RASC News Agency: Local sources in Panjshir report that at least 11 residents from various villages have been arbitrarily detained and subjected to torture by the Taliban in the past 10 days. A resident of Abdullah Khil District told RASC: “In just the past week, the Taliban arrested six people from Abdullah Khil and two more from Abshar. All of them were brutally beaten.” According to sources, these arrests are often carried out without legal justification and are driven by personal vendettas or ethnic bias. Another source stated that the Taliban systematically target Panjshiris, detaining them solely due to their ethnicity and historical resistance against the group.
The majority of those detained belong to Abdullah Khil, one of Panjshir’s most repressed regions, which has been subjected to severe security, economic, and social restrictions since the fall of the republic. Given its significant role in the resistance, the Taliban have intensified their crackdown on its residents. Local accounts suggest a systematic campaign of arbitrary detentions, extortion for prisoner releases, direct threats against families, asset confiscations, forced financial penalties, and coerced contributions under religious or social pretexts.
Many of the detainees have been imprisoned without formal charges often solely because of family ties to anti-Taliban figures or past affiliations with the former government. Families are then forced to pay substantial bribes to secure their release. Additionally, reports indicate Taliban officials are illegally seizing portions of humanitarian aid, extorting local businesses, and coercing residents into funding Taliban-run projects. Sources confirm that Taliban operatives, often relying on local informants, actively hunt down and imprison former military personnel and their relatives.
Similar patterns of arbitrary detentions, torture, and illegal imprisonments have been reported in Takhar, Badakhshan, and Kabul. Despite mounting evidence and testimonies, the Taliban consistently dismiss these allegations as baseless.
