Nurses under the Taliban rule

Amnesty International was informed by a visitor to Kabul of the plight of two Afghan nurses who were assaulted by the Taliban and beaten. The nurses had been told by Taliban officials that they should continue working at the {name withheld} hospital while others had been sent home. On 30 October, the Taliban official in-charge of the security of the area - reportedly a 17-year-old youth - came to the hospital. The nurses were not wearing burqa as they considered it was not a practical dress for a nurse in a hospital, but they were fully covered with scarves and long coats. The Talib got very angry. He grabbed the women by their hands dragged them to the tree nearby, broke a tree branch and began to hit them. One of the women tried to run away. The Talib forced her onto the floor and held her in between his feet while beating her with the stick. 

Taliban warn women not to visit foreign offices

KABUL: Afghan women were warned Sunday by the Taliban religious movement that they were forbidden to enter foreign agency offices in Kabul. "All Muslim sisters are asked not to enter and work in foreign institutions," declared theTaliban’s official Radio. "If they are caught they will be severely punished," it added. The Taliban, who captured Kabul Sep.27, soon after banned Afghan women from working in the offices of any foreign agency, which is addition to a multitude of NGOs included the UN and the Red Cross. "Foreign institutions in the county are asked to observe the principles of Shariat and not to employ (Afghan) women," the radio announcement reminded the expatriate community. Radio Shariat has also issued a ban on the use of recycled paper for making packets for wrapping fruits, sweets and cakes sold in the bazaar, as in some cases the paper wrappings contain verses form the Holy Quran.- AFP 

Worsen people's pain

"There is no education and no learning here. All schools and educational centers are closed. There are no female doctors in Kankahar that I know of, so we cannot even go to doctors. I can tell you what happened to Shayesta. She is about22 years old. She got very ill so she asked her cousin Abdul Salam to take her to a doctor. This was in Jowza 1375 {May/June 1996}. On the way to the hospital, they were stopped by armed Taliban guards several times. In the end, the guards started beating Adulsalam for taking Shayesta to the doctor. They then warned Shayesta that she would be killed if she appeared in the streets again. Shayesta’s illness got even worse, and Abdulsalam’s injuries forced him to stay at home for several weeks."  

The shelling of a soccer stadium in Sarajevo in June 1993, which caused the deaths of15 people, resulted in front-page stories in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and other major metropolitan dailies as well as prominent segment son the network television news shows. A few weeks earlier, some 700 people had died during an upsurge of shelling in Kabul. That incident merited only a small story on page 19 of the New York Times and scarcely a mention anywhere else.  

Mass graves

In March 1995,22 bodies were reportedly discovered in a mass grave in Charasyab. Journalists watching troops of President Rabbani’s government opening the grave reported that the bodies of the victims had been buried on top of each other in an irrigation ditch about 300 meters from the main road linking the town of Charasyab with Kabul. According to Reuters reports, the corpses werein varying stages of decay. The bodies were male, their hands were tied behind their backs and they had been shot in the head. Twenty of the victims were reportedly members of the Hazara Shi’s ethnic group.  

Kabul (AFP)- A man was publicly shot dead in Kabul on Wednesday in the first such execution to be carried out by the Taliban militia in the Afghan capital since they captured the city nearly three months ago. Witnesses to the killing said the relative of the murder victims shot Rohullah from close range with an AK-47 automatic assault rifle. Thousands of Afghans gathered on the football ground of the former German-medium Amani High School to witness the shooting which had not been announced. After the dead body was removed, a large crowd of people gathered at the spot where the shooting took place. No information was given about the date or nature of the murder of the family of four. The Taliban were anxious to disperse the crowd soon after execution. Many more public executions, including stoning people to death have been reported from provinces under the religious militia’s control the ultra-conservative Taliban have strictly implemented Shariat or Islamic law in the two-thirds of Afghanistan under their control.  

An eye-witness to a retaliatory attack in Farah province in early May 1995 by the forces of Ismael Khan told Amnesty International: "They dropped a lot of cluster bombs, killing between 220 and 250 people. A lot of those killed were ordinary people who neither opposed nor supported any of the factions. The fighting had stopped and there was no military activity in the area for several days. But Ismael Khan’s MiG-21, MiG-23, Su-17 and Su-18 were used against the residential areas. There was no military resistance. Only ordinary people were killed."  

Kabul (AFP)- Muslim Afghans who fail to observe a fast during the Holy month of Ramazan will be jailed for 60 days, an official of the Taliban militia’s religious police said here Thursday. Mawlawi Enayatullah Baleegh, the deputy head of the department, warned that "under Shariat" people who did not observe Ramazan would be severely punished. Violators of the rules of Ramazan will be subject to two months behind bars during which they will be forced to fast during the day, Baleegh told AFP.  

People had been ordered to congregate in the city’s football 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 had already been beaten close to death. He had reportedly been made to sign a statement that he agreed with his death sentence. A rope was placed around his neck and he was hoisted up in the air. He reportedly died after some 30 minutes of strangulation.  

Hundreds of unarmed civilians have been the victims of indiscriminate killings by the Taliban in the last two years. In November 1995, Amnesty International again warned the international community of its growing concern for the safety of the civilian population of Kabul after a renewed bombardment of the city in which at least 57 unarmed civilians were killed and over150 were injured in the residential areas of the city in three days of indiscriminate rocket and artillery barrages fired from Taliban positions south of Kabul. .... In one day alone, on 11 November 1995, at least 36civilians were killed when over 170 rockets as well as shells hit civilians areas. A salvo crashed into Foruzga Market forcing the shoppers and traders to run for cover. Rockets struck the Taimani district where many people from other parts of Kabul have settled. Other residential areas hit by artillery and rocket attacks were the Bagh Bala district in the north west of Kabul and Wazir Akbar Khan where much of the city’s small foreign community live. .... Scores of civilians have been killed in the fighting north of Kabul since the Taliban captured the city on 27 September 1996. For example, bombs dropped from a Taliban plane on 24 October 1996 killed at least 20people, mostly children, in the village of Kalakan, north of Kabul. Airraids have also been carried out by the anti-Taliban alliance. In several instances bombs dropped from planes have hit civilian areas with no sign of military activities, killing several people including children.  

Kabul (AFP)- A sum of 70,000 dollars has been stolen from the local office of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), a UN official said Wednesday. The loss is likely to hit several relief programs of the agency, which is already faces financial shortage due to decline in international donations for humanitarian work in the war-torn country, Terry Pifzner, head of the UNHCR office said. "They have stolen from one of the poorest nations of the world," Pifzner said, urging investigation and "tough action" by authorities against those responsible for crime.