The German news organization Deutsche Welle (DW) said in an article on Thursday that Taliban fighters had been searching for one of their journalists in Afghanistan, confirming that a relative of the journalist was shot dead by the Taliban on Wednesday and one other person was seriously injured.
Other relatives were able to escape at the last minute and are on the run, the DW article said.
“The killing of a close relative of one of our editors by the Taliban yesterday is inconceivably tragic, and testifies to the acute danger in which all our employees and their families in Afghanistan find themselves,” DW Director General Peter Limbourg said in the article.
“It is evident that the Taliban are already carrying out organized searches for journalists, both in Kabul and in the provinces. We are running out of time!” Limburg added.
The news comes after a threat assessment, prepared for the United Nations by a Norwegian organization, warned the “Taliban are intensifying the hunt-down of all individuals and collaborators with the former regime, and if unsuccessful, target and arrest the families and punish them according to their own interpretation of Sharia law.”
“Particularly at risk are individuals in central positions in military, police and investigative units,” the report went on to say.
CNN has obtained a copy of the report, dated August 18 and written by the Norwegian Center for Global Analyses. It includes a document purportedly written by the Taliban’s Military Commission to a senior security official in the former government who — it said — had “excellent relations with the Americans and the British.”
The document, dated August 16, said he must report to the Commission and failure to do so would mean that “your family members will be arrested instead, and you are responsible for this.”
CNN has been unable to establish the extent of the Taliban’s search for members of the security services and others associated with the former government, nor how many may have been arrested.
The last flights from Kabul inch closer
Taliban spokespeople have spent much of the past week stressing that the group will run a more tolerant regime than the one that repressed millions when last in power until it was ousted by US-led forces in 2001.
The spokesman for the Taliban’s political office in Doha, Suhail Shaheen, told CNN on Monday the group is committed to an “inclusive Islamic government,” and repeated assurances that those involved with the Afghan state over the past two decades would be given amnesty.
But a pattern of repression has already emerged in towns and cities around Afghanistan. On Thursday, the country’s independence day, Taliban patrols circled Kabul, blasting sirens and following marches that displayed the Afghan national flag.
The clampdowns are particularly concerning given the looming departure of the last US troops from Afghanistan. Those forces have been securing the military side of Kabul’s airport, and once they leave, the last chance to escape the country could vanish for the thousands who have crowded the facility all week.
Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said there has been “no decision to change” the August 31 deadline to withdraw all US troops from Afghanistan. If such a decision is made, it would require further discussions with the Taliban, Kirby said.
The scene at Kabul’s international airport has grown more desperate and chaotic as the week has worn on. On Thursday, crowds outside swelled and multiple Afghans told CNN they had been refused passage through Taliban checkpoints despite having the correct paperwork.
The US evacuated around another 3,000 people on Thursday, and have removed 14,000 people since late July, according to a White House official, quoted in the latest pool update on noncombatant evacuations conducted by the US military.
But President Joe Biden’s administration remains under intense scrutiny, after Biden stood by his unapologetic stance on the decision to withdraw US troops.
And images, videos and stories from outside the airport continue to rattle observers. On Thursday, Afghanistan’s General Directorate of Body and Sports confirmed that a teenager on Afghanistan’s youth national football team was one of the victims who fell from a US military C-17 aircraft on Monday.
“With great regret and sadness, we obtained information that Zaki Anwari, one of the youth footballers of the national team, has lost his life in a horrible incident,” it said in a statement.
Anwari was “endeavoring to leave the country like hundreds other youth from his country,” it continued. “He has fallen down from the US military plane and lost his life.”