"Chris Stephen enters Afghanistan's capital with the
Northern Alliance and witnesses the brutal treatment,
humiliation and deadly beatings dealt out to foreigners
who fought for the Taliban

War in Afghanistan: Observer special

Sunday November 18, 2001
The Observer

Pressing a rag against his face to keep out the stench of
human waste, the prison director at what was one of the
Taliban's most feared institutions pointed at a group of
30 men cowering in a cramped cell. The building, known as
Department Three of Kabul's Security Minister before the
Taliban were driven from power, used to hold opponents
caught breaking the stern religious edicts of the regime.
By yesterday the Taliban's prisoners had been freed and
the jailers had themselves been jailed. They were joined
in the fetid cell by soldiers accused of backing the
Taliban and generally associated with Osama bin Laden's
al-Qaeda.

'Our security forces didn't capture these people,' said
Abdul Qayun, the prison's new boss. 'They are all Taliban
handed over by Kabul citizens. They were cruel people who
made trouble for us.'

The boot was firmly on the other foot yesterday. With
their heads bowed and dressed in rags, some prisoners
clutched copies of the Koran; others rocked back and
forth on the floor of the cells. A few wanted to speak,
but only to declare their innocence.

In the corner, 18-year-old Shafura Rakhman, from the
south-western Pakistani city of Quetta, was fixated on
his copy of the Koran.

'I am not thinking anything. I am just reading the holy
Koran,' he said numbly when the prison director pushed
him to speak. 'I know I am in jail, but I don't care. I
just want to read the holy Koran.'

Foreign volunteers - Pakistanis, Arabs, Chechens, Uzbeks,
even Filipinos - who joined the hardline Islamic Taliban
were the most loathed by ordinary Afghans.

In a separate cell, a Saudi citizen who said that his
name was Zabeen pulled back the blanket covering his
chest to reveal a deep, open wound below his left
shoulder - a sign that he may have been a fighter for the
Saudi-born millionaire terrorist leader.

But no one present could understand his Arabic shouts.
Prison director Qayun was unperturbed. 'These Arab people
belong to Osama,' he said. 'They were terrorists working
for al-Qaeda. We will bring a doctor to him later.'
Zabeen was still shouting as the steel door slammed shut.

The men in jail were some of the lucky ones. Across the
areas conquered by the Northern Alliance, accounts
emerged yesterday of brutal acts of vengeance against
fighters suspected of being linked to the Taliban. From
Jalalabad to Kabul, hundreds were believed to have been
killed, caught by advancing forces.

The evidence was not hard to find. Some bodies had become
tourist attractions as inquisitive locals came to view
the fate of their former rulers. Two Arabs, both Taliban
volunteers, had been caught and killed a few hours before
I found them, lying in the bright sunshine near the
Salang Highway outside Kabul.

For four days they had hidden, like dozens of others, in
the hills north of the city. That morning they made their
break and got caught. The first body had been hit by
something so powerful it blew off his leg. There was less
doubt about the second corpse. He had been shot and had a
single red mushy hole in the middle of his forehead.
Hundreds of Afghans came to see, jumping out of the
fleets of buses and trucks bringing refugees home to
Kabul.

'Arab! Arab!' they shouted. Then someone picked up a
stone. In seconds a cascade of rocks were being slammed
down on to the body, one bouncing off and hitting me in
the chest. There was a moment's pause, a profuse apology,
then they resumed their efforts to mutilate the body.

In Kabul on the day of liberation there was not much
doubt that the five Pakistani Taliban dead in the central
Sharinow Park had been randomly killed: one corpse had a
banknote stuffed up his nose. Another had one stuck in
what remained of his skull. Journalists who got to the
front line reported seeing Taliban prisoners killed on
the spot.

The people hurling the rocks were happy to be
photographed doing so.. The reasoning is simple, and any
Northern Alliance soldier here will happily spell it out.
Ordinary Afghans who are Taliban are not killed because
of the nature of war in this country. Generally, there is
a short sharp battle after which the loser, seeing the
way the wind is blowing, makes a deal with the winner.

Not so foreigners: the Arabs and Pakistanis fighting
alongside the Taliban in the lines north of Kabul were
seen as invaders here to dominate the country. They
therefore get what they deserve.

Not everyone is happy with this growing list of
atrocities. Yonus Qanuni, the eloquent Northern Alliance
Interior Minister, is well travelled enough to know how
such killings look to Western eyes. He spent weeks before
the Mazar offensive reminding the Alliance's most
bloodthirsty warlord, Rashid Dostum, to restrain his men:
'Not once, but several times.'

But Qanuni is in the minority. If anyone in the crowds
watching the mutilation of those Arab corpses had any
feeling of sadness, they were doing a good job in hiding
it.

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