Afghanistan’S Experiences: The History of the Most Horrifying Events Involving Politics, Religion, and Terrorism

By Hamid Hadi M.D

Afghanistan's Experiences is a sweeping analysis of the historic events and interplay between politics, religion, and terrorism in Afghanistan, the southeastern region of the country, and beyond.

The author has vividly explained the origin and the rise of Taliban to powerone of the most important sources of turmoil in contemporary time. Thus, one can perceive how the dynamics of the sinister politics, religious extremism, and terrorism has culminated in avoidable brutal wars and human tragedies.

Hamid Hadi has vividly described and put into political debate Afghanistan's history, the implications of the Russian invasion of Afghanistan, the Americans, the Pakistanis' and Saudis' role in the civil war, and the creation of the Al-Qaeda that led to the 9/11 tragedy.

In a unique research and analysis, the author has examined the acts of Islamic terrorists against the American people and institutions during the last 176 years and brilliantly deduced that Russian invasion of Afghanistan was a watershed era in formation of the contemporary terrorism, and the failure of both superpowers' foreign policy in Afghanistan to a great extent has resulted in growth of the terror network.

Besides detailed description of the 9/11 tragedy and Iraq war, Hamid Hadi has painstakingly brought the world religions and Abrahamic religions in particular into debate and discussed the reform of the Islamic faith.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Mar 24, 2016
• ISBN: 9781504986144

Hamid Hadi M.D

Hamid Hadi is a professor emeritus at East Carolina University School of Medicine. He is the winner of several academic awards and has published extensively. The author has spent half of his life in Afghanistan and his four decades of study and insight into politics, religion, and terrorism, and his status as a human rights activist highly qualify him to delve into this endeavor. He and his wife, Afifa Hadi, live in Greenville, North Carolina.

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Published by AuthorHouse 04/11/2016

ISBN: 978-1-5049-8550-5 (sc)

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Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Chapter 1 Taliban: A Blight on Human History

Chapter 2 The Origin and the Rise of Taliban to Power

Chapter 3 Afghanistan: Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow

A. What Lessons We Learn

B. Early History

C. The Rise of Islam and Its Sociopolitical Impact on Afghanistan

D. Afghanistan's Pushtun Monarchies

E. The Rule of the Musahiban Brothers

Chapter 4 The Soviets, the Puppets, and the Path to Civil War in Afghanistan

Chapter 5 The Civil War: Mujahideen, the Taliban Cult, and the Players of the New Game

To my wife, Afifa, who immensely inspired and encouraged me in my endeavor and allowed me to impinge on her time so that I could finish this book.

Acknowledgments

In writing of this history book, I am enormously indebted to many friends and fellow scientists for their intellectual contributions.

Special thanks go to my friend Mr. Dean Muhammad for providing me with unique historic illustrations and photos of the old Afghanistan and the tribal people, to engineer Wali Tabiat for sending me the books and documents on the roots of the Pathan people, and to Mr. Qawi Koshan and Dr. Shaheer Alemy for allowing me to review their religious and historic collections on Afghanistan.

I also want to thank my colleague and friend Dr. Akram Shah of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) for his insight and debate about complex philosophical issues.

I am also indebted to the East Carolina University Campus Joyner Library's employees. Both Mr. Clark Nall and David Hisle's personal assistance was remarkable.

My thanks go to Mrs. Ann Wall for her typing and professional skill in the preparation of the chapters and pages of this book. Her dedication and commitment was unequalled.

Finally, thanks go to my wife, Afifa, the only one who carried the weight of my academic commitment by spending an enormous amount ot time helping me put this book together. I thank her with all my love.

July 2015, Greenville, NC

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Introduction

Winston Churchill once said, History will be kind to me, for I intend to write it. As I write this book, I believe that history will vindicate me for every chapter and page that I claim as historically true. In writing this book, which covered the history of Afghanistan and recounts the many horrifying events involing politics, religion, and terrorism, I may have made some of my friends and fellow countrymen uncomfortable. However, I attest to the fact that I have reviewed the events as they have occurred and have based my views on reason, debate, analysis of the events or subjects, and the testimony of most distinguished scholars in the field. Furthermore, I have not examined the events or looked at the subjects from a particular vantage point. Nor have I adopted a biased position or taken sides in controversial issues.

Living half of my life in Afghanistan as an intellectual Muslim allowed me to understand the fundamental character, disposition, and culture of this multiethnic and highly complex society. Moreover, my higher education, teaching, and research for four decades in academic institutions of medicine in the United States as well as continuous study and observation as political, religious, and terrorism issues evolved granted me the ability to produce and present this body of work to the public. The purpose of this book is twofold. First, it describes the history and importance of Afghanistan as it relates to terrorism and current global turmoil. Afghanistan is one of the most difficult, complicated, poorly understood, and yet strategically unique country on earth. Second, in a series of narratives, debates, and discussions throughout eight chapters, I have presented the origin of the contemporary terror networks and elucidated the interplay between politics, religion, and terrorism---an often avoidable tragedy that has led many countries into war, bloodshed, and unimaginable misery.

This history book critically addresses important topics such as the origin of Taliban, Afghanistan's history, Soviet invasion of the country, the civil war, the 9/11 tragedy, and religion. More importantly, the chapters of this book are linked to one another and elicit a chain of events so that the readers can easily perceive how the dynamics of the sinister politics, religious extremism, and terrorism have culminated in numerous wars and conflicts.

As a point of departure, the author has elected to begin the first chapter in a dramatic fashion with the unprovoked onslaught of the Taliban and the Al-Qaeda terror groups on the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif in Afghanistan. In order to better understand the depth of the Taliban's horror and their inherently evil tendency to annihilate any sign of civilization, the author has brought part of the text to the surface as a prelude to this introduction.

The city of Mazar and the ancient province of Balk in northern Afghanistan are also known as the land of Aryans and the mother of all cities, a cradle of civilization in Transoxiana, where the inhabitants worshipped Anahita. The legendary Zoroaster, the prophet of the Zoroastrian religion, was also born here.

In the era of the Great Kanishka, it was here that the Jewish houses of worship (the synagogues), the Christian churches, and the Buddhist temples were built side by side, tolerated, financed, and supported by the government.

Mazar recalls Alexander the Great, the Greeko-Bactria culture, the Diodatus, the Antiachus II, and poets and philosophers such as Rumi, Beruni, Avicenna, and many others. Avicenna was a physician and a philosopher, one of the most famous proponents of the Muslim universalism, and an eminent figure in Islamic learning.

