KABUL: More than 200 members of Afghanistan’s former military, law enforcement and government have been killed since the Taliban took over, the UN mission in Afghanistan said on Tuesday, despite a “general amnesty” for old enemies.

The mission said in a report it had recorded at least 218 extrajudicial killings with links to the Taliban from their takeover of Afghanistan in mid-2021 up to June. “In most instances, individuals were detained by de facto security forces, often briefly, before being killed,” the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) said.

The Taliban-led foreign affairs ministry said in response to UNAMA that it had not received reports of any cases of non-compliance with the order and any cases that did occur would be investigated.

UN human rights chief Volker Turk said the killings were a “betrayal of the people’s trust” since the victims had been assured they would not be targeted. UN rights office spokesperson Jeremy Laurence said the scale of killings was “shocking” and expected the true count to be higher.

UNAMA said about half of the killings it recorded occurred in the four months after the Taliban took over, as US-backed foreign forces were withdrawing, in August 2021, and 70 were recorded in 2022.

In total, UNAMA had recorded 800 incidents of human rights violations against former government employees and military.

Published in Dawn, August 23rd, 2023