Above: Afghan government forces in Kandahar city
Chris Pleasance – Daily Mail Online Aug 5, 2021
- Taliban executed up to 900 people as they overran Kandahar, police chief warns
- Targets included police, state employees, government supporters and comedian
- Islamists have vowed moderation as they race to re-take the country, but those on the ground say they are brutally repressing areas they capture
- Taliban now fighting to retake major cities including Kandahar as US withdraws
The Taliban executed some 900 people in six weeks in just one province as its fighters overran government troops, a police chief has claimed
Targets included police officers, tribal elders, civil activists, and even a popular comedian who were dragged from their homes and killed in southern Kandahar province, the region’s former head of police Tadin Khan said.
Islamist fighters have now recaptured much of the province and have laid siege to the regional capital – also named Kandahar – as they push to retake control of the country following US troop withdrawal.
Many of the deaths occurred in the town of Spin Boldak, on the border with Pakistan, Khan told Afghan news outlet TOLO.
‘The people have suffered enormously,’ he said. ‘The brutality that occurred in Boldak is unforgivable.’
Among them was comedian Nazar Mohammad, who previously served in the Afghan police, who had his throat slit before images of his body were posted online.
Other targets of the Islamists have been Afghan soldiers in hiding – some of whom may have surrendered to the Taliban rather than fight on the promise they would be allowed to return safely home.
Religious scholars, government employees, and anyone thought to be a supporter of the government has also been targeted, Khan said.
Taliban leaders have been keen to present the modern group as moderate version of the one that the US went to war with in 2001, in an attempt to build alliances with neighbours and prevent the kind of intervention that saw it toppled from power.
But those on the ground say it is the same brutal regime as before that has imposed its strict interpretation of Sharia law on the provinces it has captured.
Afghan Special Forces, trained by the US. Click to enlarge
Aside from the executions, women say they have been banned from leaving the house without a permit and from attending school in Taliban-controlled areas.
The Taliban has denied claims of executions.
Kandahar is just one of three provincial capitals to come under attack from the Taliban, which has spent months recapturing rural areas behind the backs of retreating American and NATO troops.
Having conquered the countryside, the militants are now focusing on recapturing cities whose control is key to control of the country.
The hardest-hit has been Lashkar Gah, capital of Helmand province which is the Taliban’s traditional heartland.
Most of the city has now fallen to the Islamists, with US warplanes striking Taliban positions in an attempt to hold back the assault and buy government troops who are still holding out in a handful of areas some breathing space
But locals report the strikes having little impact – forcing the Taliban to pause briefly while they are carried out, before resuming their attack once the bombing stops.
Government forces are meeting with greater success in the northern city of Herat, however, having pushed a Taliban assault away from its outer suburbs.
President Ashraf Ghani is hoping that by concentrating his forces in cities and holding them, the Taliban can be sufficiently weakened that it feels the need to return to peace talks which are currently at loggerheads.
The most optimistic outcome is that the government and Taliban can work out some kind of power-sharing arrangement which keeps Ghani in office.
However, if the Taliban emerge victorious then it will likely push on to try and retake the capital of Kabul – handing it back control of Afghanistan and making a mockery of two decades of western intervention.
The nightmare scenario is that no side can deal a killer blow and the conflict drags out into a prolonged and bloody civil war of the kind seen in the 1990s which spawned the Taliban in the first place.
That risks creating a severe refugee crisis and providing a safe haven for other terror groups – such as ISIS – to move into.
Just yesterday, the head of Britain’s armed forces General Sir Nick Carter warned that the country is at risk of becoming a failed state even if the Taliban re-take power.
Gen Carter also warned BBC Radio 4’s Today there is a ‘real risk’ that ‘we’re giving far too much legitimacy to the Taliban movement’.
‘There is a huge disparity between what Mullah Baradar is saying publicly, and what he’s doing publicly in travelling around countries like Russia and China, and so on and so forth, and a disparity between what’s actually happening on the ground.
‘And the international community has got to do much more about calling out the way that the people on the ground are trashing government buildings, they are threatening the population, there are reports of people being forced into marriages.’
He said there have been ‘grisly videos of war crimes’ and ‘we mustn’t let them get away with this – we’ve got to call them out’.
This is what results, when arrogant obnoxious kids follow in the footsteps of badly educated blockhead dads.
I suppose it’s a ‘calling’ to bully terror, or sat around all day poking goats up the arse with a stick.
And then our dozy pillock governmental reps decide to invite them in to live among us.
As if we don’t have enough arrogant obnoxious kids of our own kind,
spermed from equally dumb blockhead dads.
Slowly but surely, the scenario predicted by the Fatima prophecy of 1917 is unfolding before our very eyes. I myself never imagined that the “errors of Russia” would spread to the United States under the guise of “political correctness”, but it’s happened. The neo-Bolsheviks have even succeeded in hijacking the American presidency!
Only this prayer will bring lasting peace:
“Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the Father, send now Your Spirit over the earth.
Let the Holy Spirit live in the hearts of all nations, that they may be preserved from degeneration, disaster and war.
May the Lady of All Nations, who once was Mary, be our Advocate.
Amen.”
FYI: exactly ten years before communism came to an end in Eastern Europe in 1989, Pope John-Paul II made the following invocation during an outdoor Mass in Warsaw (June 2nd 1979):
“And I cry — I who am a Son of the land of Poland and who am also Pope John Paul II — I cry from all the depths of this Millennium, I cry on the vigil of Pentecost:
Let your Spirit descend.
Let your Spirit descend,
and renew the face of the earth,
the face of this land.
Amen.”
The Abrahamics, Jew, Christian or Moslem, prevent science, beauty and fun, and that means our minds, bodies and spirits, and that, in turn, means all our existence. Jos Rogiers extended this remark to Communism (no doubt), Nazism, and neo-Liberalism, and said these were the six members of the Bible-club. He called it the Devil’s book. It is not an old book, but its adherents try to destroy all our historiography so that it seems old. Naturally, the Moslems try to delete the earlier Abrahamic work. They are all the worst liars (all six).
“Every time anyone says that Israel is our only friend in the Middle East, I can’t help but think that before Israel, we had no enemies in the Middle East.” ~ Jesuit Priest John Sheehan
Great comment by Glenn Ashton at the top.
As for Afghanistan, who f***ing cares about that backwards shit-hole at this point? We in the west have our own critically serious problems with the criminal cartels posing as legitimate governments that are openly hostile to our interests and are actively trying to kill us. If the treasonous propaganda-spewing press is waving Afghanistan around, it’s only as a dog & pony show distraction. We need to focus on the solutions to our own problems.
Revolution Now.
Sharia is run-of-the-mill customary law. It deals with property, inheritance, child support. I’ve sat through sharia court sessions; they’re as dull as it gets.
If journos insist on talking about corporeal punishments, then those are called HUDUD.
I thought after 40+ years of bombing Afghanistan to smithereens, the West might get caught up on basic terminology.
It is wrong to think of “the Christian West”–Italy began to dismantle that in the 1300s just when the last of the North was receiving it, so the whole continent never quite got taken, or just for a short time.