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The find was in the district of Spin Boldak, on the border with Pakistan. Human Rights Watch had previously documented the discovery of more than 100 bodies in a canal. Taliban interference in aid distribution intensified last month. Humanitarian agencies ask for more funds: a part of the population may not survive the winter.
Kabul () – In the Spin Boldak Strait, in Kandahar province, a mass grave was found with at least 21 bodies. Taliban spokesman for the southern province, Atahullah Zaid, said, without providing evidence, that the victims were killed and buried there nine years ago, when General Abdul Raqi Achakzai, a staunch opponent of the Taliban, was serving as provincial police chief. who died in an armed attack in 2018.
The discovery of the grave occurred in a border area with Pakistan. In dialogue with amu.tv, a former border guard explained, behind anonymity, that the area is under the tight control of the Taliban and that it is most likely that they are the perpetrators of the massacre. Several former members of the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces were killed in Spin Boldak when the Taliban retook control of the district in July last year.
Patricia Grossman, Asia director of Human Rights Watch, called for an international investigation: “It is crucial that all alleged crimes are investigated in a process that is carried out in accordance with international standards,” and it is important that Taliban “avoid acts of revenge”. The UN Special Rapporteur on human rights in Afghanistan, Richard Bennett, said it was essential that, pending forensic examination, the remains were not damaged.
It would not be the first time that the Taliban committed arbitrary killings and then made the bodies disappear. In July of this year, Human Rights Watch had documented the discovery of more than a hundred bodies in the canal in the eastern province of Nangarhar. According to the reconstruction of the events, the former students of the Koran would have carried out night raids to kill anyone suspected of being affiliated with or harboring members of the Islamic State (Is-K), the terrorist group that criticizes the agenda as lukewarm. Taliban Islamist. However, it is difficult to differentiate between the killings of civilians and former members of the Afghan government, anti-Taliban resistance fighters and Islamic State militants.
The Taliban crackdown led to an increase in the number of internally displaced persons. According to data from the United Nations Office of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) – updated last week – more than 30,200 people have left their homes in 2022 due to widespread violence or environmental disasters. Although the figure is high -and the displacements of the last part of the year should be added to compare-, it is still significantly lower than the 704,000 displaced in 2021.
Meanwhile, millions of people lack what they need to get through another winter: UN agencies are seen as the last “barrier” between the famine and the Afghan population, but incidents in humanitarian assistance increased last month. In other words, the Taliban prevented the distribution of aid to the population: data from Ocha say that in August interference increased by 39% compared to July, even causing the suspension of some humanitarian programs.
Economic difficulties affect 60% of the population, that is, 24.4 million people. The UN Food Program assists 18 million seriously food insecure Afghans, of whom six million are on the brink of famine. Humanitarian agencies launched an appeal at the beginning of the year to raise 4.4 billion dollars: nine months later, only 43% of the necessary funds have been raised.
