Former soldiers targeted in unprovoked assassinations under Taliban rule.
Continuing the wave of targeting and eliminating former Afghan soldiers, local sources from Kabul report that a former Interior Ministry officer was killed by unknown gunmen yesterday.
Sources confirmed on Wednesday, July 9, that the incident occurred in the Makroyan Khohna area of Kabul city and that the victim was Colonel Obaidullah Panjshiri, who had been a resident of the area for 35 years and had no known enemies.
The perpetrators of the assassination have not yet been identified, and Taliban officials, as usual, have remained silent about the murder.
Although the Taliban promised a general amnesty after taking control of Afghanistan, dozens of soldiers, former government employees and civil society activists have been targeted, detained, tortured or killed in the past three years. Many of these cases have been attributed to Taliban affiliates, but there has never been an independent investigation or official accountability.
Earlier, a Taliban official had also implicitly admitted that some members of the group may have killed former soldiers in “revenge”.
This comes as UN reports have repeatedly warned that Afghanistan has become a place of silent repression of former security forces, human rights defenders and civilian figures; and the Taliban stand at the heart of this repression
