[In a Skype interview from London,
Ahmad Wali Masoud, the uncle of Ahmad Massoud, the leader of anti-Taliban
resistance fighters in Panjshir, echoed the accusations that the Taliban were
imposing clampdowns in the province and had killed civilians, though he was not
able to say how many or under what circumstances they were killed. The uncle, a
former Afghan ambassador, said that resistance fighters still controlled
“major” areas in Panjshir and were engaged in intermittent clashes with Taliban
fighters.]
By Haq
Nawaz Khan and Kareem Fahim
A Taliban spokesman denied that the
movement’s fighters had killed any civilians in Panjshir, a northern region
that has been a last redoubt for anti-Taliban fighters. The latest accusations
came as U.N. officials decried other alleged Taliban abuses, including reprisal
killings and beatings and fatal shootings of protesters across the country.
Taken together, the accusations
have painted a bleak picture of Taliban rule in the weeks since the Islamist
militants took power and pledged to govern inclusively, respect women’s rights
and press freedoms, and avoid retaliatory actions against former adversaries.
[Dozens
of women in Afghanistan protest Taliban rule and gender-based violence]
An interim government named by the
Taliban this week consists entirely of Taliban members, includes no women and
eliminates the ministry in charge of ensuring opportunity and rights for women
and girls. A Taliban spokesman, defending the appointments, said they were the
result of discussions held “all over the country.”
Last week, the militants seized
control of Panjshir. As sporadic clashes have continued, civilians have seized
chances to flee the province amid reports that at least eight residents,
including children, had been killed by the Taliban, said the elder, who spoke
on the condition of anonymity because he feared for his safety.
He said he fled with his clothes,
leaving behind his cows, goats and chickens. “My people pressed me to leave the
area,” he said, adding that his family warned him Taliban fighters would kill
him. The eight civilians killed in Panjshir three days earlier were “neither
supporters of the resistance or the Taliban,” he said, without providing more
detail about the deaths.
In a Skype interview from London,
Ahmad Wali Masoud, the uncle of Ahmad Massoud, the leader of anti-Taliban
resistance fighters in Panjshir, echoed the accusations that the Taliban were
imposing clampdowns in the province and had killed civilians, though he was not
able to say how many or under what circumstances they were killed. The uncle, a
former Afghan ambassador, said that resistance fighters still controlled
“major” areas in Panjshir and were engaged in intermittent clashes with Taliban
fighters.
“Everyone is weighing their next
move,” the elder Masoud said, adding that there was little prospect that
negotiations would end the standoff in Panjshir.
“The Taliban is the Taliban,” he
said. “They are worse and more violent than ever before.”
Bilal Karimi, a Taliban spokesman,
denied that the group’s fighters were harming civilians in Panjshir, calling
reports to the contrary “baseless and unfounded.”
[Anti-Taliban
resistance fighters rely on grit, history and geography to hang on in
Afghanistan]
The Taliban’s harsh handling of
protests was on full display earlier this week in Kabul, the capital, where
activists and journalists said they faced lashings by Taliban fighters. Among
those beaten were two journalists who work for Etilaatroz, an Afghan newspaper,
the outlet said on
Twitter. Photos shared on social media showed their backs covered with
red-and-purple bruises.
A United Nations human rights
official warned the Taliban on Friday to “immediately cease” using force
against peaceful protesters. Demonstrators “across various provinces in
Afghanistan over the past four weeks have faced an increasingly violent
response by the Taliban, including the use of live ammunition, batons and
whips,” the official, Ravina Shamdasani, a spokeswoman for the U.N. High
Commissioner for Human Rights, said in a media briefing in Geneva, according to
a transcript of her remarks.
Her comments came a day after
Deborah Lyons, the U.N. secretary general’s envoy to Afghanistan, said in a briefing to the Security Council that there were
“credible allegations” that reprisal killings have been carried out against
members of the former government’s security forces, despite Taliban pledges of
amnesty for soldiers and government officials. “We have received reports of
members of the Taliban carrying out house-to-house searches and seizing
property, particularly in Kabul,” she said.
Lyons added that she was
“increasingly worried” by a growing number of incidents of “harassment and
intimidation” targeting Afghan members of the U.N. staff. “The U.N. cannot
conduct its work — work that is so essential to the Afghan people — if its
personnel are subjected to intimidation, fear for their lives, and cannot move
freely,” she said.
Thousands of people, including some
U.S. citizens, have attempted to leave Afghanistan since the end of the U.S.
military airlift on Aug. 31, but the flow has been limited, in part by the slow
recovery of operations at Kabul’s Hamid Karzai International Airport following
the withdrawal of foreign military forces from the country.
A second civilian airliner left
Kabul late Friday bound for Qatar and carrying American and other foreign
passport holders, according to Emily Horne, a spokeswoman for the National
Security Council, and a Qatari official briefed on the details. The first civilian flight, on Thursday, carried 10 U.S.
citizens and 11 green card holders, according to the State Department.
Nineteen U.S. citizens were among
the 158 passengers on Friday’s Qatar Airways flight bound for Doha, along with
French, Dutch, British, Belgian and Mauritanian nationals, the officials said.
Horne, in a statement, said that an additional group of two U.S. citizens and
11 lawful permanent residents left Afghanistan on Friday “via overland passage
to a neighboring country.”
Also on Friday, White House press
secretary Jen Psaki said that flights of refugees from Afghanistan to the
United States had been “temporarily paused” because four Afghans who had
recently arrived in the United States had been diagnosed with measles. The
suspension of flights was made at the request of the Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention “out of an abundance of caution,” she said.
Khan reported from Peshawar,
Pakistan, and Fahim from Istanbul. John Hudson in Washington contributed to
this report.
