Kabul: Taliban forces unlawfully killed 13 ethnic Hazaras, most of them Afghan soldiers who had surrendered to the insurgents, a rights group said. The killings took place in the village of Kahor in Daykundi province in central Afghanistan on August 30, according to an investigation by Amnesty International. Eleven of the victims were members of the Afghan national security forces and two were civilians, among them a 17-year-old girl. The reported killings took place about two weeks after the Taliban took control of Afghanistan in a blitz campaign, culminating in their takeover of Kabul. At the time, Taliban leaders sought to reassure Afghans that they had changed from their previous harsh rule of the country in the late 1990s. Amnesty’s secretary general, Agnes Callamard, referring to the killings in Daykundi, said “these cold-blooded executions are further proof that the Taliban are committing the same horrific abuses they were notorious for during their previous rule.” Taliban spokespersons Zabihullah Mujahid and Karimi did not respond to calls seeking comment. The rights group said Sadiqullah Abed, the Taliban-appointed chief of police for Daykundi, denied any killings.
US charges former Taliban commander
On a June day in 2008, three US soldiers and an Afghan interpreter were ambushed and killed when their Humvee convoy was hit during a combat patrol by mines and rocket-propelled grenades about 50 miles south of Kabul. Over 13 years after the brutal attack and about a month after the US two-decade war in Afghanistan ended, a man whom the federal authorities described as a former Taliban commander was charged with four counts of murder in the killings as well as other terror-related crimes, including the downing of a US military helicopter. The man, Haji Najibullah, was already in custody after being charged last year with kidnapping a US journalist and two Afghan nationals who were taken hostage at gunpoint several months after the roadside offensive.
Moscow invites Taliban for talks
Russia will invite representatives of the Taliban to international talks on Afghanistan that it plans to host in Moscow on October 20, President Putin’s special representative on Afghanistan Zamir Kabulov said. He did not provide further details. Russia is worried about the possibility of Islamist militants infiltrating the former Soviet republics of Central Asia, which Moscow views as its southern defensive buffer. In the wake of the Taliban takeover, Moscow has held military exercises in Tajikistan and bolstered its hardware at its military base there. Putin also held a phone call with Tajik president in which the two leaders discussed the security situation.
Dozens of girls return to high school
Girls have returned to some secondary schools in a northern province of Afghanistan, Taliban officials and teachers said, but they remain barred from classrooms in much of the country. Dozens of girls in black, some wearing white head scarves and others with black face veils, sat in chairs waving Taliban flags, in a video posted by the hardline group’s spokesman Suhail Shaheen. “Girls are going to high schools in Khan Abad, Kunduz Province,” tweeted Doha-based Shaheen.
But in Kabul, education ministry official Mohammad Abid said there had been no policy change from the Taliban’s interim central government, saying: “High schools still remain closed for girls.” The Taliban have faced international fury after effectively excluding women and girls from education and work across the country.
Seven weeks after seizing power, the hardliners have incrementally stripped away at Afghans’ freedoms. The Taliban permitted girls to attend primary school from the start, but have maintained that neither they nor their female teachers could return to secondary school yet.