Mazar is also distinguished with a majestic mausoleum and blue mosque where, according to legend, the slain body of Ali, the fourth caliph of Islam, was buried. The splendid structure of the mausoleum with its geometric friezes on blue tiles and marble is an architectural allegory depicting the ethos or the fundamental character and spirit of early inhabitants.

As part of the heritage of this city, on the first day of the first month of the year, the feast of the equinox or Nowruz, meaning New Day, is held, and people offer prayers for the peace and prosperity of the nation.

It was here in Mazar on a hot day in August 1998 that a nightmare engulfed the city. A group of the most primitive and barbaric students of the Islamis madrassas of Pakistan (called the Taliban) who were interspersed with the Pakistani military Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI) and armed with heavy artilleries and shrouded in a mysterious international intrigue entered the city of Mazar. They created enormous fear and awe as they captured an estimated four to eight thousand Hazara Shia men inhabitants of the city and slit their throats in the courtyard of Ali's mausoleum. Then in a frenzy of vengeance killing, a paroxysm characteristic of the religious terror groups, they massacred men, women, and children around the city. They didn't take pity on religion, culture, civilization, rank, age, race, or the wailing women they abducted and gang-raped. They looted, plundered, and destroyed everything in their path. They burned schools and libraries. Religious terrorists consider books to be the dangerous enemy of their twisted ideology.

The massacre went on and on until no soul was left alive and no eyes remained open to weep for the dead. For the next few days, thousands of corpses lay in the streets and alleys, as they were forbidden to be buried. Stray dogs started gathering around the victims' bodies. The heavy fog, smoke, and clouds overcast the sky and prevented the sun from divulging the hidden carnage and telling the world about this story of cruelty. The late president of France Francois Mitterrand in an interview with Elie Wiesel in his book Memoir in Two Voices (published by the Arcade Publishing) said; The fact remains, we have still not evolved beyond the barbaric stage of evolution. We see that taking place here now, before our very eyes.

This is the true face of religious terrorists. In her book Holy War, the distinguished historian Karen Armstrong blamed crusades for today's conflicts in the Middle Eastern countries. She wrote in her introduction, I now believe that the crusades were one of the direct causes of the conflict in the Middle East today. I know that this is a startling statement and I welcome the opportunity to explore it in depth. In his book God's War, Christopher Tyerman echoed the same concept and wrote, Francis Bacon in the early 17th century mocked the crusaders as a 'rendezvous of cracked brains that wore their feather in their head instead of their hat,' or condemned by the 18th century Scottish philosopher and historian David Hume as the most signal and most durable monument of human folly that has yet appeared in any age or nation."

Here during the era of the Taliban, one can vividly see that violence that the state has approved and the religion has supported. As indicated in chapter 2, following the withdrawal of the Soviet troops from Afghanistan, the players of the new game entertained the formation of the religious army (the Taliban) in order to occupy the postwar-shattered Afghanistan and extend the gasoline pipeline from untapped Central Asian reservoirs through Afghanistan to the coastal city of Karachi at the Arabian Sea. The parties that perpetrated this adventure included Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, politicians of the West, and the oil companies, namely Unocal. As extensively described in this book, each party pursued its own interest. This plan, which costs thousands of lives, disastrously failed because of a lack of understanding about Afghanistan.

Chapter 3 of this book explores the fundamental understanding of the character, the spirit, the disposition, and the moral elements of the groups and communities of Afghanistan---something essential in fighting terrorism and transforming a rogue nation into a state of democracy and rule of law. Historians agree that no other country of comparable size and population to Afghanistan has seen so much action in the course of history. No nation has experienced so much bloodshed, intrigue, gallantry, savagery, devotions, patience, or sacrifice.

The invading armies of Timurlane, Alexander the Great, Babur, Akbar, Britain's Auckland, Mcnaughten, Pollack, Napier, and communist invaders during the three Anglo-Afghan wars all have experienced the savage spirit of Afghan people for freedom and witnessed their resistance to foreign invaders and colonialists. During the last fifteen years, American efforts to stabilize the country have not achieved the desired goal.

Despite the presence of American troops and their sacrifice in the war against terrorists in Afghanistan, notwithstanding billions in taxpayer dollars for financial aid and reconstruction projects, the input is known, but the outcome is not assessed. The country is still a battleground for insurgency and suicide bombers, a wilderness for the religious fundamentalists and warlords, an international heroin market with widespread rings of thugs and thieves in the highest legislative, executive, and judiciary branches of government. In the historic course of democracy, Afghanistan is the only country where a president was appointed to the office before the people's votes were counted. In summary, victory in Afghanistan means understanding Afghanistan.

The Durand borderline between Afghanistan and the neighboring Pakistan and its millions of the ungoverned tribal population in regard to peace and stability in the region are extensively discussed in this book. Together, we will reach the following conclusions: The Russians had three intentions for invading Afghanistan in December of 1979. First, the Soviet Union was always interested in establishing a cordon sanitaire or creating buffer states on its frontiers. Second, Brezhnev's doctrine declared that the Soviet Union had a right to come to the assistance of an endangered fellow socialist country that, without direct assistance from the Soviets, could not survive against growing resistance from Mujahideen or freedom fighters. Third, it was always a strategic desire for the Soviets to get closer to the Persian Gulf and warm waters of India.

I have also emphasized that we should not ignore the America role in the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Once Soviets invaded Afghanistan, former President Jimmy Carter's national security advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, gloated in Washington for his success in a predesigned plan to lure the Soviets into invading Afghanistan. After the Red Army entered the country, Brzezinski sent a note to President Carter and said, Now Soviets are going to have their own Vietnam in Afghanistan.

Several years later when Soviets withdrew their troops, Afghanistan descended into chaos, and Kabul was transformed into a theater of conflicts. Americans were no longer interested in helping people who defeated the Red Army. The civil war resulted in a massive influx of migrants, terrorists, Pakistani Taliban, and members of the ISI through a porous southeastern border into the country. This 1,640-mile border and its tribal population---Federally Administered Tribal Area (FATA) and North Western Frontier Province (NWFP)---from North and South Waziristan to Quetta have functioned as a source of terrorism between the two neighbors, and more recently, these areas have actively harbored terrorists. After studying the 9/11 tragedy, I presented a striking finding. The chronology of Islamic terrorist attacks on American people and institutions from 1837 to 2013, a period of 176 years, showed interesting and appauling results.

