RASC News Agency: A chilling wave of silent retribution swept across Afghanistan in early 2022, following the leak of a highly sensitive document: a list naming thousands of Afghanistanis who had collaborated with British military forces during the two-decade-long NATO presence. The consequences of that breach, long shrouded in silence and deniability, have now been laid bare in an investigative report by The Daily Telegraph a report that reveals the Taliban’s systematic campaign of vengeance against these individuals. According to the findings, more than 200 former members of the Afghanistan National Army and police force have been hunted down and executed by the Taliban since the leak. While the British government has never officially confirmed that those targeted were on the leaked list, eyewitness testimonies and mounting circumstantial evidence point unmistakably to that conclusion.
Taliban sources who spoke with the Telegraph openly admitted that they had gained access to the leaked document and formed a specialized unit called “Yarmouk 60” to identify and eliminate individuals listed as former collaborators. This unit, composed of Taliban special forces, was reportedly tasked with carrying out extrajudicial killings under the pretext of pursuing “British spies” a term now broadly applied by the Taliban to anyone who worked with Western military forces or international NGOs. The details unearthed are harrowing. In Helmand, a former police commander named Tor Jan was abducted after leaving a mosque following evening prayers he was never seen alive again. In Khost province, another former officer was gunned down in broad daylight. Others, such as Mazamil Nijrabi in Kapisa and Hayatullah Nezami in Takhar, were victims of targeted night-time assassinations and forced disappearances a chilling hallmark of the Taliban’s campaign of repression.
While the Taliban’s initial promises of a general amnesty in 2021 were widely publicized, they have since been openly contradicted by the regime’s own admissions. Taliban officials now state, without pretense, that “spies of Britain” their derogatory label for former interpreters, police officers, and military personnel are excluded from any form of clemency. The regime has thus weaponized the very notion of justice, using it to settle old scores under the guise of sovereignty. In London, government officials have sought to minimize the scandal, framing the breach as the result of “an inadvertent mistake by a Ministry of Defence employee.” But for the families mourning the brutal deaths of their loved ones, this bureaucratic explanation rings hollow. For many, their names once tied to hope for a safer future have now become death warrants.
The UK government has since allocated nearly £7 billion to support the relocation of Afghanistanis under threat to British soil. Yet, thousands remain stranded inside Afghanistan, living in fear, trapped under Taliban rule, and left to endure the consequences of a failure in British operational security. Long before the Telegraph investigation, both The New York Times and Human Rights Watch had sounded the alarm. Their reports documented an escalating pattern of summary executions, arbitrary detentions, systematic torture, and the enforced disappearance of former military personnel. In each case, the Taliban either denied responsibility outright or deflected blame onto so-called “rogue elements” within their ranks a tactic designed to mask what is clearly a coordinated state policy of persecution.
But the evidence is undeniable. Far from turning the page on the past, the Taliban are actively rewriting it with blood. They are pursuing vendettas with clinical precision, aided by a document that should never have fallen into their hands. That breach, tragic as it is, has become a death sentence for hundreds and a haunting reminder that promises of amnesty from a regime built on fear and repression are nothing more than empty words.
