TALIBAN KILLINGS FUEL FEAR, MORE CHAOS OUTSIDE AIRPORT
KABUL, Afghanistan — Reports of targeted killings in areas overrun by the Taliban mounted Friday, fueling fears that they will return Afghanistan to the repressive rule they imposed when they were last in power, even as they urged imams to push a message of unity at weekly prayers.
Terrified that the new rulers would commit such abuses and despairing for their country’s future, thousands have raced to Kabul’s airport, where chaotic scenes continued unabated. People seeking to escape struggled to get past crushing crowds, Taliban airport checkpoints and U.S. bureaucracy. Video images showed crowds gathered in the dark outside the barbed-wire topped walls. Occasionally someone shot a stream of gunfire into the air.
What appeared to be American troops stood in the distance. In one dramatic image, a U.S. Marine reached over the razor wire atop a barrier and plucked a baby by the arm from the crowd and pulled it up over the wall.
Reports of planes leaving at least partly empty underscored how difficult it still is for people to get into the airport. In an indication of the extent of the chaos, the Belgian foreign affairs ministry confirmed that one of its aircraft took off from Kabul without a single passenger because the people who were supposed to be on board got stuck outside the airport.
Also Friday, American officials confirmed to The Associated Press that U.S. military helicopters flew into Taliban-held Kabul to scoop up would-be evacuees, and President Joe Biden pledged to bring all Americans back from Afghanistan — and Afghans who aided the war effort, too.
“We will get you home,” Biden said from the White House.
The Taliban say they have become more moderate since they last ruled Afghanistan in the late 1990s and have pledged to restore security and forgive those who fought them in the 20 years since a U.S.-led invasion toppled them from power.
But many Afghans are skeptical, fearing that the Taliban will erase the gains, especially for women, achieved in the past two decades. Opposition to the takeover has included street protests — acts of defiance that Taliban fighters have violently suppressed.
An Amnesty International report provided more evidence Friday that undercut the Taliban’s claims they have changed.
The rights group said that its researchers spoke to eyewitnesses in Ghazni province who recounted how the Taliban killed nine ethnic Hazara men in the village of Mundarakht from July 4 to July 6. It said six of the men were shot, and three were tortured to death. Hazaras are Shiite Muslims who were previously persecuted by the Taliban and who made major gains in education and social status in recent years.
Amnesty International warned that more killings may have gone unreported because the Taliban cut cellphone services in many areas they captured.
Separately, Reporters without Borders expressed alarm at the news that Taliban fighters killed a family member of an Afghan journalist working for Germany’s Deutsche Welle on Wednesday. The broadcaster said fighters conducted house-to-house searches for their reporter, who had already relocated to Germany.
Meanwhile, a Norway-based private intelligence group that provides information to the United Nations said it obtained evidence that the Taliban have rounded up Afghans on a blacklist of people they believe worked in key roles with the previous Afghan administration or with U.S.-led forces.