It was quite evident that since the year 1979, terrorists of the Islamic faith were overwhelmingly incriminated in attacks on American people and institutions. They were mostly Arabs, Middle Eastern, and/or Pakistani in origin. I believe that the year 1979, which coincided with Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, was a great watershed era in the creation of the contemporary terrorism in Afghanistan. In the evolution of this event, the two superpowers' failed foreign policy played a primary role in this genesis. Russians were responsible for invading a poor and relatively peaceful small country. By doing so, they killed one million Afghans and destroyed the government institutions, and among other atrocities, they devastated the country's intellectual wealth. Americans were blamed on the other side for luring the Soviets into invading Afghanistan and later abandoning the country when the Red Army was defeated. The fatal devastation occurred when Afghanistan was left in the hands of heavily armed Mujahideen, Pakistani religious terrorist groups, the ISI, and the Al-Qaeda terror network. Later the Taliban harbored Osama bin Laden, who attacked the United States of America.

In the chapter on 9/11, I have critically examined the Al-Qaeda network, and I have also presented the life of bin Laden from his birth to the 9/11 tragedy. The US response to the 9/11 tragedy, the Iraq War, was severely criticized around the globe. Beside an economic loss from this war, a number of federal laws were violated. Thousands of Americans and Iraqis lost their lives, and American prestige and image were tarnished abroad.

In regard to the Iraq War, I have explained the role of neoconservatives who imposed their long-held ambitious plan on George W. Bush. This group, which always touted American exceptionalism and expressed contempt for the international accords, was composed of students of Leo Strauss and Albert Wohlstetter. They harbored a dangerous ideology and asserted that the fundamental determinant of the relationship between states rests on military power and the willingness to use it. The lengthy discussion on the horrifying events of the torture chambers of the Iraq's Abu Gharieb Prison is included in this chapter too.

The depth of the negative impact of the Iraq War on American prestige and image was so profound that Rabindranath Tagore, Indian poet and philosopher, once described the Taj Mahal as a solitary tear, suspended on the cheek of time.

Religion is a pivotal concept in this book. All Abrahamic religions are historically associated with wars and human miseries. Here, the history and philosophy of all religions are presented, and the theories behind the origin of religions are explained for the public. The first two Abrahamic religions are reasonably reformed, and in its political systems, the separation of state from religion is successfully achieved.

Special attention is paid to the religion of Islam, where religion is not separated from the state, and we should note the Islamic laws and jurisprudence have not been reformed according to the changing time and environmental conditions.

At the end of the book, among many other contributory factors, a three-pronged conceptual framework for understanding the reason for the creation and surge of the contemporary terrorism and chaos is outlined. These three factors include

• the failure in the foreign policy of the two superpowers (the former Soviet Union and the United States of America) in Afghanistan;

• the failure to change the status of the ungoverned tribal border people between Afghanistan and Pakistan and the failure to overhaul the pro-terror cultural DNA of Pakistan and the Saudi Arabia; and

• the failure to reform the religion of Islam according to the changing time and environment as Prophet Muhammad recommended 1,400 years ago.

Prophet Muhammad recommended the reform of religion of Islam every hundred years because of change in time and environment.

Chapter 1

Taliban: A Blight on Human History

Nothing is more dangerous when intolerance and ignorance have power

-Voltaire

Mazar: The Point of Departure

Mazar, also known as Mazar-e-Sharif, is the capital city of historic Balkh Province in northern Afghanistan. Balkh Province lies on the borders of Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan in Central Asia. Mazar-e-Sharif means the noble place of pilgrimage and refers to the mausoleum of Ali ibn Abi Talib---the burial site of the fourth caliph of Islam, cousin and son-in-law of the prophet Muhammad. As the fourth largest city of Afghanistan, Mazar-e-Sharif is linked by roads to Kabul, the capital in the southeast, Herat to the west, and Uzbekistan to the north. It is also the center of export and import trade with Uzbekistan via the Amu Darya (Oxus) River.

The ancient region of Balkh or Bactria was the site of art, culture, and learning in Central Asia. Mazar-e-Sharif, too, was a crossroad of commerce, art, and old civilization. It was once the most sophisticated cradle of learning and philosophy, where cultures mingled to produce dazzling architecture, art, and poetry. Many poets, philosophers, and early scientists were born in Balkh.

One of the most famous exponents of Muslim universalism and an eminent figure in Islamic learning was Ibn sina Balkhi, known in the West as Avicenna (980--1037). Avicenna Balkhi was a philosopher and physician. Along with his numerous treatises and contributions in medicine, astronomy, physics, mathematics, poetry, and philosophy, his textbook, The Canon of Medicine, was a standard text used in the universities of Montpellier and Louvain as late as 1650. He is considered the father of modern medicine.¹

In the list of Balkh's poets and philosophers, Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Balkhi/Rumi was one of the few intellectuals and mystics whose views have so profoundly affected the worldview in its higher perspective. His famous book Masnawi weaves fables, scenes from everyday life, Quranic revelations and exegesis, and metaphysics into a vast and intricate tapestry. He passionately believed in the use of music, poetry, and dance as a path for reaching God. It was from these ideas that the practice of whirling dervishes developed into a ritual form. Rumi's vision, words, and life taught us to reach inner peace and happiness so that we can stop the continuous stream of hostility and hatred and achieve true global peace and harmony.

About 1500 BC, migrating Aryan tribes settled in this region and described Balkh as the country of lofty banners. Inhabitants worshipped Anahita, the goddess of waters. According to legends, Zoroaster, the prophet of the Zoroastrian religion, was born here, perhaps earlier in the seventh century BC.

By the middle of the sixth century BC, the Persian Achaemenid Empire, whose rulers were Zoroastrians, took over the region as a satrapy, which they called Bactria. They pushed its northern limits beyond the Oxus River. In 329 BC, Alexander the Great led his army across the Hindu Kosh into Bactria and took its main city, which was then called Zariaspa. In about 250 BC, Diodotus I, a Greek satrap of the Seleucid ruler Antiochus II, declared his independence and established the so-called Graeco-Bactrian kingdom or Greek Bactria. Some thirty-two rulers of this line held the area between the Oxus River and the Hindu Kosh until about 140 BC and pushed to the east across the Hindus River.

