Afghanistan: Taliban accused of genocide in last hold out

Afghan resistance fighters in Panjshir province. Picture: AFP.

As the last frontier holding out against the Taliban, the valley of Panjshir – long connected with freedom and independent spirit, was always going to be punished. And now, with the Taliban brutalising villages alongside the main road that runs through the valley, word is emerging not just of war crimes, but of genocide.

Communications with the area is difficult because the internet and phone lines have been cut. But The Australian has spoken with a senior Panjshir local, Mohammed, now living outside of the country, who is getting various messages relayed to him and the information is highly distressing.

He said: “The Taliban are taking human prizes, so many casualties that are the civilians in the villages. The fighters run to the mountains, but the Taliban have entered villages (lower down in the valley floor) and killed whoever they found.’’

Others have spoken about Panjshir men and young boys in the villages situated alongside the main road being rounded up and taken away at gunpoint in trucks.

One of the victims of a Taliban village massacre was Mohammed’s cousin, 15. “He wasn’t a fighter, he was a student but he was killed brutally”. He adds that another two extended cousins have also been killed, but he added, “they were fighters’’.

The Taliban has stopped journalists from covering the conflict, raising fears of other atrocities being carried out in Panjshir.

There are unverified rumours of mass killings, with heads being placed on poles; of others being run over by tanks and their bodies thrown in the river.

On Wednesday the Taliban severely beat up two journalists from Etilaatroz newspaper who had been covering a Kabul protest in support of women’s rights.

Afghan journalists paying the price for continuing to do their work in the face of threats and violence. We know many of them, they are all a source of great pride in our trade. https://t.co/mnlBq4xfKj

— [e-mail] (@KimSengupta07) September 9, 2021

The men were told they were lucky not to have been beheaded, and were instead severely beaten, kicked and whipped until they fell unconscious before being released after three hours.

In recent days the Taliban, armed with their hi-tech weaponry courtesy of the allies’ departure, have targeted and killed Panjshir commanders from the National Resistance Front “from the air””. Just who controlled the drones has been the source of much conjecture. Iran has condemned “foreign interference’’ in the valley. Pakistan has denied being involved, saying the allegations were “preposterous’’.

Those to have been killed include the highly respected former Afghan journalist and resistance spokesman Fahim Dashti, 48, whom The Australian had been communicating with about the situation on the ground. The last message from him came nearly two weeks ago as he set up an interview with the resistance leader Ahmad Massoud after delicate talks with the Taliban had broken down. Massoud had called on the Taliban to allow free elections and decentralise the government to empower people.

Afghan women protest in Kabul. Picture: EPA.

Dashti, who had been badly injured but survived the lethal bomb attack which assassinated Massoud’s father, the Northern Resistance leader Ahmad Shad Massoud 20 years ago, was killed instantly last weekend alongside the commander at the resistance front line General Sahib Abdu.

Just before his death Dashti wrote on Twitter: “If we die, history will write about us, as people who stood for their country till the end of the line”.

Mohammed has told The Australian he feels the same.

This week the Taliban conquered the valley road and hoisted the Taliban flag, and most distressingly for Afghans, they vandalised the memorial of Massoud senior.

Mohammed said he believed that the dreadful sacrifices of the Panjshir people were worthwhile because they had provided all of Afghanistan with “hope’’.

“We kept hope alive, we got killed, we got slaughtered and massacred, but hope is there. Panjshir showed it was not a solution to fly out of Afghanistan, but to stay and fight for freedoms.’’

Haj Bahlul Bahij, one of the most important resistance leaders was killed in gunfight with the Taliban on Wednesday. Mohammad said Bahij had fought until he ran out of bullets and then refused to surrender.

He said the Taliban’s involvement in war crimes had started in 1996, when they were targeting the ethnic minority group Hazara, and their methods had become both more sophisticated and barbaric in 2021.

“The Taliban has strong sympathy among the new generation of extremists, who want to fight. They don’t know anything else, they can’t do simple manual things, their only skill is hatred and then fighting what they are shown is a target,’’ he said.

The National Resistance Front‘s spokesman Ali Nazary also warned that the Taliban was starving the Panjshir people of supplies. He told the BBC: “Unfortunately they cut off Panjshir more than a week ago from supplies, from food, from medicine, it’s turning into a humanitarian crisis … the world is ignoring this”.

On Wednesday the National Resistance Front tweeted the situation had deteriorated even further: “The Taliban have resorted to a sustained campaign of massacring civilians. evidence abounds about the group’s war crimes that borders on genocide”.

Massoud’s French philosopher friend Bernard-Henri Lévy tweeted on Thursday, the anniversary of Massoud senior’s assassination that while the Taliban controlled part of the valley of Panjshir, but didn’t control the mountain and that the resistance was organising and morale “is high’’.

The Taliban governor of Panjshir, Malawi Qudratullah Panjshiri, released a video message saying that the Taliban had security in Panjshir under control and that 400 fighters had been deployed to try and enable people to be able to return to their homes.