Jessica Donati
KABUL—The Taliban appear to have launched a campaign to track down former Afghan members of U.S.-backed military and intelligence units, according to colleagues, relatives and a network of American veterans trying to help them.
Former Afghan troops have increasingly been arrested, gone missing or been killed since the Taliban seized power last August. The goal, the people say, is to prevent troops from joining an opposition group that has taken root in the northeast.
The arrests and killings add to the risks faced by elite forces, who have been targeted in revenge attacks for their role in the war against the Taliban. Thousands have likely gone into hiding or fled across the border to neighboring countries. Among them is Ahmad, who said goodbye to his wife and children and sought refuge in a safe house in Kabul almost a year ago with the help of a retired U.S. Army Ranger.
Ahmad knows five colleagues from his special-operations unit, who worked closely with the Rangers and the Central Intelligence Agency, who have disappeared in recent months. His former colleague Abdul was taken from his house a couple of months ago. Abdul had received a call from another former colleague, asking him to step outside to talk, according to his wife, Murwarid. He found a group of Taliban waiting to arrest him.
The Wall Street Journal verified the identities of those who disappeared or are in hiding and agreed to withhold their full names.
The Taliban officers told Murwarid that Abdul was being investigated for links to the National Resistance Front, a new domestic opposition group. They searched the house for electronics and arrested their son as well. The teenager was released the next day, she said, but Abdul has disappeared. Local police departments and the Taliban’s spy agency told relatives inquiring about his whereabouts that they knew nothing about his arrest.
“I believe if he doesn’t come back, I cannot continue living,” Murwarid said.
Murwarid hasn’t seen her husband, Abdul, since he was arrested by the Taliban a few months ago.The Taliban, who offered amnesty to former adversaries after regaining control of the country last year, have repeatedly denied any systematic effort to target former soldiers, intelligence-agency personnel and others. The group has said that any killings or disappearances are rooted in local conflicts and score-settling after two decades of bitter conflict.
Behzad Behnam, former commander of the Afghanistan Reconnaissance Unit, which worked with the U.S. Army Rangers in high-risk and covert operations, said he knows of nine of his former soldiers who have disappeared. He has since escaped to the U.K. and has received calls from soldiers asking him questions about the opposition group, which he said he has no connection with. He believes the Taliban forced the men to call him under duress.
“They are still thinking that operatives are all around Afghanistan working for the U.S. government,” he said.
The U.S. and its allies say they don’t support any opposition group in Afghanistan. Western and Middle Eastern governments have declined requests by Afghan opposition leaders to supply weapons or money, according to National Resistance Front members.
The United Nations and other entities have documented hundreds of extrajudicial killings of former Afghan forces and government workers in the past year.
Mirwais Naab, a senior Afghan foreign ministry official under the former government, collects data on targeted killings and disappearances with a team of about a dozen people, mostly in Afghanistan. The team said it has verified about 750 reports, including accounts that elite military units are being hunted down one by one. Mr. Naab said his team has gathered hundreds more reports that are impossible to verify because family members are unreachable or unwilling to talk.
A former member of an elite Afghan unit held prayer beads in a safe house in Kabul.Afghans affiliated with the U.S. have been the subject of targeted killings for years. The attacks escalated as soon as the Taliban seized power. Many inside the country blame them for night raids and bombings that often killed civilians.
Soon after the last evacuation flights took off, Ahmad, whose team members were recruited from an Afghan special unit known as the Ktah Khas, began to fear for his life. A cousin called to warn that the local police chief had been killed. The cousin had recognized the man’s body dumped in the playground near his house.
As Ahmad began making arrangements to go into hiding, he learned that a colleague from the Ktah Khas had been shot and killed after being stopped at a checkpoint while trying to leave Kabul.
“I thought, if any of my neighbors know who I am, they can call the Taliban and let them know about my location,” he said in an interview at his safe house in Kabul earlier this summer.
Ahmad fled to a relative’s house and called Mike Edwards for help. Mr. Edwards is a retired U.S. Army Ranger who has 18 combat tours under his belt, most of them in Afghanistan. He had helped launch the reconnaissance unit that Ahmad was part of for over a decade.
Ahmad in an apartment in Kabul.Mr. Edwards set up an organization called Project Exodus last year to help evacuate former forces and others at risk. He had tried to help Ahmad escape from Kabul during last year’s chaotic evacuations. Ahmad was unable to get to the gate at Kabul airport with his wife, who was then six months pregnant, and three children. The crowd was too large.