Invading tribes brought the downfall of the Braeco-Bactrian kingdom, and the region was subsequently held by minor dynasties until shortly after the middle of the seventh century AD. At that time, Arab armies, propagating the Muslim faith, entered the area and devastated the capital. Later the city was rebuilt, and it became one of the flourishing cities of the Muslim world, acquiring the title mother of all cities because of its wealth and fame as a center of learning. By the ninth century, half the region had been absorbed into neighboring Khorasan.

In 1920, Balkh surrendered to the Mongol hordes of Genghis Khan, who slaughtered all the inhabitants and burned the city. Just half a century later, Marco Polo passed through Balkh and described it as a noble and great city, adding that it was strewn with the ruins of the fine palaces and buildings of marble.

Although the site was partially reoccupied, Balkh was eventually displaced as a regional center by the newer town of Mazar-e-Sharif, which was a few miles to the east. The area around the city became the province of Balkh. As a crossroads of civilization and an ancient capital on the main silk caravan route across Asia, Balkh witnessed not only complex events because of the arrival of warring dynasties and ethnic movements but also far-reaching social, economic, and cultural upheaval.²

The dominant language in Mazar-e-Sharif is Persian, but Uzbek is also widely spoken. The city is a major tourist attraction because of its Islamic and Hellenistic archaeological sites. Ethnically, most residents are Uzbeks, Turkmen, and Tajecks. Minorities include Hazaras and Pushtuns. Historically, Afghan Pushtun governments facilitated the migration of Pushtun nomads in search of water and grasslands from southeastern parts of the country to Mazar-e-Sharif and northern provinces heavily dominated by Persian-speaking inhabitants. Throughout the course of Afghan history, the government enforced the migration of Pushtun nomadic tribes from the barren plains of the south to the more fertile lands of the north. The central government or its agencies systematically and illegally usurped the northern population's land and gave it to Pushtun nomads. The policy was aimed at spawning the Pushtun population in the north and mitigating the political influence of the northern population. This malevolent policy of divide and rule continued for decades. It is still practiced, resulting in war, bloodshed, hatred, and misery among various Afghan tribes.

Mazar-e-Sharif is famous for its handmade carpet and rug industry and Karakul fur trade. Karakul fur (lambskin) is used to make hats for Afghan men and fashionable coats for women abroad. The city is also known for its traditional Buzkashi game, a sport of daring, courage, and supreme horsemanship. It involves horseracing and goat-carrying. In this game competitors on horses pick up a killed goat or calf from a circled spot, lap the other team, and return it to the same spot. This sport captivates Afghan people and foreign visitors and dignitaries.

This city was a nondescript village in the shadow of Balkh Province until the mystical dream that revealed the location of Ali ibn Abi Talib's tomb there. Although most believe the fourth Islamic caliph's tomb is located in Najaf, Iraq, stories have passed from one generation to another, and some say that it is located in Mazar-e-Sharif. Afghan traditional historians also relate that his coffin was brought to Mazar-e-Sharif on a white camel for fear of persecution by Sunni opposition in Iraq.

Although Sunni and Shia sects of Islamic faith believe in one God, the Quran, and one prophet, Muhammad, as the messenger of God, politically and theologically they are divided. These differences have resulted in wars, destruction, and hatred. Rabindranath Tagore, Indian poet and philosopher, once described the Taj Mahal as a solitary tear, suspended on the cheek of time. The religious division between Sunnis and Shias is, in fact, another sad reality and a tear suspended on the cheek of Islam.

The shrine of Ali majestically stands at the center of the city. Calligraphy adorns the exterior with Quranic verses. The walls have geometric friezes on blue tiles and marbles. This mausoleum is an architectural allegory depicting the ethos and fundamental character and spirit of Islamic culture.

Mazar-e-Sharif's climate is pleasant in spring. The city is famous for its red tulips. The annual festival of the red tulip, which corresponds with the spring equinox on March 21, is called Nowroz (new day), and this time first appeared in Persian records in the second century AD. Nowzoz, which is the first day of the Persian calendar, is celebrated in Central Asia, Afghanistan, Iran, the Middle East, and many other countries. It is customary to buy new clothes, visit relatives, prepare a variety of foods, including cookies, pastries, and fresh and dried nuts, and exchange gifts with friends and families. On Nowroz, the day of the rebirth of nature, a banner is hoisted in front of Ali's mausoleum. Tens of thousands of people gather and pray for the peace, prosperity, and happiness of humankind.

In pre-Islamic Persia, royal custom called for the king's first visitor to be the high priest of the Zoroastrians. He brought the king gifts, including a golden goblet of wine, a ring, some gold coins, a fistful of green sprigs of wheat, a sword, and a bow. He then glorified God and praised the monarch. Furthermore, this paragraph tells the readers about an old civilization and culture that, contrary to present-day situation, conveyed peace, hope, and prosperity.

O Majesty, on this feast of the Equinox, first day of the first month of the year, seeing that thou has freely chosen God and the faith of the ancient ones; may Surush, the Angel-messenger, grant thee wisdom and insight and sagacity in thy affairs. Live long in praise; be happy and fortunate upon thy golden throne. Drink immortality from the cup of Jamshid (King of Persia); and keep in solemn trust the customs of our ancestors, their noble aspirations, fair gestes and the exercise of justice and righteousness. May thy souls flourish; may thy youth be as the new-grown grain; may thy horse be puissant, victorious; thy sword bright and deadly against foes; thy hawk swift against its prey; thy every act straight as the arrow's shaft. Go forth from thy rich throne, conquer new lands. Honor the craftsman and the sage in equal degree; disdain the acquisition of wealth. May thy house prosper and thy life be long!³

This magnificent historic city of Mazar-e-Sharif, the land of Aryans, did not enjoy a long period of peace and prosperity. On a hot day of August 1998, another nightmare engulfed the city. This time, hoards of the most primitive and barbaric fundamentalist Madrassa students (Taliban) joined with Arab Al-Qaeda terrorists and Pakistani militants from Deobandi religious schools along with Pakistani Interstate Intelligential (ISI) members equipped with heavy artillery mounted on Toyota pickup trucks (gifts from Saudi Arabia), tanks, helicopters, and jet fighters. Together they entered the city from the west and massacred an estimated four to eight thousand people at the courtyard of the mausoleum. The Sunday Times wrote, The detailed evidence of Taliban atrocities will embarrass western policy makers who still see the fundamentalists as useful players in a modern 'great game' to keep Iranian and Russian influence out of Afghanistan and so ensure that the huge oil and gas riches of Central Asia remain a prize for western multinationals.⁴ The invasion of Mazar-e-Sharif was intended to avenge the Taliban's defeat in the city in 1997 when the Hazaras (belong to Afghanistan Shia sect of Islam) and other ethnic fighters turned against them.

