Taleban revenge fears grow in Afghanistan

KABUL • The Taleban is going house to house searching for opponents and their families, according to an intelligence document for the United Nations which deepened fears that Afghanistan's new rulers were reneging on pledges of tolerance.

After routing government forces and taking over Kabul on Sunday to end two decades of war, the hardline Islamist movement's leaders have repeatedly vowed a complete amnesty as part of a well-crafted public relations blitz. Women have also been assured their rights will be respected, and that the Taleban will be "positively different" from its brutal 1996 to 2001 rule.

But with thousands of people still trying to flee the capital on board evacuation flights, the report for the UN confirmed the fears of many.

The Taleban has been making "targeted door-to-door visits" to people who worked with US and Nato forces, says a confidential document by the UN's threat assessment consultants seen by AFP.

The report, written by the Norwegian Centre for Global Analyses, said militants were also screening people on the way to Kabul airport. "They are targeting the families of those who refuse to give themselves up, and prosecuting and punishing their families 'according to syariah law'," Mr Christian Nellemann, the group's executive director, told AFP. "We expect both individuals previously working with Nato/US forces and their allies, alongside with their family members to be exposed to torture and executions."

Taleban fighters also searched for journalists in Kabul and other provinces, German media organisation Deutsche Welle (DW) said yesterday, adding that a relative of one of its Germany-based staff had been shot dead while another had been severely injured. DW added that three more of its journalists had their homes raided.

"The killing of a close relative of one of our editors by the Taleban yesterday is inconceivably tragic, and testifies to the acute danger in which all our employees and their families in Afghanistan find themselves," DW director-general Peter Limbourg said.

The Taleban has repeatedly said its fighters are barred from entering private homes.

Mr Nazar Mohammad Mutmaeen, a senior Taleban official, insisted this remained the policy, though he conceded some fighters were breaking into homes. "Some people are still doing this, possibly in ignorance," he said in a Twitter post. "We are ashamed and have no answer for it."

The Taleban has also insisted that women have nothing to fear under its new rule. During its first stint in power, women were excluded from public life and girls banned from school.

People were stoned to death for adultery, while music and television were also banned.

A video posted online this week by a high-profile woman journalist of a government-run television station offered a different reality to the Taleban's claim of tolerance. "Our lives are under threat," said Ms Shabnam Dawran, an anchor of RTA, as she recounted being barred from the office.

"The male employees, those with office cards were allowed to enter the office but I was told that I couldn't continue my duty because the system has been changed."

There have been isolated signs of opposition to the Taleban in parts of Afghanistan this week. Small groups of Afghans waved the country's black, red and green flags in Kabul and a handful of suburbs on Thursday to celebrate the anniversary of Afghanistan's independence - on occasion in plain sight of patrolling Taleban fighters.

Taleban fighters fired guns to disperse dozens of Afghans in Jalalabad who waved the flag on Wednesday.

Russia also emphasised yesterday that a resistance movement was forming in the Panjshir Valley, led by deposed vice-president Amrullah Saleh and Mr Ahmad Massoud, the son of a slain anti-Taleban fighter. "The Taleban doesn't control the whole territory of Afghanistan," Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said.

In the Panjshir Valley north-east of Kabul, Mr Massoud, the son of Afghanistan's most famed anti-Taleban 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," he wrote in The Washington Post.

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

Chaos erupted at the airport this week as frantic Afghans searched for a way to leave. An Afghan sports federation said that a footballer for the national youth team had died after falling from a US plane he had desperately clung to as it took off.

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE, BLOOMBERG