transferred to the Haqqani network , a brutal Taliban faction accused of some of the deadliest attacks of the war.
Monday marks his second year in captivity. “Threatening the safety of Americans or any innocent civilians is always unacceptable, and hostage-taking is an act of particular cruelty and cowardice,” Biden said.
“The Taliban must immediately release Mark before it can expect any consideration of its aspirations for legitimacy. This is not negotiable.”
Biden pulled US troops out of Afghanistan in August in a chaotic withdrawal that drew sharp criticism from Republicans and his own Democrats as well as foreign allies and punctured his approval ratings.
Frerichs’ family has criticised the US government for not pressing harder to secure his release. Last week, his sister, Charlene Cakora, made a personal plea to Biden in a Washington Post opinion piece titled, “President Biden, please bring home my brother, the last American held hostage in Afghanistan.”