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According to a new report from Amnesty International, shortly after taking power in Afghanistan, the Taliban killed at least 13 Hazara members, including a 17-year-old girl, in the central Dekundi Province.
On August 30, a convoy of 300 Taliban fighters entered the Khidr area and killed at least 11 former members of the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF). 9 of them were taken to a nearby river basin, shortly after the surrender Was executed. The human rights organization said in a report released on Tuesday.
A teenager named Masuma was killed in a crossfire after the Taliban attacked Afghan troops trying to flee the area. Another newly married civilian, Fayaz, in his 20s, was also killed in the crossfire.
Amnesty International said the ANSF members who were killed ranged in age from 26 to 46. All the victims were Hazaras, who were persecuted during the first Taliban in power from 1996 to 2001.
This is the second killing of a Hazara recorded by Amnesty International. In July, before the Taliban militants seized power, at least nine Hazaras were killed by Taliban militants in Ghazni Province. Amnesty International Report August 19th.
The Taliban and its rival, the Islamic State of Khorasan Province (ISKP), have all been accused of targeting the Hazaras who make up the majority of the Shiite population in Afghanistan.
By September 1, the Taliban denied the killing. Saidqullah Abed, the daykundi police chief appointed by the Taliban, will only confirm that one of their fighters was injured in the crossfire.
Former member of the province Raihana Azad also confirmed the report submitted by Amnesty International to Al Jazeera, stating that the incident on August 30 was equivalent to an “inhuman massacre” carried out by the Taliban.
She said that what happened in Khidr directly violated the Taliban’s claim to grant a national amnesty to former security forces and government workers.
Amnesty International Secretary-General Agnes Karamad said: “These cold-blooded executions further prove that the Taliban are committing the same terrible abuses they were notorious for during their previous rule of Afghanistan.”
During the five-year rule in the 1990s, the Taliban were accused of massacring hundreds of Hazaras in Balkh and Bamyan provinces.
Amnesty International South Asia researcher Zaman Sultani (Zaman Sultani) said that Dekundi’s killing followed a clear Taliban pattern.
He pointed out that the interviewee believed that a statement made by a senior Taliban official was evidence: “I have been killing people for the past 20 years. Killing is easy for me. I can kill again,” the official reportedly told Dekundi residents.
Former congressman Azad said that the Taliban’s atrocities in Dekundi did not end with killings.
She said that since the Taliban occupied the province on August 14 (the day before former President Ashraf Ghani fled the country), thousands of families have been forced to leave the mountainous provinces of Gizab and Pato. Homes.
A list compiled by residents shows that as many as 20,000 families have been forcibly displaced in at least 10 different villages in the past month and a half.
When talking to Al Jazeera, residents of Daykundi said that when the Taliban came to their home, the fighters claimed that the family had illegally occupied the land, or that a Taliban Shura believed that the land “belongs to the people”.
No financial ability
Azad said that the large tracts of land occupied by the Taliban made their reasoning unbelievable.
“If it’s just a village, these may be some kind of legal issues, but there is no reason for land disputes in so many villages.”
She said that many families have lived on their own land for generations, “They control everything.”
Muhammad*, a resident of Gizab district, is one of them.
The 42-year-old said that when the Taliban came to their door on September 23 and asked them to vacate the property, his wife and children were at home. The nine members of Muhammad’s family were frightened and did not know what to do, all left the house they lived in for decades.
“I was a child when that house was built. I planted trees outside myself,” Mohammed told Al Jazeera from Kabul, where his family now lives.
Before coming to the capital, Mohammed, a former Ministry of Education staff member, tried to appeal to the Taliban, but he said it was useless, even if the soldiers who came to his home were from the same area as him.
“I tried to explain to the Islamic Emirate, but they just said,’Your land now belongs to the people and has been decided.'”
Even what he did was of no avail. He was told that the decision was made in accordance with Islamic law. However, like Azad, Muhammad has difficulty reconciling the Taliban’s reasons. He said that even in the Shariah court, land disputes may take months or even years to resolve.
“These things will not happen in a few weeks,” Mohammed said.
Former congressman Azad said that as the winter in Afghanistan approaches, these forced evictions will lead to a humanitarian crisis in a mountainous province. It may take up to 14 hours to get from a region to the capital, Nili.
“Without homes and land, these people do not have the financial means to move to other places, so they can only live in tents in the fields,” Azad said.
Daykundi is considered one of the poorest and least developed provinces in Afghanistan. Most of the men in the province went to other cities or Iran and Pakistan when they were adolescents to work in day labor or mine work.
These forced displacements seem to be consistent with other reports about the Taliban before the Taliban took over Afghanistan. In July, Human Rights Watch released a report in the northern province of Kunduz, stating that the Taliban forced at least 400 families to flee their homes.
“Forced displacement of civilians is illegal, unless it is absolutely necessary for the safety of affected civilians or for military reasons. Retaliation is a form of collective punishment and is also forbidden,” Human Rights Watch Deputy Director of Asia, Pat Lixia Gossman told Al Jazeera.
*The name has been changed to protect its identity.
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