As American troops rush to complete their withdrawal by President Biden’s Tuesday deadline, many Afghans are afraid that reprisals from the country’s new rulers will soon follow.
When Taliban fighters seized control of Kabul two weeks ago, the invading units made a beeline for two critical targets: the headquarters of the National Security Directorate and the ministry of communications. Their aim — recounted by two Afghan officials — was to secure the files of intelligence officers and their informers, and to obtain the means of tracking the phone numbers of Afghan citizens.
That could be disastrous for hundreds of thousands of people who had been working to counter the Taliban threat and are considered as “enemies” by the insurgents.
So far, the Taliban’s political leadership has presented a moderate face, promising amnesty to government security forces who lay down their arms. They have even written letters of guarantee that they will not be pursued, although reserving the right to prosecute serious crimes.
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Yet there are growing reports of detentions, disappearances and even executions at the hands of the Taliban, in what some current and former government officials describe as a covert pursuit of the militants’ enemies. The scale of the campaign is uncertain because it is being conducted covertly. And it is unclear what level of the Taliban leadership authorised detentions or executions.
“It’s very much underground,” said one former legislator, who was in hiding elsewhere when the Taliban visited his home in the middle of the night. Like him, many people have gone into hiding, changed their locations and telephone numbers, and broken off communications with friends and colleagues.

“They (Taliban) seem to be doing very menacing searches,” said Patricia , associate Asia director for Human Rights Watch. “It is very much policestate kind of behaviour. The message is very clear.” People in the northern province of Badakhshan have been pulled out of their homes in recent days and have not been seen since, one of the government officials said.
There has been a pattern of pursuit of Afghan special operations forces personnel and commandos of the intelligence service, known as 00 units, as well as police and security chiefs across the country, he added At least a dozen former provincial officials of the Ghani government have been detained by the Taliban around the country, ex-government officials said.

It is not clear where the officials are being held or if any legal proceedings have been brought against them. Human Rights Watch established that 44 members of Afghan forces were taken from their homes and executed in July in Spin Boldak. All 44 had got amnesty letters from Taliban, Gossman said.

On Sunday, the family of an Afghan folk singer said he was shot dead by a Taliban fighter under unclear circumstances. The slaying on Friday of Fawad Andarabi came in the Andarabi Valley for which he was named. “He was innocent, a singer who only was entertaining people,” his son said.
“They shot him in the head on the farm.” Andarabi played the ghichak, or thebowed lute, and sang songs about Afghanistan. “There is no country in the world like my homeland, a proud nation,” he can be seen singing in a video.