The Taliban cracked down on protests that erupted in at
least four cities in Afghanistan on Thursday and rounded up opponents
despite promises of amnesty, even as fearful workers stayed home and
thousands of people continued a frenzied rush to leave the country.
Even as the Taliban moved to assert control, hundreds of protesters took to the streets
for a second day to rally against their rule, this time marching in
Kabul, the capital, as well as other cities. Again, the Taliban met them
with force, using gunfire and beatings to disperse crowds. And again
the actions of Taliban foot soldiers undermined the leadership’s
suggestions that, having taken power, they would moderate the brutality
they have long been known for.
The police officers who served the
old government have melted away, and instead armed Taliban fighters are
operating checkpoints and directing traffic, administering their notions
of justice as they see fit, with little consistency from one to
another.
Kabul’s international airport remained a scene of desperation, as thousands struggled to get in and board flights out.
Millions
of other Afghans, including critical workers, particularly women, hid
in their homes despite Taliban calls for them to return to work, fearing
either retribution or the harsh repression of women that the militants
instituted when they ruled from 1996 to 2001. Aid agencies said services
like electricity, sanitation, water and health care could soon be
affected.
The Taliban seized control of city after city
with remarkable speed once most U.S. forces had withdrawn, brushed
aside the demoralized and disorganized Afghan security forces, and swept
into Kabul on Sunday. Now they are learning that while conquest may
have been swift, governing a vibrant, freethinking society is not so
easy.
The anti-Taliban protests have been a remarkable display of
defiance of a group that has a long history of controlling communities
through fear and meeting dissent with lethal force. The protests also
offered evidence that while tens of thousands are now seeking escape,
some of those left behind would try — for now, at least — to have a
voice in the country’s direction, despite the growing crackdown.
There
were news reports of several people killed in the eastern city of
Asadabad when Taliban fighters opened fire Thursday at a rally of people
waving the flag of the deposed government, marking Afghanistan’s annual
celebration of gaining independence from Britain in 1919. It was not clear whether the victims had been shot or had died in a stampede.
There
were even demonstrators waving the flag in Kandahar, the southern city
that is considered the birthplace of the Taliban. In the southeastern
city of Khost, the group imposed a curfew, a day after demonstrations
and clashes there. The protests on Thursday in Kabul included one near
the presidential palace, and another that drew about 200 people before
the Taliban used force to break it up.
The events, led primarily
by young men and women, were a wholly new experience for Taliban
insurgents who have spent the last 20 years mostly in the mountains and
rural districts of Afghanistan and Pakistan.
When
the Taliban last held power, before being toppled by the U.S.-led
invasion in 2001, Kabul was a dingy ruin, the population crushed by
poverty and harsh rule and isolated from the world. But even as war
dragged on, a new generation of educated, ambitious and media-savvy
Afghans grew up in the cities — young people, including women,
accustomed to making themselves heard.
Though Taliban leaders are
in talks with former leaders of the deposed government about forming an
inclusive governing council, on Thursday they declared the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan — the same name they used a generation ago.
The
tricolor flag flown by the collapsed government, taken down by the
Taliban and replaced by their own banner, has become a repeated flash
point, with people in multiple cities beaten for displaying it. On
Wednesday, the Taliban fired on demonstrators waving the flag in the
eastern city of Jalalabad, with reports of two or three people killed.
One
of the protesters in Kandahar, Noorayel Kaliwal, tweeted on Thursday:
“Our demand is that no government, system or group in Afghanistan change
the national flag of Afghanistan.” He added that he supported a
democratic system in the country, had been detained by the Taliban in
July for his activism and was moving around to avoid arrest.
In
Kabul, Hasiba Atakpal, a journalist from the Afghan news channel Tolo
News, said that Taliban soldiers had stopped her reporting in the
street. “They seized the camera from me, hit my colleague and fired in
the air,” she said on Twitter.
She
added that after the Taliban spokesman’s first news briefing, held on
Tuesday, when he insisted that the rights of the media and women would
be respected, she had not expected much good to come.
“I had low expectations but now it has become clear that there is a gap between action and words,” Ms. Atakpal said.
Residents
of Kabul were feeling their way under the new regime gingerly. The
streets were quiet, largely empty of traffic, interrupted by occasional
bursts of gunfire and the roar of American military planes patrolling
and conducting the round-the-clock evacuation.
