Afghans Haven’t Forgotten
Taliban Atrocities
The United States’ withdrawal may be a balm
domestically. It’s anything but for those that lived through the horror.
| APRIL 19, 2021,
12:32 PM
Children
walk through ruins in the Qarabagh district in the Shomali Plain of Afghanistan
on April 13. Two decades later, the Taliban’s destruction is still
visible. STEFANIE GLINSKI FOR FOREIGN POLICY
QARABAGH,
Afghanistan—The Taliban flooded into the Shomali Plain by the thousands,
supported by tanks and air power. Reza Gul fled south toward Kabul barefoot
amid the chaos, leaving behind her house, her belongings, and the bodies of her
three teenage sons, slain by Taliban bullets.
Within days,
the militants had deliberately killed countless people, scorched the rich
farming land, destroyed tens of thousands of houses, and blown up irrigation
systems. The Taliban’s 1999 invasion of the Shomali Plain, stretching north
from Kabul toward Bagram, was one of their most brutal—and lingering. Today,
the destruction is still visible. Behind the main highway, countless skeletons
of old houses are testimony to the Taliban’s past atrocities; out of 70
villages in Gul’s district of Qarabagh, 99 percent of the houses were destroyed. Many of the ruins have never been
rebuilt.
Gul, who is
now 75, breaks into tears at the memory, which remains crystal clear, as deeply
etched as the wrinkled crevasses in her face that she said show just how much
she’s suffered.
“It haunts
me,” she told Foreign Policy. “I am afraid the Taliban will come
back.”
Reza Gul, 75, seen on April 13, fled her home when the
Taliban attacked the Shomali Plain in 1999. She hasn’t forgotten the Taliban’s
past atrocities.STEFANIE GLINSKI FOR FOREIGN POLICY
She’s not
alone. More than two decades after the invasion of the Shomali Plain, with the
United States poised to abandon Afghanistan for good after 20 years, many fear
the militants will once again stage large-scale devastating attacks.
“Atrocities
like Shomali were a regular feature of the war in the 1990s. A vast
international presence prevented some but not all such killings in the past 20
years,” said Patricia Gossman, Human Rights Watch’s associate Asia director. “If
there is no settlement and the war continues, which unfortunately seems likely,
I am afraid civilians will continue to bear the brunt of the war and continue
to be the victims of atrocities.”
One of the
senior Taliban field commanders in the Shomali Plain during the 1999 offensive
and massacre as well as the Taliban’s deputy to the chief of army are today
leading the militant groups’ negotiations in Doha, Qatar, according to the
Afghanistan Justice Project. In other words, the men who allowed entire valleys
to be razed and torched are today leading the theoretical charge for “peace.”
The Taliban
said U.S. President Joe Biden’s decision to withdraw all U.S. troops by Sept.
11 rather than the May 1 deadline they thought they had clinched with former
U.S. President Donald Trump is a breach of the pact. The militants warned in a
statement this “opens the way … to take very necessary countermeasures, hence
the American side will be held accountable for all future consequences and not
the Islamic Emirate.”
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On April 13,
just moments before Biden announced his decision to pull out, Asadullah
Sarwary, 56, sat at home in Qarabagh, recalling how his own house was burned to
the ground when the Taliban attacked. Sarwary, a tall man with 10 children who
is a community leader, fought for the Northern Alliance in the 1990s, the
military force that opposed the Taliban during its rule from 1996 to 2001. The
Taliban had made incursions into the Shomali Plain before but nothing as
horrible as late summer 1999.
“They
captured, abducted, and killed people, destroyed houses and mosques, and set
entire villages on fire,” Sarwary said. “The sky had turned black. People
scattered quickly and couldn’t even bury their dead; they dried up in the sun
or were eaten by dogs.” For a 25-mile stretch, from the northern outskirts of
Kabul toward what is today the U.S. Air Base at Bagram, everything in the
valley was razed within days.
Then,
Sarwary said, the Northern Alliance launched a counteroffensive and managed to
push the Taliban back, allowing an estimated 167,000 civilians to seek refuge
in the narrow Panjshir Valley, the Northern Alliance stronghold, where they set
up temporary camps.
“I remember
the day well,” said Mir, a 64-year-old former humanitarian worker who spoke on
condition of anonymity. “People were traumatized. They had been chased out of
their homes. It’s unclear how many died, but those who made it to Panjshir
stayed there for almost two years, enduring bitterly cold winters.”
Not until
after the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 could people, including Gul,
return to the Shomali Plain in large numbers. Mir and his team of aid workers
rebuilt more than 5,000 houses, simple dwellings just shy of 200 square feet
built from mud bricks and wooden planks. That’s exactly where Gul has been ever
since.
Gul is surrounded by children in her house in
Qarabagh, rebuilt by an aid agency 20 years ago, on April 13.STEFANIE
GLINSKI FOR FOREIGN POLICY
If the U.S.
arrival allowed Gul and many of her neighbors to return home, the question is
what happens when the U.S. troops leave. Some observers speculate the Taliban
of today are not the same as the brutal group that waged vicious war and
imposed a hard-line brand of Islam on the country in the 1990s. Sarwary sees no
change.
“If the U.S.
were to leave tomorrow, I could see the Taliban try to launch similar
large-scale attacks in the future,” he said. Equally concerning, he said, is
the steady infiltration of extremist ideology in the Shomali Plain. “They
recruit criminals and the unemployed. It’s no longer safe here. The Taliban is
everywhere now.”
The U.S.
intelligence community’s annual threat assessment, published on April 13—the same day
as Biden’s announcement—warned the Taliban are confident they can achieve a
military victory and are likely to make gains on the battlefield. It also
stated the Afghan government will struggle to hold them at bay if coalition
forces withdraw support.
After a
phone conversation with Biden, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani tried to calm
rising panic. “Afghanistan’s proud security and defense forces are fully
capable of defending its people and country, which they have been doing all
along,” he said. But Afghan forces are already demoralized. Some have abandoned
their posts and taken defensive positions.
“We
shouldn’t underestimate the Taliban’s capacity to inflict major damage,” said
Michael Kugelman, deputy South Asia director at the Wilson Center. “When Afghan
forces no longer have the advantage of calling in U.S. air power to fend off
Taliban advances into cities, the insurgents will have a major opportunity that
they will fully exploit.” He added the Taliban have plenty of arms and money
after diversifying their funding over the years beyond drug trafficking and
smuggling.
Like many
Afghans, Mir believes a full U.S. withdrawal could not only clear the path for
the Taliban but likewise empower warlords and regional power brokers to set up
their own armies, possibly leading to civil war—as has happened before.
“Everyone—including
the warlords—wants to come back to power,” Mir said. “None of them care about
the ordinary people.”
Gul, now a
widow living with her three remaining children and their own families, admits
the memories and fear haunt her, but she said she wouldn’t flee again if the
Taliban come back in force.
“I will
either live in peace or die in war,” she said.
Stefanie Glinski is a journalist and
photographer who reports on conflict and humanitarian
crisis. Twitter: @stephglinski
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