Afghanistan: Taliban fighters ‘set woman on fire for bad cooking’

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Women are being burned to death, forced to marry Taliban fighters and also shipped overseas in coffins to be used as sex slaves in the latest horrors to unfold in Afghanistan after just five days of Taliban rule, it has been claimed. 

One woman was set alight by Taliban fighters on Thursday in the north of the country because they didn’t like the food they forced her to cook for them, according to Najla Ayoubi – a former Afghan judge who now lives in the US.

Still more women are being packed into coffins and shipped abroad so they can be used as sex slaves while young girls are being forced to marry Taliban fighters, she told Sky News.

It comes after videos emerged of gun-wielding Islamists beating people with rifles, confiscating Afghan national flags and shooting a police chief to death, along with reports that minorities are being tortured to death with muscles carved from their bodies by vengeful jihadis.

On Tuesday, Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid had vowed there would be no revenge attacks and that the rights of women and minorities would be respected under a new and more-moderate version of the Islamist regime which ran the country in the 1990s.

But almost all of those pledges now appeared broken just over 48 hours later, after a separate UN report warned that Taliban fighters are going house-to-house looking for western collaborators to kill.  

Some of the latest footage to emerge from within Afghanistan shows Taliban fighters attacking anyone carrying an Afghan national flag in at least a dozen incidents primarily in the capital Kabul.

It comes after human rights group Amnesty International revealed that Taliban fighters massacred nine ethnic Hazara men after taking control of the country’s Ghazni province last month, with eyewitnesses giving harrowing accounts of the killings.

Six men were shot and three were tortured to death, including one man who was strangled with his own scarf and had his arm muscles sliced off during the atrocity, which took place between July 4 and 6 in the village of Mundarakht, Malistan district, the group revealed.

In another revenge killing, one regional police chief who stood against the Taliban was executed in cold blood by the jihadist group, local reports say. 

Shocking video footage being circulated on the internet shows the kneeling handcuffed and blindfolded figure of General Haji Mullah Achakzai, chief of Badghis Province near Herat, being gunned down in a hail of bullets. 

Footage posted online shows Taliban fighters attacking anyone carrying an Afghan national flag in at least a dozen incidents primarily in the capital Kabul. 

One video appears to show a heavily armed militant jumping out of a pickup filled with Taliban and pulling his gun on a man on a bicycle, who is shrouded in an Afghan flag.

The camouflage-wearing militant is seen hastily taking the black, red, and green national emblem off the cyclist before he lashes out and slaps the man in the face.  

He then is seen walking back to a pickup adorned with the white and black Taliban flag and filled with militants. He then appears to angrily scrunch up the Afghan flag and put it on the floor of the pickup. 

A second video posted online shows a Taliban fighter attacking an Afghan who was carrying the national flag, with his gun. 

Footage shows the militant hit the man in the back of the head with the butt of his gun as he tries to flee. The fighter then turns the barrel of the gun on the man and thrusts it towards him several times, but does not threaten to shoot. 

The fighter then turns the gun again and raises the weapon above his head before bringing it down on the defenceless man, who raises his arms to protect himself.  

The video then pans to a Taliban fighter holding the national flag after apparently seizing it from the man. 

Despite the Taliban’s claims of an ‘amnesty’ there is also mounting evidence that they are making it hard for any of their opponents to make it to the safety of Kabul airport and a US evacuation flight. 

Terrifying video shows fighters spraying assault rifle bullets just yards away from women and children gathered at the airport’s perimeter. 

A leaked UN dossier says the Taliban are ‘arresting and/or threatening to kill or arrest family members of target individuals unless they surrender themselves to the Taliban.’

It was filed to the UN by the Norwegian Center for Global Analyses, a group which provides intelligence on global conflicts.

That report followed the emergence of video the execution of General Haji Mullah Achakzai near Herat. 

The disturbing clip of the police chief’s slaying was re-tweeted by former BBC Persia journalist Nasrin Nawa after it emerged on the feed of an apparent resistance group to the Taliban called @PanjshirProvince.

