Traveling through the beautiful Andarab River valley north of the Afghan capital Kabul, we see no signs of conflict. But the Taliban, though stronger and better armed than ever before here and in neighboring Panjshir province, are facing the emergence of armed resistance against their forces in Afghanistan.
Small groups of guerrillas led by ex-Afghan army soldiers hiding in the mountaintops ambush and fight the Taliban.
We always accompany the Taliban by car through the green and fertile fields. Under his watchful eye, locals praise the increased security with his regime and criticize the rebels.
Some of the praise doesn’t feel right, but a man on a side street of a market makes a grim statement to us: “I can’t tell the truth – I could have been killed if I did.”
It’s hard to get an idea of the true extent of the war. While the resistance forces often exaggerate their strength, the Taliban seriously denies their existence. However, in Panjshir, fighters against the Taliban managed to shoot down a military helicopter and capture the soldiers on board.
Elsewhere in Baglan province (where Andarab region is located), resistance fighters were recently spotted hoisting a Taliban flag from a military post.
When the BBC went to the Andarab Valley in June, it became clear that the Taliban had firm control of the area. We visited the village of Qais Tarrach and the local military commander told us “no problem”.
“You can see for yourself, we only have a very small military presence here,” says Kari Jumadin Badri, a battalion commander in the Afghan Army’s Omari division, on a mountaintop above the valley.
However, we have reliable information about an ambush by insurgents against a Taliban vehicle near here last May that resulted in the deaths of two Taliban members. When asked, Badri said, “That was a long time ago. We started an operation in the mountains and now it’s gone. [mais] anything.”
In Panjshir, videos of lengthy convoys of Taliban reinforcements were broadcast, but there, too, Taliban officials deny consistent reports of combat.
Andarab – another stronghold of anti-Taliban sentiment – appears less militarized. But while speaking in secret with local residents, we heard serious and repeated allegations of human rights abuses by the Taliban trying to dismantle the resistance movement.
A relative of a resident named Abdul Hashim said he and three other men were arrested and killed by the Taliban soon after the ambush near Qais Tarrach, after being falsely accused of involvement in the attack. According to a relative, “His hands were tied and he was shot in the head and chest”.
He showed photos of Abdul Hassim’s body and said that his brother-in-law Noorullah was also killed in the incident.
“They didn’t allow men to attend Abdul Hashim’s funeral,” a relative told the BBC. “Only women were able to bury him.”
A villager who was detained along with the men by the Taliban in the search operation also told the BBC that the Taliban took about 20 men from his village to the ambush area, where they were beaten in the legs with sticks and metal cables. .
“They put me in the back of a pickup truck, someone put our head down… Noorullah and Abdul Hashim were in another truck – they landed them in the back of a military vehicle and hit them on the side of a creek,” he counts.
Two more people from the same village were killed that day.
There are other disturbing claims as well. Traveling together towards the village of Tagarak, an active center of the resistance, the four men were detained and questioned by the Taliban in June and allegedly later killed.
Last year, shortly after the Taliban took Kabul in August, resistance fighters in Andarab said they were quickly “liberating” several areas.
A doctor named Zainuddin was killed in his home, along with five of his relatives, including children, after he was taken back by the Taliban. A family member claimed he was killed for providing treatment to resistance fighters.
“As a doctor, it was your job to treat everyone,” the relative said angrily.
In February of this year, another doctor – Dr. Khorami, from the Deh Salah region in the northeastern part of the country, was also killed. A relative said he received threats from the Taliban warning him to stop treating people linked to the resistance.
Several families accused of being linked to the resistance report were told to leave their village, while local residents claimed that a third doctor remained in custody.
Asadullah Hashemi, the Taliban’s intelligence chief in Baglan province, denies the allegations. He admits that a doctor was killed in the area, but describes the incident as “personal hostility”.
Regarding the alleged extrajudicial killings, Hashemi categorically denied that any detained person had been killed. But he added that anyone who “vigorously resists government forces” during an operation could be killed or imprisoned: “This happens all over the world.”
Hashemi refused to acknowledge the presence of resistance forces in the area, referring to a small group of “terrorists”, but there is a long history of opposing the Taliban there.
Andarab and Panjshir are ruled by the Persian-speaking Tajik community, while the Taliban are mostly Pashtun.
Unlike the previous regime in the 1990s, the Taliban managed to successfully recruit some locals. A few local Taliban police chiefs and intelligence officials were either Tajik or Iranian, as were some of the soldiers stationed in Andarab.
But most of them are Pashto. Many in Andarab worked in the former Afghan government’s security forces and are now fiercely opposed to the Taliban, whom they see as intruders.
Some relatives of the victims of extrajudicial executions also criticize the resistance forces. They say guerrilla tactics leave the civilian population vulnerable to Taliban retaliation.
The BBC managed to contact Commander Shuja, a resistance fighter in Andarab.
“Our fight is for justice, fraternity, equality and true Islam, not for Taliban Islam that defames religion,” he said in a pre-recorded message responding to questions sent by the report.
“Our fight is for the rights of our sisters. Our Prophet said that education is obligatory for both men and women,” she says.
The violence in Andarab and Panjshir is local and does not yet pose a serious threat to the overall Taliban control over the country. However, there is a risk of repeating the same mistakes of your old competitors.
Over the past two decades, invading attacks by Afghan and international forces and allegations of innocent civilians being killed have helped boost the Taliban’s popularity where the country already exists and has some degree of support.
Now they are accused of using the same suppression tactics, apparently with little sense of responsibility.
Abdul Hashim’s relative, who was allegedly detained and killed by the Taliban, told the BBC: “The Taliban claim they are the government, so they should investigate, not just kill a person directly.”
source: Noticias
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