KABUL, AFGHANISTAN – Taliban intelligence agents have detained a young man from Panjshir in Kabul city, accusing him of collaborating with an armed anti-Taliban group, according to local sources.
Speaking with KabulNow, sources identified the man as Baba Jan Amiri, who was detained in Kabul city on Tuesday, September 18.
According to the sources, the Taliban have accused the young man of collaborating with the National Resistance Front (NRF), an armed group fighting the Taliban across Afghanistan.
However, the sources dismissed the Taliban’s claims, saying that he had no connections to any such groups and had not been involved in any armed activities in the past.
The Taliban authorities have yet to comment on the matter. However, the regime’s violent crackdown on residents of Panjshir province has continued and escalated in recent months.
This is the second incident this week in which the Taliban has detained residents of Panjshir. On Monday, the regime detained a former soldier from Panjshir in Kabul on charges that have yet to be known.
Panjshir province, a small province north of Kabul, has been the main stronghold for two armed anti-Taliban groups, the National Resistance Front (NRF) and the Afghanistan Freedom Front (AFF). As a result, it has faced some of the harshest collective punishment from the Taliban in the past three years.
Since their return to power in Afghanistan in August 2021, the Taliban have detained, tortured, and in some cases killed hundreds of Panjshir residents, often accusing them of collaborating with armed groups or possessing weapons.
Rights groups, activists, and groups opposing the Taliban say that the regime’s suppressive behavior toward residents of Panjshir province amounts to war crimes.
In a report last year, the international rights group Amnesty International stated that the Taliban committed the war crime of collective punishment against residents of Panjshir in recent years.
“While many of the acts taken by Taliban forces individually constitute war crimes, the entirety of those acts – plus the additional arbitrary detentions and restrictions on the civilian population – also constitute the war crime of collective punishment,” the rights group said.