After a content warning, Ms Nawa added: ‘Haji Mullah, Police chief of Badghis province executed by #Taliban. This is their public amnesty!’

The Taliban had promised that there would be no acts of vengeance against former enemies following their takeover of Afghanistan on Saturday.

Gen. Achakzai, in his early 60s, was an avowed enemy of the Taliban and known as a seasoned fighter in the long-running conflict between the group and the forces of the Afghan civil government, which fell at the weekend.

According to reports, the governor and police chief of Laghman Province near Jalalabad in eastern Afghanistan have also been detained, with their fate to be decided by the Taliban high command.

The brutal execution follows numerous reports of Taliban patrols going door-to-door in some areas and taking men of fighting age into detention.

In the most brutal evidence,  Human rights group Amnesty International interviewed eyewitnesses and reviewed photographic evidence following a series of killings in Mundarakht approximately 100 miles south west of Kabul. .

On 3 July 2021, fighting intensified in Ghazni province between Afghan government forces and the Taliban. 

Villagers said they fled into the mountains to traditional iloks, their summer grazing land, where they have basic shelters.

There was not much food for the 30 families that fled, so the following morning, July 4, five men and four women returned to the village to get supplies. 

They found that their homes had been looted, and Taliban fighters were waiting for them.

Wahed Qaraman, 45, was taken from his home by Taliban fighters who broke his legs and arms, shot him in the right leg, pulled his hair out, and beat his face with a blunt object.

Another man, Jaffar Rahimi, 63, was severely beaten and accused of working for the Afghan government after money was found in his pocket. 

He was strangled to death with his own scarf. 

Three people involved in the burial of Rahimi said that his body was covered in bruises, and the muscles of his arms had been carved off.

Sayed Abdul Hakim, 40, had been taken from his home, beaten with sticks and rifle butts, had his arms bound, and shot twice in the leg and twice in the chest. 

His body was dumped next to a nearby creek.

One eyewitness, who assisted with the burials, told Amnesty International: ‘We asked the Taliban why they did this, and they told us, ”When it is the time of conflict, everyone dies, it doesn’t matter if you have guns or not. It is the time of war.’

Senior Afghan officials told The Telegraph they have been forced into ‘deep hiding’ to avoid the marauding fighters who they suspect have gained access to government employee databases.

Earlier this week, former British Army officers told the same paper that hundreds of elite Afghan soldiers had gone into hiding and were trying to flee the country.

The units were made up of the Taliban’s most feared enemies and there are fears that they are intent on exacting revenge.

Already, harrowing footage has emerged of the jihadists carrying out brutal executions of former government officials who surrendered.  

Another senior figure in the former government, who spoke anonymously, said that he had been targeted for his view that women and girls should be educated. 

Yesterday, thousands of people marched in anti-Taliban protests on Thursday, waving national flags in defiance of the Islamists to mark the country’s independence day.  

Islamists fighters have also been celebrating independence day in their own fashion – by flying their black and whit flag and claiming victory over American forces.  

On Thursday, a procession of cars and people near Kabul’s airport carried long black, red and green banners in honour of the Afghan flag. 

Protesters even went so far as to raise the flag in Abdul Haq Square in the capital, in a brazen show of resistance. 

At another protest in Nangarhar province, video posted online showed a bleeding demonstrator with a gunshot wound. Onlookers tried to carry him away.  

The group had insisted they are a new organisation from the despotic jihadists of 20 years ago, who brutally oppressed women and allied themselves with Al Qaeda terrorists, this new ‘Taliban 2.0’, the world was assured, would now respect freedom, equality and basic humanity. 

But those lies have now been exposed, and Afghanistan’s new rulers have proven beyond what little doubt there was that they are just as bloodthirsty and tyrannical as their equivalents from two decades ago.

Human rights group Amnesty International revealed that Taliban fighters massacred nine ethnic Hazara men after taking control of the country’s Ghazni province last month, with eyewitnesses giving harrowing accounts of the killings. 

Six men were shot and three were tortured to death, including one man who was strangled with his own scarf and had his arm muscles sliced off during the atrocity, which took place between 4-6 July in the village of Mundarakht, Malistan district, the group revealed. 

