KABUL (AFP) - A statue of a prominent anti-Taleban fighter killed by the group before it took power for the first time in the 1990s has been decapitated in Bamiyan city, residents said on Wednesday (Aug 18).
Mr Abdul Ali Mazari, a political leader who represented Afghanistan's ethnic Hazara community, was declared a national martyr in 2016, more than two decades after the Taleban said he had died in a gunfight aboard a helicopter.
"We are not sure who has blown up the statue, but there are different groups of Taleban present here, including some... who are known for their brutality," a resident told AFP, asking not to be named.
Pictures of the damaged statue being shared on social media showed it largely intact, but with the head resting at the plinth.
Another resident, who asked to be identified only as Zara, said a group of Taleban fighters used a rocket-propelled grenade to destroy it on Tuesday.
"The statue is destroyed and people are sad - but also scared," she said.
The Taleban swept back to power in Afghanistan at the weekend, 20 years after being ousted by a United States-led invasion in the aftermath of the Sept 11,2001 attacks.
It earned notoriety that same year for destroying two giant Buddha statues in Bamiyan after deeming them un-Islamic.
While it made no apology for the destruction of the statues at the time, in the days since returning to power it has tried to portray itself as a different movement, including saying it will allow girls to attend school and women to work.
Comprising roughly 10 to 20 per cent of Afghanistan's 38 million population, Hazaras have long been persecuted for their largely Shi'ite faith by Sunni hardliners in a country wracked by deep ethnic divisions.
In 1995, the Taleban said Mr Mazari was killed in a gun battle on a helicopter taking him and other prisoners to Kandahar, the Islamist hardliners' spiritual birthplace.
A spokesman for the group at the time said that Mr Mazari had snatched a Kalashnikov rifle from a guard and shot dead six Taleban fighters, before being killed himself.
