THE Taliban has “dismantled” human rights in Afghanistan, an Amnesty International report documenting a litany of abuses in the year since the group seized power has said. 

Hundreds of security personnel and former government officials have been subjected to extrajudicial killings — possibly amounting to war crimes — the report published today claims. 

A brutal crackdown on freedom of expression has seen the fundamentalist group ban peaceful protest, and intimidate, torture and arbitrarily detain journalists who do not “tow the line,” it added. 

Amnesty identified over 80 cases where journalists were arrested and tortured for reporting on protests in the last year, with one telling the organisation that they were beaten and whipped so hard they couldn’t stand. 

The report comes a year to the day since the Taliban took control of Afghanistan on August 15, 2021, after the retreat of US and British troops. 

In the immediate aftermath, the Taliban leadership pledged to respect human rights, including the rights of women and girls, media freedom and protections for former government personnel.

However in the last 12 months, a “litany of human rights abuses and violations under international law against the civilian population have been committed by the Taliban with absolute impunity and zero accountability,” Amnesty says. 

“The Taliban has brutally clamped down on civic spaces, imposed draconian restrictions on women, contradicting their own repeated assurances during the negotiations,” the 24-page report, the Rule of Taliban: A Year of Violence, Impunity and False Promises continues. 

Amnesty argues that the international response to address human rights violations in Afghanistan has been “weak,” and is calling for world leaders, the United Nations and the International Criminal Court to act. 

“We must not just stand on the sidelines, watching as the human rights of a whole population collapses,” Amnesty International South Asia director Yamini Mishra said. 

“To prevent Afghanistan’s human rights crisis from spiralling further, the international community must take meaningful action to hold the Taliban accountable for these crimes.”

Despite promising an “amnesty” to those who worked for the previous government and Afghan security forces, the report documents cases where bodies have been uncovered with bullets and signs of torture. 

One man told Amnesty that his friend, who had served in the Afghan National Defence Security Forces, was kidnapped by the Taliban despite having been sent a “pardon letter.” 

Torab Kakar, 34, said: “The Taliban tied his hands behind him, blindfolded him and kept beating him while his wife and children, parents and younger siblings were crying and screaming.”

His family was threatened and warned not to look for him. 

According to eyewitness testimony gathered by Amnesty, the Taliban extrajudicially executed nine former members of Afghanistan’s former army who had surrendered — killings that appear to be war crimes — in August last year. 

Women have been subjected to increasing violence, the report continues, highlighting the case of Lida, the pregnant wife of a former member of the Afghan security forces, who was shot and killed along with her two children, aged two and four, in Qala Naw city, Badghis province, in June. 

Amnesty is demanding the Taliban to end all human rights violations and ensure that any officials involved in abuses are held accountable through fair trials. 

Alongside the report, the organisation also criticised the British government for its response to Afghan refugees, describing ministers’ treatment of those fleeing Taliban rule as “appalling.”

The group highlighted the slow pace to resettle Afghans under two official resettlement schemes and government failures to move thousands out of hotel accommodation. 

Amnesty International UK’s refugee and migrant rights director Steve Valdez-Symonds said: “Nearly a year after the Home Secretary announced with great fanfare that the UK would resettle thousands of Afghans at risk from the Taliban following the emergency evacuation, it’s totally unacceptable that this promise remains unfulfilled.

“With human rights deteriorating still further in Afghanistan, the government must urgently update the country on the resettlement scheme, scrap its unlawful punishment of refugees and set about rebuilding a fair and efficient asylum system.”