Status: 08/20/2021 7:39 p.m.
According to a UN report, the Taliban are specifically looking for alleged collaborators and their family members in Afghanistan. There have been reports of executions, according to human rights activists.
The United Nations has warned of the Taliban’s revenge actions in Afghanistan. According to an internal UN report, the Islamists are systematically looking for opponents and their relatives, as reported by the British broadcaster BBC. The report said the greatest risk were those who held key positions in the military, police or other investigative agencies.
According to the report, the Islamists had drawn up lists and maps of the whereabouts of people they tried to arrest before they captured major cities in Afghanistan. If they could not be found, family members would instead be taken into custody or threatened with arrest and even death.
Close search at checkpoints in Kabul
It also said that the Taliban intensified the gathering of information on former government employees by recruiting informants and contacting traders and mosques. The focus of Western nations on the repatriation of their own citizens is being exploited to target Afghans in a targeted manner. Warnings are given against an increasingly close-knit search at checkpoints in Kabul. This could lead to the capital Kabul being completely cordoned off within the next few days and leaving the city much more difficult.
“The Taliban are looking for key people who want to get to the airport and have set up checkpoints on all major roads and around major cities, including in Kabul and Jalalabad, including the highways,” the report said. In the worst case, there will be public executions. The arrest of Western citizens and medical workers is also not ruled out.
Reports of executions
The human rights organization Human Rights Watch (HRW) claims to have received reports of “civil executions” by the Taliban. The alleged victims are former Afghan government officials and security forces, said the deputy director for HRW in Asia, Patricia Gossman, in an online column with journalists. The extent is still unclear. Many of these incidents were found to take place outside of Kabul in the Afghan provinces.
At the same time, according to a local media report, several representatives of the previous Afghan government are missing. Relatives told the TV broadcaster ToloNews that their family members have disappeared or have presumably been held by the Islamists since the Taliban came to power. The previous governor and the previous police chief of the Laghman province in the east of the country had surrendered to the Taliban, but were still held in captivity by the Islamists, the relatives said. The police chief of Gasni in the south-east of the country cannot be found either.
Taliban had announced amnesty
At their first press conference since taking power on Tuesday, the Taliban announced a comprehensive amnesty for all government employees and members of the army. They had also given assurances that former local staff in the international armed forces would not have to fear attacks.