Trigger warning: Violence
The Taliban, on Wednesday, executed Haji Mullah Achakzai, the police chief of the Badghis province near Herat, Afghanistan.
In a video that surfaced on Twitter on Thursday, Achakzai can be seen blindfolded, kneeling down on his knees as he was surrounded by Taliban individuals who shot him several times, reported Newsweek.
The group shared the video through a Taliban-related network, Afghan security advisor Nasser Waziri, who personally knew Achakzai, told Newsweek.
“He was surrounded by the Taliban and had no choice but to surrender last night,” Waziri said. “The Taliban targeted Achakzai because he was a high-ranking intelligence official.”
Waziri said that when the Taliban were able to hack into the Afghan intelligence database to track down government officials, they accessed information, photographs, biometrics, and national identification documents. As of Monday, they started “door-to-door investigations.”
A door-to-door investigation is how the Taliban spots targeted individuals through families, according to Waziri. They threaten and abuse those individuals’ families to reveal their whereabouts.
One of Waziri’s friends, a district governor who hasn’t been identified for security reasons, has been hiding in Kabul as the Taliban recently visited some of his family members in Nurstin, an Afghan province.
“They [the Taliban] took the family out of their house and hit them so that they could give information on which city he can be,” Waziri said.
Earlier this week, Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid had assured peace and stability in the region.
The Taliban would not seek retribution against former soldiers and members of the western-backed government, said Mujahid, insisting that “everyone is forgiven”.
“Nobody is going to harm you, nobody is going to knock on your doors,” said Mujahid. He said that the Taliban “do not wish to see any kind of chaos” in Kabul.
“Our plan was to stop at the gates of Kabul after capturing all other provinces,” the spokesman claimed, adding that a “smooth transition” of power was what the group had sought to avoid “trouble, harm, and damages”.
