UN accuses Taliban of stoking fear over brutal killings

The Taliban have executed scores of officials linked to the fallen government and displayed their bodies to spread fear despite declaring an amnesty after taking over the country in August, the United Nations has said.

Its Human Rights Council said it had heard of the killings of more than 100 former government officials, most attributed to the Taliban, along with the summary execution of suspected Islamic State members, including hangings and beheadings.

“In several cases the bodies were publicly displayed,” Nada Al-Nashif, UN deputy high commissioner for human rights, told the council in Geneva. “This has exacerbated fear among this category of the population.”

Al-Nashif said she was deeply alarmed by continuing reports of such killings, which contradict the Taliban’s promised amnesty for all those linked to the former US-backed government.

The Taliban have not extended any such promise to members of Islamic State Khorasan, the jihadist network’s branch in Afghanistan and a sworn enemy of its new rulers.

The council was given a grim account of the situation by the former government’s ambassador to the UN. He said many other allegations of targeted killings and enforced disappearances were going undocumented.

“With the takeover of Kabul, not only do we see a total reversal of two decades of advances . . . but the [Taliban are] also committing a litany of abuses with full impunity, which in many cases is going unreported and undocumented,” Nasir Ahmad Andisha, ambassador to the UN in Geneva, said. He retained his credentials at the world body after the Taliban were denied UN recognition.

Abdul Qahar Balkhi, the Taliban’s foreign ministry spokesman, said that all allegations would be thoroughly investigated but added that unsubstantiated rumours should not be taken at face value. He insisted that the Taliban remained fully committed to the amnesty and that anyone found breaching the amnesty decree would be prosecuted and penalised.

In a report released yesterday Amnesty International alleged that the Taliban had tortured and killed ethnic and religious minorities, former Afghan soldiers and suspected government sympathisers during the final stages of the conflict.

“Our new evidence shows that, far from the seamless transition of power that the Taliban claimed happened, the people of Afghanistan have once again paid with their lives,” Agnès Callamard, Amnesty’s secretary-general, said.

“Homes, hospitals, schools and shops were turned into crime scenes as people were repeatedly killed and injured. The people of Afghanistan have suffered for too long, and victims must have access to justice and receive reparations,” she added.

Amnesty accused the US military, the Taliban and security forces from the previous regime of “all being responsible for attacks that resulted in extensive civilian suffering before the country’s government collapsed”.

This week the survivors of a US drone strike that killed seven children and three adults from one family learnt that no American soldier would be disciplined. The US military has yet to make good on a promise to compensate the family and move them out of Afghanistan. It admitted the family had been mistaken for Isis militants.

Perhaps the gravest warnings were over the deepening humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan. The Disasters Emergency Committee said that one million young children were at risk of dying from hunger in the next three months.