Upon entering the city, what one witness called a frenzy of vengeance killing ensued. The Taliban fighters swept through the city, firing heavy machine guns mounted on pickup trucks. The streets were covered with bodies and blood. They forbade anyone from burying the corpse for six days.

According to numerous witnesses, the Taliban began a house-to-house search for Hazara men. Hazaras are descended from Mongols and easy to recognize by their distinctive Asiatic features compared with the ethnic Pushtuns, who make up the ranks of the Taliban. According to extremely reliable witnesses, most of the victims were shot in the head, the chest, and the testicles. A large number of Hazaras were slaughtered around the shrine of Ali, the fourth caliph of Islam, who also belonged to Shia sect. These Hazaras were brought and massacred in what the witness called the halal way by having their throats slit. (In Islamic tradition, when a sheep, goat, or calf is sacrificed, its throat should be slit while the person simultaneously recites the phrase Allah-u-Akbar, which means, God is great. The meat can then be consumed).

The Sunday Times reported on a woman who fled to Pakistan after Taliban entered her house and shot her husband and two brothers dead. Then they cut the men's throat in front of the woman and her children. Testimony compiled by international observers and handed to the diplomats in Pakistan reveals that hundreds of people were packed into containers. Inside they suffocated when the Taliban locked the doors and left them in the searing midday heat. Men, women, and children were shot in their homes and on the street, and hospital patients were murdered in their beds. Statements made available describe a campaign of slaughter directed against a Shia Muslim minority, namely the Hazaras in Mazar-e-Sharif. The evidence, regarded by experienced aid officials as highly credible, painted a ghastly picture of butchery and rape as Taliban shot and cut the throat of Hazaras.⁴ In the same report, the Human Rights Watch identified three Taliban leaders, including Mullah Manon Niazi, the governor of Mazar-e-Sharif, who announced to a large crowd of people summoned to a mosque that the policy of the Taliban was to exterminate the Hazaras. The Taliban would kill victims purely because of their ethnic and religious differences.

While killing continued for several days, the Taliban and their Al-Qaeda companions with the help of Pakistani disguised army burned libraries and piles of thousand historic books, looted academies, and destroyed public places. They were so fearsome, so murderous, and so destructive that all other criminals were afraid of them. They were rapacious and destructive. As these barbarians pillaged their way from Quita Pakistan and Deobandi fundamentalist schools to Kandahar, Kabul, Herat, and Mazar-e-Sharif, they flitted hither and thither on their armed vehicles and gun-mounted Toyotas, backed by tanks, helicopters, and planes. Their speed outstripped rumor, and they didn't take pity on religion, culture, civilization, rank, age, race, or wailing women and children. They abducted and raped young girls and women. This was the hallmark of their Wahhibi movement symbolism. Day after day, Taliban, Al-Qaeda, and Pakistani militia disguised their intentions and pretended to be Muslims. They searched houses in Sahidabad, Karte Ariana, and Ali Chopan neighborhoods, killing inhabitants once people opened the doors, and then they would ask questions---a familiar theme from Iraq war. A witness from the same neighborhood told Human Rights Watch that she had seen teenage girls in the area being pushed into Taliban's Pijaro cars and taken to an unknown destination.⁵

The United Nations and Amnesty International confirmed the Taliban massacre of ethnic minorities. A senior diplomat who interviewed dozens of Hazara families said, Young men over sixteen were brought out of their houses chopped off at the wrist, and were told, 'You will never fight us again.'⁶ An aid worker said that Hazara bodies were left in the streets for days and that people trying to escape from the city were shot.

For several days in Mazar, the stray dogs were gathered on unburied bodies. Those who escaped the assault mingled together, disturbed and filled with fear and awe. Shops were closed, and streets were deserted. The Taliban's sweep of the city resembled Mongol Genghis Khan's carnage. The difference was that Genghis Khan reopened and made secure the Silk Road that linked the markets of India and China with those in Asia Minor, North Africa, and Europe. Taliban failed in their master plan to establish a gasoline pipeline that would connect Central Asia's untapped huge oil reservoir to the warm waters of India.

As Taliban mercenaries continued to sweep their way through the city and swarmed the neighboring villages, they pursued people in the streets and alleys like hunters chasing down herds of deer. They impaled the men and raped the women. The mullahs and nonreligious alike were slaughtered like sheep. They would slit their throats and pile up their corpses. Taking women away as wives during wartime is sanctioned in Islam. Furthermore, according to the fielitious hadiths of Muhammad, a Muslim who commits theft or adultery will enter paradise provided that he prays five times a day! The massacre went on and on until not a soul was left alive. No eyes remained open to weep for the dead. They set fire to empty buildings, and they looted stores and libraries. The Taliban considers books and libraries as the most dangerous enemies of their ideology. the scale of devastation wrought by the Taliban was intended to erase any remnant of the old civilization in Afghanistan. During the next few days, the numerous corpses were still lying on the streets and in alleys, and the smoke, fog, and the thick clouds prevented the sun from illuminating the hidden carnage and telling the world this story of cruelty among men.

In 1994, when Taliban first entered Afghanistan, they emerged as a military and political force in the country, and subsequent analysis clearly represented them as the key to geopolitical turmoil. No government or ruling party was as shrouded in secrecy as the Taliban in Afghanistan during early period of invasion. However, as time passed, these mysterious bearded clerics who were cloaked in a fake Sharia law emerged from obscurity and unfolded their heinous ideological and political agenda. In the beginning the Afghan people were generally content with the Taliban administration since they introduced much-needed security in the area following two decades of civil war, bloodshed, and occupation by the Soviet Union. But their blitzkrieg assault and deadly rise to power and capture of Kandahar, Herat, the key city of Jalalabad, and the capital, Kabul, opened another chapter of misery that was worse than any time before.

