RASC News Agency: Local sources in northern Faryab Province confirm that a 28-year-old man, the son of a Taliban official, was killed in Qaisar district after detonating a hand grenade while handling or playing with the explosive. The incident once again highlights the lethal consequences of the widespread presence of weapons and explosives in everyday civilian life under Taliban rule.
In a brief statement, the Taliban’s provincial police command in Faryab said the incident occurred on Monday night, January 4, in the village of Ziyaratgah in Qaisar district. As in many similar cases, however, the authorities offered no transparent explanation as to how a civilian gained access to military-grade explosives, limiting their response to the routine announcement that an “investigation has been launched” a familiar pattern of institutional opacity.
According to local sources, the victim was identified as Safiullah, the son of Mu‘tasim Billah, the former Taliban head of the Department of Education in Faryab and the current education director in Baghlan Province. That such a fatal incident occurred inside the household of a Taliban official underscores a grim reality: even families closely connected to power are not insulated from the security disorder and lack of weapons control that now pervade the country. For ordinary citizens, the risks are considerably higher.
The Taliban continue to claim they have established “nationwide security,” yet hand grenades, automatic weapons, and battlefield ammunition remain present inside residential areas, often in the hands of individuals with no professional training or safety oversight. International organizations have repeatedly warned that the unregulated stockpiling and circulation of weapons in Afghanistan especially after the collapse of the previous government has dramatically increased the likelihood of deadly accidental explosions and shootings.
This is not an isolated incident. Just days earlier, a local Taliban commander in Farah Province was reportedly killed by an accidental discharge while cleaning his weapon. The recurrence of such events directly contradicts the Taliban’s official narrative of discipline and order, revealing instead how a governance model rooted in militarization normalizes violence and carries it into private homes and civilian spaces.
Security analysts stress that without professional weapons control mechanisms, mandatory safety training, and genuine institutional accountability, such tragedies will continue. Comparative experience from other conflict-affected societies shows that the normalization of weapons especially when paired with political impunity extracts a direct and ongoing human cost. That cost was paid in Faryab this week, and without structural change, it is likely to be paid again elsewhere in Afghanistan.