With
long experience of war and upheaval, most people stayed home. In
particular, few women were on the street, though some ventured out
without wearing the head-to-toe burqa once mandated under the Taliban,
which forbid women from holding jobs or even venturing out of their
homes without a male relative.
Schools were closed in Kabul on
Thursday, as were most offices and banks. Electricity had been out for
two days, one resident said.
The caution that has touched every
household is the dread inspired by the Taliban soldiers who brandish
their assault rifles and rockets with a calculated carelessness.
“They look very scary, as they have long hair and are very heavily armed,” said Masoom Shesta, 38, a trader in downtown Kabul.
Many Kabulis were already changing their ways to comply with the strict social regulations expected to come into force.
One
woman complained that popular Turkish television serials were no longer
airing, after cable companies closed down their services. The Taliban,
which banned all television during their previous time in power, have
since embraced media as a propaganda tool, and cable companies were
already anticipating new rules on morally acceptable content in
accordance with the militants’ strict interpretation of Islamic law.
Mr.
Shesta said he was deleting photos from his cellphone of him meeting
with the former president, Ashraf Ghani, and other government officials,
many of whom have fled the country. Mr. Ghani left the capital on
Sunday, and several of his senior officials traveled to Turkey on
Monday.
At the Kabul airport, which is still controlled by U.S.
troops, the Taliban are in charge outside its blast walls and used force
and intimidation to control access, beating people back and firing
their rifles.
Individuals
and families, some having waited for days, stood or sat amid pieces of
former lives discarded by others in their haste to flee — shoes,
scarves, whole suitcases. Some families waited in taxis. Others got out
to walk. Parents carried small children.
On Thursday morning, a
Taliban fighter stood on a concrete barricade, holding a radio and a
pistol and shouting. Taxis inched forward along a road lined with
abandoned cars.
“The Taliban are beating
people,” said Hayatullah, a resident of Kabul, who asked that only his
first name be published to avoid problems with the Taliban. “They use
lashes to disperse the people and sometimes fire into the air.”
His son had tried most of the day to gain access to the airport, without success, and would have to try again tomorrow, he said.
In
a video obtained by The New York Times on Wednesday, men in uniform
fired their rifles — whether into the crowd or above it was not entirely
clear — as some people screamed and others crouched. A man pounded on
the back of a van to keep it from backing into his mother, whom he
pushed in a wheelchair.
The Pentagon said Thursday that some 7,000
Americans and other evacuees, including Afghan allies of the United
States, had been airlifted out of the airport. That is still well short
of the 5,000 to 9,000 passengers a day that the military said it can fly
out once the evacuation process is at full throttle.
The State
Department said that 6,000 people were at the Kabul airport fully
processed and waiting to board planes. There have been reports of
non-American evacuation flights leaving with many empty seats, a sign of
the difficulties facing people trying to make their way to the airport.
The Taliban have said
they are not keeping people from the airport who have valid visas and
tickets. One commander said they were limiting access to help the
international evacuation effort, to avoid the kind of overcrowding and
chaos that occurred on Monday, when people swarmed onto the runway and
several were killed.
But there have also been reports of Taliban
fighters turning away people with proper documentation, and scanning the
crowds for former officials to detain.
The threat assessment drafted for the U.N. by an intelligence consulting group, the Norwegian Center for Global Analyses,
cited multiple reports that the Taliban had a list of people to
question and punish, as well as their locations. Military and police
personnel and people who worked for investigative units of the toppled
government were particularly at risk, according to the document, which
was dated Wednesday.
Already, the Taliban were going door to door
and “arresting and/or threatening to kill or arrest family members of
target individuals unless they surrender themselves to the Taliban,”
said the document, which was seen by The New York Times.
It
contained a reproduced letter dated Aug. 16 from the Taliban to an
unnamed counterterrorism official in Afghanistan who had worked with
U.S. and British officials and then gone into hiding.
The letter
instructed the official to report to the Military and Intelligence
Commission of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan in Kabul. If not, it
warned, the official’s family members “will be treated based on Shariah
law.”
Victor J. Blue, Helene Cooper and Jim Huylebroek contributed reporting.
No comments:
Post a Comment