Nilofer Pazira, a Canadian investigator who speaks on the situations of women in Afghanistan wrote,

Imagine one morning you wake up and get ready to go to work, but when you open the door, a group of young, bearded men who are dressed in long buggy clothes which is dusty and fealty, pushes you with their rifle inside the house and say you are not allowed to leave. Imagine your younger sister wants to go to school and your mother has to go grocery shopping because there is nobody left in the house. Your sister is told that she does not need any education, and your mother, though fully covered, if not accompanied by a man is beaten or sent back home. Imagine that your income is the only source of providing for the family and you have to do something about it, but you are told with indifference, that you are not allowed to work. Imagine all of this happens to you only and only because you are a woman. Can you tell me how you would feel? What would you do if you were to stare at the walls inside your house as a substitute for living a normal life since you are prevented from listening to music, watching TV, even from going to public bath houses?⁷

Physicians for Human Rights published the result of their survey on the status of women's health under the Taliban in Afghanistan in 1998. The highlights from this work are as follows: 71 percent of women reported a decline in their physical health; 62 percent of women reported that they were employed during their last year in Kabul.⁸ Among the study group, 62 percent had no access to health care under the Taliban, and 42 percent had signs of post-traumatic stress disorder. Forty-two percent of the study population demonstrated evidence of major depression, and 86 percent had significant anxiety symptoms. Eighty-four percent of women reported one family member or more killed in war. Sixty-nine percent of this population said they or one of their family members had been detained or abused by Taliban militia. Sixty-eight percent of women reported extremely restricted social activities, and 98 percent of women supported and appealed for human rights.

The Boston Globe wrote in an issue published on December 6, 1998, and March 25, 1999, No other regime in the world has methodically and violently forced half of its population into virtual house arrest, prohibiting them on pain of physical punishment from showing their faces, asking for medical care without a male escort, or attending school.⁹ On March 25, 1999, it also wrote, It wasn't always like this. Forty percent of Afghan doctors were once women; more than half the teachers were women. But in 1996, the Taliban took over, and in one day with one stroke they flipped the switch off. Under guise of a fake and unreformed Islamic law they declared a state of gender apartheid. Women can no longer hold jobs. They can no longer go to school. A bare ankle or wrist is cause for public beating. The teachers lost their jobs and became beggars.¹⁰ The newspaper reported that fifty years after the world declared human rights for all, the silence of these women is almost as searing as the silence of the world.

On October 1998, the New York Times reported that half in the nation of Afghanistan were condemned.¹¹ The health care for women had effectively vanished. Women and girls, including babies, were dying needlessly from illnesses that were left untreated. The executive director of Physicians for Human Rights, Leonard Rubenstein, said in an interview, We are not aware of any place in the world in recent history where women were so systematically deprived of every opportunity to survive in the society from working to getting an education to walking on the street to getting health care. As reported, a woman died of appendicitis after she was turned away from two hospitals. A nurse told Physicians for Human Rights researchers that many were dying at home or in hospitals and clinics since male doctors were prohibited from seeing pregnant women and performing delivery. During the Taliban reign, the living atmosphere for Afghan women was unbearable. For the outside world, especially free nations, such crimes and atrocities are unimaginable.

Imagine if Congress outlawed television, movies, videos, music, dancing, toys and games, wedding parties, New Year celebrations, mix-sex gatherings of any kind, photographs and paintings of people and animals, cigarettes, magazines and newspapers, and most books. They've forbidden applause, though there is nothing left to cheer for. Whatever was pleasurable or brought joy has been banned by government edict. For women, it gets even worse. Female education from kindergarten through graduate school was banned. Employment was banned. It was illegal to wear makeup and jewelry, to cut your hair short or pluck your eyebrows, and to wear colorful, stylish, or white clothes, high heels, or sheer stockings. You could not walk loudly, talk loudly, or laugh in public either. In fact, the so-called religious government would prefer that you not go out at all. You must wear a veil. The world is hidden from you, and you from it. Under these circumstances, women were living in a hell. Major depression and other psychiatric disorders were widespread. A sense of hopelessness prevailed, and suicide became a growing problem. These crimes, atrocities, and acts of terrorizing a nation took place in a modern age when the body of the United Nations, huge democracies, and freedom-loving governments and nations were fully alive and operational but still appallingly silent.

Physicians for Human Rights repeatedly reported their survey in Afghanistan that women and girls were brutally beaten by the Taliban. They were forced to wear burqas that covered their bodies from head to toe. They lost their jobs. They had no access to health care, and they were not allowed to go to school.¹²

Judy Mann of the Washington Post wrote on December 30, 1998, This is a column about the living dead: The women of Afghanistan who are suffering under one of the most viciously anti-female regimes ever to grip a country. Women who have been forced into virtual house arrest while much of the world has looked the other way.¹³ It sounds like Nazi Germany's atrocities against Jews, doesn't it? Operating deceptively under the guise of strict Islamic law, the Taliban prohibited women from fundamental human rights. They issued an edict that the windows of buildings with women inside must be painted. Women could not work or go to school, and when in public, they had to be covered from head to toe by burqas that they could not afford to buy. (Burqas could cost between nine to thirteen US dollars, which is the equivalent of a month's salary for them.)

In September 1997, the Taliban began segregating men and women into separate hospitals. Male doctors were forbidden to treat women unless they were accompanied by a close male relative. At one point Kabul's half of a million women were relegated to one hospital that had thirty-five beds and no clean water, electricity, or surgical equipment. Women and men who disobeyed dress and other behavioral codes were subjected to barbaric punishments. The Taliban terrorized the city of Kabul by publicly punishing alleged wrongdoers in the Kabul sports stadium and requiring public attendance at the floggings, shootings, hangings, beheadings, and amputations. One reporter asked Abdul Wakil Motawakal, the Taliban's foreign minister, why they performed these punishments in Kabul stadium. He answered, If you build another facility for us, we will not use the stadium. We were told they dragged out a young girl and beat her in the stadium and you could only see the veil becoming full of blood, said Eleanor Smeal, president of Feminist Majority Foundation. Smeal says,

Not to have the sunshine on our bodies, to paint your windows dark, I don't know which one of these straws drove me around the bend. These women can't see out when they do go out ... they can't get sunshine. They can't see a blade of grass, can't feel the wind in their hair. Talk about Vitamin D and minimal needs of survival for a human being. I have spent my life fighting for equality for women, and to think in 1998 we have to fight for the right to have sunshine or to be able to see out the window. The whole world should be rushing in to rescue these women.