Mr. Edwards said he was in touch with another group of veterans that had space in their safe-house operation. He told Ahmad that hiding was his best option until there was a way to get him out of the country, and connected him with an Afghan ground team that would escort him to a safe place.
Ahmad made arrangements to depart, wiping the data from his phone and hugging his wife and children. He got into a car filled with armed men waiting to escort him to the secret location in Kabul. His escorts were disguised as Taliban and he feared they would arrest or kill him.
Mr. Edwards said Project Exodus now has its own network of safe houses and is sheltering some 700 people, the majority former special-operations and air force members and their families.
Female former special-operations members are especially vulnerable. Many were disowned by their own families for joining the army and have nowhere to hide on their own. One 24-year-old female former member of the Ktah Khas unit learned how to jump out of helicopters in her job searching women during raids by special operations troops. Now she’s in a safe house with her parents run by Mr. Edwards and, like Ahmad, hoping the U.S. will save her.
A 24-year-old former member of the Ktah Khas unit at a safe house in Kabul.The situation has grown more dangerous with the rise of the anti-Taliban National Resistance Front, according to former soldiers, family members and human-rights groups. Daily attacks in Panjshir—the Tajik-dominated province that formed the base of Northern Alliance, a coalition of militias that fought the Taliban in the 1990s—have risen in recent months and are inflicting casualties on both sides.
The Taliban view former Afghan military and intelligence forces as top candidates for recruitment to the resistance movement, given their years of alliance with and training by the U.S. and allied forces. Some of those left behind in August fled to Panjshir, helping to establish the opposition group.
Analysts say the resistance group is years away from being a significant threat, but it has become a serious concern for the Taliban rulers, who have deployed thousands of troops to fight the group.
A State Department official said the U.S. has received a growing number of reports of arrests, killings and disappearances of former combatants in Afghanistan, although he said that it was unclear whether killings were directed from the top.
The official said the State Department’s special representative for Afghanistan, Tom West, meets Taliban representatives roughly every six weeks and raises the issue in every meeting.
Ahmad said his fears eased after he reached the safe house, in a towering apartment block in a busy part of Kabul. He has gotten unusual-sounding text messages and calls from some former colleagues, asking for information on his whereabouts or the opposition group. He deletes the messages each time.
He has left the safe house only a handful of times since arriving. The first time was for the death of his father. Then he took his family to apply for passports in another province. His wife had given birth to a boy, and he held his son in the car all the way there.
The baby died soon afterward, following a night of vomiting and diarrhea. Ahmad left the safe house again to bury him. He blames himself for being unable to get the baby to a doctor in time. Most recently, he returned home for a gathering for his sister’s engagement.
“It’s like a prison, but it’s good to be safe. Even if it’s a prison, I am alive,” he said.
He has applied to the U.S. for a Special Immigrant Visa, designed to help Afghans who are at risk of reprisal, but hasn’t heard back. Most of the elite forces that worked for the Afghan army or spy agency don’t qualify for the visa, which requires applicants to have worked directly for the U.S. government.
A female former member of an Afghan elite unit with her newborn in a Kabul safe house.Ahmad’s application is in a pipeline with a backlog of some 74,000 others left behind in Afghanistan. In all, there could be a quarter of a million people waiting to be evacuated, including family members, State Department officials say—a number that will take years to process.
Travis Peterson, an Afghan war veteran who is the founder of a network called the Moral Compass Federation, aims to coordinate the efforts of the many veteran and civilian groups that sprang up last summer to help evacuate Afghan allies. It maintains a list of some 33,000 vetted Afghans at risk, the majority of whom were in special operations, served as intelligence officials or are female former troops. Mr. Peterson is hoping to change some of the U.S. criteria for evacuating Afghan partners.
“The end goal is legislation,” he said. “We need to help the ones that we made a promise to.”
Earlier this month, a bipartisan group of Senators introduced a bill that would give certain Afghan special operations forces a path to a Special Immigrant Visa, and make the almost 80,000 Afghans who have been evacuated to the U.S. eligible for green cards.
In Kabul, Ahmad spends his days in the safe house keeping track of reports of colleagues and other Afghan forces who have been arrested or disappeared.
Recently, a former colleague was stopped in the Salang Pass on his way to Iran, was arrested by the Taliban and hasn’t been heard from since.
Last month, another former colleague called to ask for advice. The Taliban had visited his family, who are low-income farmers, and warned they would be taken hostage unless he delivered himself to the authorities. Ahmad advised him to stay put.
“I told him, there’s nothing to do. Why would you go to their prison?” he told his friend. “Do you want to disappear as well?”
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