We have to wait for the Taliban to show their true face, many Afghans warned in recent days. And it wasn’t a long wait. While the fundamentalists promised in a press conference on Tuesday that “the Islamic Emirate has no hostility or resentment towards anyone”, more and more reports are now coming out of Taliban door-to-door in Kabul looking for Afghans who once worked for NATO. troops, foreign media or the former Afghan government.
And where a female journalist from the media company Tolo News While interviewing a Taliban spokesman on television on Tuesday, it was announced hours later that all female state television employees had been banned from returning to work with immediate effect. In areas previously occupied by the Taliban, such as Kandahar and Herat, some female university students and workers had already been sent home.
shaky principles
The so-called new tolerance towards ethnic minorities also seems to be a shaky principle. The Taliban delegation that attended a religious gathering of the Hazara, a Shia minority in the country on Tuesday, is now overshadowed by an Amnesty International report released Thursday. In it, the human rights organization describes in detail how the Taliban carried out a massacre of a group of Hazara men in Ghazni province last month.
Six men were executed in cold blood, and three men were tortured before being shot. One victim had all arm muscles severed, another had arms and legs broken and hair pulled out before being killed. The incident is anything but a sign of a newfound tolerance for minorities such as the Hazara, who have always been oppressed by the Taliban in the past.
Looking for ‘collaborators’
Many Afghans do not ignore the writing on the wall, and err on the side of caution. For example, many well-known Afghan influencers have disappeared from Instagram and Youtube in recent days, and guides are circulating on social media on how best to erase your ‘digital footprint’. Because old Facebook messages that are critical of the Taliban, or photos on Instagram with dancing or singing, could get you in trouble with the jihadists, it is feared. Facebook said Friday it has released a tool that allows users in Afghanistan to hide their profile from anyone they are not friends with with a single click. That way the Taliban can’t watch.
Some Afghans working for foreign NGOs say they have removed all telephone numbers of Western contacts from their mobiles so that they cannot be linked to foreign organizations should the Taliban investigate their phones. Those fears are not unfounded, more and more reports are coming out of the Taliban going door-to-door looking for what they consider to be ‘collaborators’.
‘Death is better than being taken by them’
According to a report by the Norwegian Center for Global Analyses, which collects intelligence for the United Nations, the Taliban have a “blacklist” of names of Afghans associated with the former government, the military, the police and the US armed forces. They are not only a target, Afghan journalists are also wanted.
On Thursday it was announced that a close relative of an Afghan journalist who works for the German broadcaster German wave was killed after the Taliban were unable to locate the journalist – who is already in Germany – after several house searches. Deutsche Welle says that the houses of three other employees have now also been raided, it is unclear whether people have been arrested.
Although Afghans with ties to the West are in grave danger, they still stand a slim chance of being evacuated in the coming days, if they are to believe their employers’ promises. But many Afghans for whom there is no way out fear the moment that the Taliban will knock on their door. Also a young Afghan student in Kabul who – anonymously – in an interview with the BBC tells how she waits “with fear in the bones” for their arrival. “Maybe I’ll kill myself when they come. I’m talking about it with my friends, and this is what we all – really all – plan to do. Death is better than being taken by them.”
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