(Kabul) The Taliban have expelled 3,000 of their members from their ranks, accused of illegal practices, as part of a vast “filtering process” begun since their return to power in Afghanistan, an official announced on Saturday.
Posted yesterday at 12:33 p.m.
The Taliban took Kabul in August after a 20-year insurgency against the US-backed Afghan government and a foreign coalition under the NATO banner.
The new authorities have promised a less rigorous regime than the one the Taliban ruled between 1996 and 2001 and the Islamist movement has set up a commission to identify those of its members breaking its rules.
These members “gave a bad name to the Islamic Emirate”, the name of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, declared to AFP Latifullah Hakimi, head of this commission within the Ministry of Defense, “they were excluded during this filtering process, so that we can build a clean army and police in the future”.
Human rights organizations have accused Taliban fighters of executing former members of the Afghan security forces, despite the amnesty proclaimed by the movement’s supreme leader, Hibatullah Akhundzada.
So far about 2,840 members have been expelled from the ranks in 14 of the country’s 34 provinces and the process will continue in other provinces, Hakimi added.
“They were involved in corruption, drugs and intruding on people’s private lives. Some had ties to Daesh,” the Arabic acronym for the Islamic State (IS) group, he said.
The Afghan branch of the EI (EI-K), rival of the Taliban, now represents the main threat to the security of the country.
The Taliban have made the return of security their priority after decades of war and the EI-K regularly carries out attacks, in Kabul and other cities, targeting leaders of the movement, members of the security forces or civilians.
Since regaining power, the Taliban have largely restricted the freedoms of Afghans, particularly women.
Female civil servants have largely been prevented from returning to work, and many secondary schools no longer enroll girls.
Women are also prohibited from traveling long distances without being accompanied by a male relative.