VANCOUVER, CANADA – Local sources from Panjshir say that a young man from the province has died of torture in Taliban prison in Kabul.
The victim named Ahmad was arrested seven months ago by the regime in Khanirkhana, the northern part of Kabul mostly populated by those originally from Panjshir and adjacent provinces.
His body was returned to his family by the Taliban in Kabul and was put to rest today, April 9, in the valley over 120 KM north of the capital.
Ahmad’s family says that the Taliban refused to share any information about his whereabouts after his arrest. He had no ties to any political group, according to his relatives, nor did he engage in any such activity.
The valley of approximately 170,000 people has been the target of the cruellest collective punishment from the Taliban who have held historic vengeance against a community that has refused to recognize its authority and claim to power since its inception.
An unknown number of young men, thousands according to some estimates, have been detained by the regime on unidentified charges. Some of them have disappeared, bringing back memories from the late 1970s and early 1980s when the Moscow-backed leftist government forcibly disappeared hundreds of thousands they deemed adversarial to its rule.
In the immediate wake of the Taliban’s resurgence to power, Panjshir emerged as the only bastion of resistance against the group, putting up a fierce fight that lasted several months and brought the regime’s forces from all over the country to quell.
Since then, the Taliban have used ties to the Tajikistan-based remnants of the National Resistance Front (NRF) as a bogus charge to wound up civilians, raid houses, and sometimes shoot people at point blank.
Although the Taliban commands a credible control of the valley now, the population still is still subject to arbitrary arrests and other ill-treatment due to the regime’s fear that a resistance could always be in the cooking.
In October 2022, local sources in Panjshir reported the death of a young man in the hands of the Taliban fighters in the provincial prison. Gholam Ehsan, a resident of Dara Abdullah Khil village in Dara district of Panjshir, was detained along with another young man named Noor Mohammad who died in prison. Four days later, Gholam Ehsan died under unknown circumstances after being transferred to the emergency hospital in a state of coma.
According to local sources, Gholam Ehsan and Noor Mohammad were detained by the Taliban on charges of collaborating with the NRF. They had been arrested while tending to their cattle in Hesarak valley.
International human rights observers have said that the Taliban’s behavior in the valley amount to collective punishment and war crimes. Organizations such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have called for independent investigations into the atrocities committed in Panjshir. The Taliban, however, have not paid any heed to such calls.
The regime in Kabul has denied entry to the UN Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in Afghanistan Richard Bennett after he reported on the group’s treatment of the population in Panjshir, its persecution of the Shia Hazaras, and the full erasure of women from public life.
The National Resistance Front (NRF) has not commented yet on the death of Ahmad in Taliban prison.