Sadly, there was deadly silence and indifference around the globe. Thus, 97 percent of the Afghan women, according to the report, were suffering from major depression. Forty-two percent had post-traumatic stress disorder. Eighty-six percent had significant symptoms of anxiety, and nearly a quarter frequently thought of committing suicide. As the New York Times editorial put it in August 15, 1998, Kabul was a city of widows. There were thirty thousand widows in Kabul alone, all without close male relatives, and they were the sole supporters of their children. The rules were particularly harsh for these women. They could not support themselves and their children because they were not allowed to work, and even bread and other supplies given by aid groups went to men. Women who went out alone in search of food risked beatings by religious police.¹⁴ Women who were not obeying the Taliban's draconian edict were mercilessly beaten on the street or in the marketplace. The economic and social council of the United Nations published the following reports:¹⁵

A survey of Afghan refugees who left Afghanistan in the period from end of 1998 to the third quarter of 1999 and also internally displaced persons who were interviewed provides the basis for findings of gross human rights violations.

1. Women were continually denied access to education, health, and employment. The right to the freedom of movement of women continues to be severely curtailed, and they still have little access to employment or education. The Taliban continue to enforce its edicts with unabated severity. The refugees related stories about the abduction of women, rape, various punishments, such as stoning, lashing, and other forms of inhuman torture.

2. Women prisons reportedly existed in Kandahar, Kabul, Mazar-e-Sharif, and possibly in Jalalabad. Many women from the Hazarajat and Banyan region (Hazaras-Shias), from Mazar-e-Sharif and Pul-e-Khumri regions in the north (Hazaras and Tajecks), and from Shamali (north of Kabul) and Panjshir regions during the latest summer incursion were reportedly held captive in these prisons without official reason.

3. When the Taliban took over territory in central and northern Afghanistan, many Hazara and Tajeck women and girls were abducted in the villages and taken directly from their houses by force. Under the Taliban's policy of separating families, Hazara and Tajeck women have been rounded up in trucks from Mazar-e-Sharif, Pul-e-Khumri, and Shamali regions. The trafficking of women and girls to Kandahar, Jalalabal, and Pakistan was reported. Women have been killed and maimed trying to escape from these trucks. One Afghan woman reportedly jumped from a truck with her two daughters as it was moving in order to escape. Most of these women have not returned to their villages. Eyewitnesses have seen trucks and cars full of Afghan women on the road to Kandahar and Pakistan. Many suspect that these women and girls are forced into prostitution.

4. Women from Kabul, Mazar-e-Sharif, and Shamali regions have given accounts of many instances of forced marriages. Taliban reportedly entered houses in Kabul, and in new territory they conquered, they placed white flags on the homes of families where unmarried young girls lived and forced the families of the young girls and women to conclude a nikah (marriage contract), thus marrying them to Taliban members. When families refused, the Taliban would take the women and girls away by force. Many families in the Shamali region have sent their daughters away along with internally displaced people who were headed toward Kabul and refugee camps to Pakistan, fearing forced marriages and abduction by the Taliban.

5. Many of the refugees reportedly encountered Urdu-speaking men in positions of authority during the fighting in the north as well as in Kabul and Kandahar. Many report that these non-Afghans (including Pakistanis and Arabs) were involved in human rights violations committed against women and ethnic minorities.

6. The Economic and Social Council of the United Nations also reported that Shia and Tajeck families were accused of being associates with the truck-bomb explosion near Mullah Omar's residence and were forcibly evacuated from Kandahar and surrounding areas. They were told to quit their homes and leave all of their belongings behind.

7. New arrivals in refugee camps reported that Tajecks, Hazaras from central Afghanistan, and some from Shamali plains were separated (men from women, younger women and girls from elderly, etc.). Sto too, all of their possessions and material belongings were looted, and their houses were burned (a reminder of Nazi atrocities against Jews in Krystalnacht of 1938 in Germany). For nearly two decades, armed conflicts and these violations of human rights devastated the health and well-being of the Afghan people. Following the invasion of Afghanistan by the former Soviet Union in 1979, more than six million Afghans fled to the neighboring countries of Pakistan, Iran, and others, one of the largest exoduses in the world.¹⁶ Afghanistan remains one of the poorest countries in the world. It has one of the highest infant (165 of 1,000) and child (257 of 1,000) mortality rates of all countries.¹⁷ Life expectancy in Afghanistan was reported to be forty-five years, and only 5 percent of people in rural areas and 39 percent in urban areas had access to safe drinking water.¹⁸

In 1997 at the peak of Taliban atrocity against women in Afghanistan, the maternal mortality rate was reported to be one of the worst in the world---820 maternal deaths per hundred thousand live births per year.¹⁹

A new scientific study confirmed what was already known anecdotally. Afghan women were dying in record numbers while giving birth. An average of 1,600 women die in Afghanistan for every hundred thousand live births---a figure that suggests Afghanistan may be the worst place in the world for a woman to become pregnant. Afghanistan's maternal mortality rates are reportedly twice as bad as the African country of Niger, twelve times worse than neighboring Iran, and 130 times higher than the United States. The startling numbers are contained in a major report released in Kabul (2002) by the United Nations Children Fund (UNICEF), the US Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and the Afghan Ministry of Public Health.²⁰

The conclusions of the new survey were so grim that Afghanistan's deputy minister of health began a presentation of the report's findings at the Ministry of Public Health by calling for a moment of silence. This is true. This tragedy is brought upon the same Afghan people who suffered more than a million casualties, defeated communism with their own blood, and ended the Cold War.

