KABUL, AFGHANISTAN – The Taliban intelligence agents arrested a retired Colonel of the former Afghanistan National Defense and Security Forces (ANDSF) in Kabul on Thursday, March 28.
According to local sources, the former officer, identified as Mohammad Nasir Nawabi, was originally from Sangana village in the northeastern Panjshir province but was living in the Kart-e-Parwan neighborhood of Kabul.
Local sources told KabulNow that Nawabi had retired two years before the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan and had been leading a civilian life since then.
The Taliban has not yet commented on the arrest.
This incident is the latest in a series of targeted arrests, detentions, and killings of former soldiers, employees of the previous government, and rights activists by the Taliban in Afghanistan. The situation has raised serious concerns about the safety and security of citizens across the country.
Human rights groups have repeatedly accused the Taliban of gross human rights violations, expressing concerns that revenge killings and enforced disappearances of former security forces have not stopped despite the Taliban’s “general amnesty.”
In a report last year, the UN mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) documented at least 800 cases of human rights abuses including extrajudicial killings, arbitrary arrests and detentions, and torture and ill-treatment against the former army, police, and intelligence forces between August 15, 2021, and June 2023.
“In most instances, individuals were detained by de facto security forces, often briefly, before being killed,” the report said. “Some were taken to detention facilities and killed while in custody, others were taken to unknown locations and killed, their bodies either dumped or handed over to family members,” it added.
The rights group called on the regime in Afghanistan to respect the rights and freedoms of all citizens, including former government soldiers.
The latest arrest is also part of a series of crackdowns by the Taliban on residents of Panjshir province. In the last two and a half years, the group has detained, tortured, and killed scores of former soldiers and civilians, often accusing them of collaborating with the armed anti-Taliban groups or possessing weapons.
In a report last year, Amnesty International highlighted that the Taliban has been involved in “mass punishment of civilians and extrajudicial executions of prisoners of war” in Panjshir province.
The secretary general of the organization, Agnès Callamard, said that the list of war crimes and other violations of international humanitarian law committed by the Taliban in Panjshir province is “extensive.”
The Taliban, however, have denied reports of such incidents in the past and have claimed to adhere to their leader’s general amnesty, including for those who worked with the previous government.
