Taliban beat Afghans for carrying the national flag in crackdown on protests sweeping the nation

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Taliban are beating Afghans for carrying the national flag and banning female presenters from television in a crackdown as the extremists cement their control.   

It comes amid reports of revenge executions and torture away from Kabul as 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.   

Footage posted online purported to show 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 purportedly 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. 

It comes as reports:  

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; Shocking video footage emerged showing 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;Taliban militants searched for a journalist for German broadcaster Deutsche Welle and one of the reporter’s family members was shot dead;Three female TV anchors were barred from entering their channel’s studio by Taliban and were ordered to ‘to go home, remain there and never return’; Human rights group Amnesty International revealed Taliban fighters massacred nine ethnic Hazara men, torturing six to death, including one man who was strangled with his own scarf and had his arm muscles sliced off during the atrocity;Senior Afghan officials said they have been forced into ‘deep hiding’ to avoid the marauding fighters who they suspect have gained access to government employee databases. 

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. 

Female demonstrators took to the streets of Kabul waving the black, red and green flag which has become a symbol of defiance to the country’s jihadist rulers.

They were joined by thousands across the country who celebrated the 1919 handover of power from the British by rejecting their new overlords. It comes just a day after three were shot dead for flying the flag during protests.

The Taliban responded with beatings and gunfire while tearing down flags, despite their pledge to be a ‘reformed’ and ‘moderate’ version of the brutal outfit which controlled Afghanistan in the 1990s.  

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.