The Taliban's violence and acts of atrocities were not limited to women in Afghanistan. Amnesty International warned the civilized world that the truth must be exposed, as the Taliban refused to allow independent monitoring of the situation in northern areas of Afghanistan. Following the fall of Mazar-e-Sharif and several other major towns, the Taliban concealed the human rights violation in the area. The reports indicated that tens of thousands of defenseless women, men, and children were killed. A fifth of the population fled to the country in terror. Those who remained lived in constant fear that they may be the next victims of assassination, torture, rape, or abduction.²¹ Amnesty International reported on July 20, 1997, that in a few days the Taliban had rounded up as many as two thousand men from the Tajeck and Hazara minorities in Kabul. These men were found and arrested mostly in their homes in the Khar Khana, Karte Parwan, Char Kala, and Dasht Barchi suburbs of Kabul. There have been no reports tht these men were involved in fighting. Information received indicates that these men have been detained solely because of their identity as minority Tajecks and Hazaras. Therefore, they were considered prisoners of conscience, and their immediate and unconditional release was demanded.²² The Taliban, which imposed their strict sectarian rule on Afghan people in 1994 to 2000, brought the country to a new level of desperation and horror following the harsh years of civil war. In addition to the massacres of civilians and deliberate or indiscriminate rocketing of villages and towns, the Taliban were imposing a version of so-called Sharia law, which had no parallel in the world. Women were barred from work and imprisoned in their homes. Men and women were brought to Kabul soccer stadium for public execution and amputation for crimes of sodomy, homosexuality, adultery, or theft. On many occasions, people were executed or their limbs were amputated because they had stolen food for their survival. Physicians for Human Rights reported a number of women witnessed the executions of family members in front of them. Following the beheadings, the women, shrouded in burqas, continued crouching next to the bodies. The death penalty is at all times the most extreme violation of the right to life, and when carried out as a form of public theater, it can only serve to fuel a climate of hatred, violence, and vengeance. People had been also executed by hanging, slitting their throats, or toppling walls on top of them. The latter punishment was reserved for homosexuals. All these atrocities and crimes were committed by the Taliban without their victims receiving due process or fair trials. The verdicts for both the executions and amputations were passed by their Sharia courts, where judges were virtually untrained in law. The judges based their judgments on a mixture of their personal understanding of Islamic law and a tribal code of honor prevalent in the Pashtun tribal code. Amnesty International has received information that Taliban courts often decided a dozen different cases in the same day in sessions that may only take a few minutes. Defendants did not have the right to lawyers. There was no presumption of innocence, and verdict was final with no mechanism for appropriate judicial appeal.

The Taliban ordered their ranks to grow beards that extended farther than a fist clenched at the base of the chin. Men were also required to wear a head covering. The assault on culture also included banning music, the closure of theaters, and the destruction of museums, countless cultural artifacts, and various paintings. The so-called religious movement of the Taliban punished the wrongdoers with execution, amputation, flogging, hanging, beheading, or rape. Physicians for Human Rights obtained firsthand information about two cases of gang rape (of boys) by the Taliban religious police. One was thirteen, and the other was eighteen years old. The thirteen-year-old child was abducted after a fight he had with the son of a Taliban supporter. In prison he was reportedly beaten and raped by Taliban forces. He developed emotional problems and physical injuries as a consequence of his abuse. Both of the boys were Hazaras, and they were particularly vulnerable to Taliban depredations.²³ Testimonies and statements of convicts accepting their sentences before they were carried out had frequently been extracted under torture. They were tortured because it was part of the Taliban's atrocity. In short, they confessed to the crimes under torture that they had not commited. An eighteen-year-old youth who allegedly killed two Taliban members in February 1996 was executed in pubic in Herat Province. People were ordered by the Taliban to congregate in the city's soccer stadium. Then the gates were closed, permitting no one to leave. The convicted prisoner was then brought in and positioned below a waiting crane. People in the audience noticed that he agreed with his death sentence. A rope was paced around his neck, and he was hoisted up in the air. He reportedly died after a few minutes of strangulation. In Taliban's kangaroo religious court, some convictions appear based solely on the allegations of the complainants.

In July 1996, Toryalai, a man in his late thirties, and Nurbibi, a woman in her midtwenties, were stoned to death in the city of Kandahar. The man's father had married Nurbibi around fifteen years ago, and Nurbibi, a young widow, reportedly developed an affair with Toryalai, which had lasted a number of years. The Taliban reportedly caught wind of the affair. A few said the couple was hidden on a neighbor's roof, and some had seen the two coupling. Based on that evidence, the Taliban court sentenced the couple to death by stoning. According to local people, the Taliban had arranged for the stoning to take place on a hill outside the city. They offered free transport to people, but according to several reports, people showed no interest. They then changed the site to the city center, and this time ordered people to attend. When the time came, people did not throw stones. The Taliban threw the first stones and told ordinary people to join in, which meant they had to. The man reportedly died after he was hit with several stones, but the woman lasted longer. Members of the women's family were ordered to be present, and her son was forced to check if the woman was still alive. The last stone to kill her was a boulder that a Talib lifted and dropped on the woman's head. During the Taliban's reign, the imposed sentences were completely arbitrary and issued by unschooled individuals, and they often favored executions and amputations over detention.

In the belief that this would effectively deter prospective offenders from committing crimes, executions and amputations were carried out in public. Taliban guards believed they were entitled to act as both judges and executioners. On April 6, 1996, Taliban arrested Abdullah and Abdul Mahmood, two men from Uruzgan on charges of theft. Reportedly they were first severely beaten. Then the Taliban guards cut off their left hands and right feet. The guards then pressed red-hot iron plates against the wounds to stop the bleeding. There were at least fourteen reports of public amputations carried out by doctors from the Ministry of Public Health, and these were usually done in the soccer stadium in front of thousands of spectators, some of whom said they had been forced to attend.

Detainees in Taliban custody have been frequently made to do hard labor in sometimes life-threatening conditions, including mine clearance. Several people detained in Kandahar in early 1995 were reportedly brought to the front line southwest of Kabul to dig trenches for the Taliban. As the area was mined, many of the prisoners were killed or seriously injured when the mines exploded. Those injured were simply left to die. One of the survivors succeeded in escaping to Pakistan, where he received treatment in a hospital. Specific groups of detainees were particularly targeted for beating and horrible treatment by the Taliban. These groups included members of religious minorities like Shia of non-Pushtun ethnic minorities, former army officers, and journalists.²⁴

In the first days that the Taliban entered Kabul, their armed militia detained hundreds, possibly more than a thousand civilians during house-to-house searches throughout the city. They were held for allegedly sympathizing with the ousted president, Burhanuddin Rabbani. The Taliban cordoned off the city's streets and entered homes, searching for evidence of cooperation with the former administration. During Taliban occupation, scores of men and young boys in Kabul, Kandahar, and Herat provinces were detained during these search. Their whereabouts are not known. Surviving families that did not have money or political power were not able to bring the criminals to justice.

Deliberate and arbitrary killings continued throughout Afghanistan. The Taliban's advance to other provinces, such as Herat, Farah, and Nimruz, reportedly resulted in many targeted killings of civilians. Scores of noncombatants were killed by Taliban guards deliberately. Many included non-Pashtun civilian men whom the Taliban had suspected of anti-Taliban activity. One eyewitness reported to Amnesty International about the killing of noncombatants after the fall of Herat in September 1995 and said,

I saw many dead bodies in Pul-e-Dhakab bordering Farah, Nimruz and Helmand Provinces. Some corpses were lying under the bridge. People had buried them several