Fear Grips Afghans as Taliban Said to be “Searching” its Opponents

Manas Dasgupta

NEW DELHI, Aug 20: Despite the Taliban offering a “general amnesty” and asking the government employees, including women, to return to their normal duty, fear has gripped the people of Afghanistan following reports that the militants were “looking for its enemies.”

A United Nations report on Friday said Taliban members had been conducting door-to-door searches to track down their opponents, especially ones who have helped US and NATO forces in the past. The report, written by the Norwegian Center for Global Analyses, said militants were also screening people on the way to Kabul airport.

Media reports citing a NATO official said more than 18,000 people have been flown out of Kabul since the Taliban’s advent. Thousands of people, desperate to flee the country were still thronging the airport even though the Taliban have urged people without legal travel documents to go home, official sources said.

The Taliban has also urged for unity ahead of Friday prayers, the first since they seized power taking over Kabul on Sunday, calling on imams to persuade people not to leave Afghanistan amid the chaos at the airport.

Even as Pakistan’s state-run airline has resumed special flights for Kabul on Friday in order to evacuate Pakistanis and foreigners stranded in Afghanistan, it had been a tough wait for some 450 Indians possibly still stranded inside Afghanistan.

The Government of India is said to be coordinating with the United States and other embassies to assist in their return, as transport to the airport as well as flights from Kabul to Delhi are proving to be a challenge.

In addition, four days after Taliban militia took control of the capital, there was no formal government in place, making it harder for those who don’t have all the necessary documents, officials said.

The External Affairs minister S Jaishankar said India was working with international partners, principally the U.S., in bringing stranded Indian nationals back home from strife-torn Afghanistan. Jaishankar said this while addressing reporters at the UN Security Council stake-out after chairing the Security Council briefing on the ‘Threats to international peace and security caused by terrorist acts’, held under India’s current Presidency of the Council.

The US secretary of state Antony Blinken also spoke with Jaishankar on August 19 over the chaotic situation in Afghanistan. They have agreed to continue coordination.

A total of 7,000 people have been evacuated from Afghanistan since the start of evacuation operations on August 14 and over 5,200 U.S. troops are in Kabul, the Pentagon said on August 19. Cumulatively, the number of people moved out of Afghanistan is somewhere near 12,000.

India had brought back about 200 of its nationals including its embassy staff in two trips and closed down its mission in Kabul soon after the Taliban took over the national capital last Sunday but since then all flights have remained suspended due to the prevailing chaotic conditions at the Kabul airport.

The Pakistani Information Minister Fawad Chaudhry in a tweet said Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) will send its two planes to the Afghan capital on Friday to evacuate 350 passengers. Chaudhry said Pakistan’s interior ministry was also facilitating the evacuation of Pakistanis and foreigners from Afghanistan through border crossings.

The latest development comes days after PIA halted all flights to Kabul to protect passengers, the crew and the planes after consulting the Afghan civil aviation authorities.

Pakistan’s government has been trying to evacuate its citizens and foreigners by air and land routes since the Taliban took over Kabul. For this purpose, Pakistan is issuing visas upon arrival to all diplomats, foreigners and journalists who want to leave Kabul over security concerns.

Spain’s defence minister says the country’s military transport planes are leaving Kabul partly empty because chaos at the city’s airport is preventing Afghans from evacuating. Media reports quoted Defence Minister Margarita Robles stating that one Afghan family taken out by Spain had left behind a daughter they lost in the airport crush. She told Spanish public radio RNE that an ideal solution would be to set up corridors into the airport, but that’s impossible because “nobody’s in control of the situation.”

An Afghan official familiar with the government formation talks with the Taliban said the group had no plan to take any decision or make announcements about the upcoming government until after the August 31 US withdrawal date passes.

The official said the Taliban lead negotiator Anas Haqqani had told his ex-government interlocutors that the group has a deal with the US “to do nothing” until after the final withdrawal date passes. He did not elaborate on whether the reference to doing nothing was only in the political field.

Haqqani’s statement raises concerns about what the religious movement might be planning after August 31, and whether they will keep their promise to include non-Taliban officials in the next government. Until now the Taliban have said nothing of their plans to replace the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces, or what a replacement would look like.

The Vatican’s newspaper is calling on the international community to welcome Afghan civilians fleeing the Taliban. According to AP, in a front-page article in the Friday edition of L’Osservatore Romano, deputy editor Gaetano Vallini said the West was obliged to urgently remedy the situation with concrete action and welcome refugees to avoid a “catastrophic humanitarian emergency.”