Despite the organisation’s claims it would not seek vengeance on those who fought their tyranny, one regional police chief who stood against them was executed in cold blood by the jihadist group, reports say.

Shocking video footage being circulated on the internet shows the kneeling handcuffed and blindfolded figure of General Haji Mullah Achakzai, chief of Badghis Province near Herat, being gunned down in a hail of bullets. 

The grey-haired commander was reported to have been arrested by the Taliban after they seized the area, near the Turkmenistan border, in their lightning advance late last week.

The disturbing clip was re-tweeted by former BBC Persia journalist Nasrin Nawa after it emerged on the feed of an apparent resistance group to the Taliban called @PanjshirProvince.   

Gen. Achakzai, in his early 60s, was an avowed enemy of the Taliban and known as a seasoned fighter in the long-running conflict between the group and the forces of the Afghan civil government, which fell at the weekend.

According to reports, the governor and police chief of Laghman Province near Jalalabad in eastern Afghanistan have also been detained, with their fate to be decided by the Taliban high command.

The brutal execution follows numerous reports of Taliban patrols going door-to-door in some areas and taking men of fighting age into detention. 

And while Taliban militants searched for a journalist for German broadcaster Deutsche Welle, one of the reporter’s family members was shot dead, according to local reports . 

Now the jihadis are intensifying their hunt for those who dared to work with UK, US and NATO forces in Afghanistan, a confidential report to the UN reveals. Jihadists are going door-to-door to threaten relatives of civil servants, interpreters and other consular staff, while other militants are even stopping people outside Kabul airport. 

In Khost province, Taliban authorities instituted a 24-hour curfew Thursday after violently breaking up another protest, according to information obtained by journalists monitoring from abroad. 

The authorities did not immediately acknowledge the demonstration or the curfew.

Protesters also took the streets in Kunar province, according to witnesses and social media videos that lined up with reporting by The Associated Press.

The demonstrations were a remarkable show of defiance after the Taliban fighters violently dispersed a protest Wednesday. 

At that rally, in the eastern city of Jalalabad, demonstrators lowered the Taliban’s flag and replace it with Afghanistan’s tricolor. Three people were subsequently shot dead.   

Meanwhile three news anchors were barred from entering their channel’s offices, with one presenter forced into hiding after being ordered off air by the Taliban at gunpoint.

Mehr Mursal Amiri was ordered ‘to go home, remain there and never return’ after militant Islamists burst into Afghanistan‘s national TV network RTA’s studios in Kabul. She was also berated for wearing make-up and refusing to wear a hijab.

Fellow RTA anchors Shabnam Daran and Khadija Amin were also barred from entering the offices earlier as fears grow for women in the country after the Taliban’s vow to impose strict Sharia law.      

It was not clear how serious a threat they posed given that Taliban fighters overran nearly the entire country in a matter of days with little resistance from Afghan forces.

The Taliban so far have offered no specifics on how they will lead, other than to say they will be guided by Shariah, or Islamic, law. 

They are in talks with senior officials of previous Afghan governments. But they face an increasingly precarious situation.  

Russia also emphasised on Thursday that a resistance movement was forming in the Panjshir Valley, led by deposed vice-president Amrullah Saleh and Ahmad Massoud, the son of a slain anti-Taliban fighter.

‘The Taliban doesn’t control the whole territory of Afghanistan,’ Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said.

In the Panjshir Valley northeast of Kabul, Massoud, the son of Afghanistan’s most famed anti-Taliban fighter Ahmed Shah Massoud, said he was ‘ready to follow in his father’s footsteps’.

‘But we need more weapons, more ammunition and more supplies,’ Massoud wrote in the Washington Post.

Tens of thousands of people have tried to flee Afghanistan since the Taliban swept into the capital.

The United States said Thursday that it had airlifted about 7,000 people out of Kabul over the past five days.

Chaos erupted at the airport this week, as frantic Afghans searched for a way to leave the country.

An Afghan sports federation announced a footballer for the national youth team had died after falling from a US plane he desperately clung to as it took off.