Taliban admit to killing Afghan comedian crushed in video

Afghanistan’s Taliban took duty this week for the killing of a comic book within the nation’s south, elevating the specter of revenge killings because the US and NATO put the ultimate touches on their departure.
A video of two males slapping and abusing Nazar Mohammad, higher referred to as Khasha Zwan, unfold extensively on social media. He was later killed, shot a number of occasions. Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid acknowledged that the 2 males have been Taliban.

The males have been arrested and will likely be tried, Mujahid mentioned. He alleged that the comedian, from the southern a part of Kandahar province, was additionally a member of the Afghan National Police and had been implicated within the torture and killing of Taliban.
Mujahid mentioned the Taliban ought to have arrested the comedian and introduced him earlier than a Taliban courtroom, as a substitute of killing him.
The brutality of the killing heightened fears of revenge assaults. It additionally undermined the Taliban’s assurances that no hurt would come to individuals who labored for the federal government, with the U.S. army or with U.S. organizations.
Hundreds of individuals are reportedly being held by Taliban in areas they’ve overrun. Schools have been burned and studies have emerged of restrictions being imposed on girls akin to these imposed when the insurgents final dominated Afghanistan. Back then, they’d denied women entry to colleges, and barred girls from working.
In an interview final week with The Associated Press, Taliban spokesman Suhail Shaheen mentioned the group’s commanders have orders to not intrude with civilians, or impose restrictions in newly captured areas. He mentioned that when complaints of wrongdoings come up they’re investigated.
However Patricia Gossman of Human Rights Watch says that revenge killings have been dedicated by all sides throughout Afghanistan’s a long time of conflict.
“The war–all 43 years of it–has a revenge-driven dynamic,” she mentioned in an interview on Tuesday. “Revenge for past wrongs, including terrible atrocities, committed by one side or the other has been a mobilizing factor for all the various armed forces.”
For instance, in 2001 when the U.S.-led coalition ousted the Taliban and lots of surrendered, lots of have been packed into containers by troops loyal to warlord Rashid Dostum, with dozens suffocating within the brutally sizzling solar. Others who returned dwelling after the Taliban defeat have been usually singled out for extortion by authorities officers.
Reports have additionally since surfaced of U.S.-allied warlords calling in American airstrikes on supposed Taliban, or al-Qaida targets that turned out to contain private vendettas, not extremists.

“Each new horror — understandably — brings new outrage,” Gossman mentioned. “With no hope for any other kind of justice, this is likely to continue… and every side is far too blind to the fact that this sense of outrage and horror at wrongs done is shared.”
The worry of revenge has pushed as many as 18,000 Afghans who labored for the U.S. army to use for Special Immigration Visas to the United States. In Washington and in NATO capitals there’s a rising demand to evacuate Afghans who labored with the army.
The US has promised it should transfer shortly on hundreds of particular visa requests.
Gossman pressed for investigations into alleged atrocities.
“The UN should be much more engaged in investigating these atrocities, as Afghan and international human rights groups have called for, and has happened in other countries,” she mentioned.