Media reports said the Friday prayers were uneventful in Kabul, with no Taliban gunmen seen guarding the entrances of mosques or enforcing dress code restrictions as they have in the past. Some mosques even saw higher numbers than normal in attendance. The Taliban had issued guidance to imams around Afghanistan yesterday, saying they should use the weekly sermons and prayers to appeal for unity, urge people not to flee the country, and to counter “negative propaganda” about them.

The Amnesty International, however, claimed that the Taliban fighters tortured and killed members of an ethnic minority (Hazaras) in Afghanistan after recently overrunning their village. The rights group said its researchers spoke to eyewitnesses in Ghazni province who recounted how the Taliban killed nine Hazara men in the village of Mundarakht on July 4-6. It said six of the men were shot, and three were tortured to death.

The brutality of the killings was “a reminder of the Taliban’s past record, and a horrifying indicator of what Taliban rule may bring,” said Agnes Callamard, the head of Amnesty International.

Meanwhile, The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday that about two dozen US diplomats in Afghanistan had send an internal cable last month warning Blinken of the potential fall of Kabul to the Taliban as U.S. troops withdrew from the country,

The newspaper said the confidential cable sent through a so-called dissent channel was signed on July 13 and offered recommendations on ways to mitigate the crisis and accelerate an evacuation. US officials declined to confirm specific details or share the contents of the cable.

“I think the cable reflects what we’ve said all along which is nobody had this exactly right in predicting that the government and army of Afghanistan were going to collapse in a matter of days,” White House deputy national security adviser Jonathan Finer said. A source familiar with the situation said the State Department took on board the concerns of those who drafted the cable, including by condemning the Taliban’s atrocities ahead of the group seizing the Afghan capital Kabul on Sunday.

State Department spokesman Ned Price said diplomats’ views shared with Blinken through the channel were incorporated into policy and planning. “We value constructive internal dissent. It’s patriotic. It’s protected. And it makes us more effective,” Price said.

The air force of Indonesia has evacuated 26 of its citizens from Afghanistan, its foreign minister said on Friday. Indonesia, the world’s largest Muslim majority country, picked up 33 people in total on a plane that was now headed home via Pakistan, foreign minister Retno Marsudi said on Twitter.

“The plane is now in Islamabad to continue on to Indonesia,” she said, adding there were 26 Indonesians aboard, including embassy staff, plus five Filipinos and two Afghan nationals.

More than 160 Australian and Afghan citizens have been evacuated from Kabul after a third rescue flight, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison said. Morrison said 60 Australians and Afghans who helped Australia during the 20-year war were flown to the United Arab Emirates overnight.

Former Sri Lankan prime minister Ranil Wickremesinghe has cautioned the government against recognising Taliban’s rule in Afghanistan and advocated snapping of ties with Kabul, saying one should rethink if the country should be a “party to help terrorism” raise its head in the region.

In a statement, the four-time former prime minister said: “Everyone fears that Afghanistan would become a centre of jihadi terrorist groups under the Taliban rule. No one could condone their action to threaten states and people. Their ideology based on a wrong interpretation of the Quran is a threat to conventional Islamic states and other nations,” Wickremesinghe said. “There are no justifiable reasons for us to recognise a Taliban rule,” he added.

Meanwhile, the police said in Nagpur that an Afghan national, who was deported to his country from India in June this year after he was found staying here illegally, has apparently joined the Taliban and his picture holding a rifle has surfaced on social media.

“The man, Noor Mohammad Ajiz Mohammad, 30, was found staying in Nagpur since the last 10 years illegally. He was living in a rented place in Dighori area of the city. Acting on a tip-off, the police had started keeping a watch on his activities. He was finally nabbed and deported to Afghanistan on June 23,” he said.

“After his deportation, he seems to have joined the Taliban and his photo holding a gun has emerged on social media,” he added.

During the probe earlier, police had found that he had come to Nagpur in 2010 on a six-month tourist visa. Later, he had applied to the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) seeking a refugee status for himself, but his application was rejected. His appeal was also turned down by the UNHRC. Since then, he stayed in Nagpur illegally, the official said.

Another police official said that Noor Mohammad’s original name is Abdul Haque and his brother was working with the Taliban. Last year, Noor had floated a video on social media with a sharp-edged weapon.