Community elders in Ghor province say that the Taliban intelligence department is gathering information about displaced families from Panjshir, Baghlan, Takhar, and some other northern provinces.
A community elder from Firozkoh city, capital of Ghor province, told Zan Times on the condition of anonymity, “The Taliban intelligence has been distributing forms in mosques and local councils in Firozkoh in the past few days, the purpose of which is to collect information of displaced families.”
Zan Times has seen a copy of a form that asks for information such as names of family members, their home address, the province and district from which they are displaced, and the phone number of the head of the family.
The community says that the purpose of that information gathering is to identify families who came to Ghor from provinces such as Panjshir, Baghlan, Takhar, and other non-Pashtun provinces.
Another resident of Firozkoh confirmed this and said that the form was distributed after the head of Taliban intelligence was changed. He added that the Taliban is surveilling the displaced families.
The resistance to the Taliban in Panjshir and Baghlan provinces and the Taliban repression and violence have displaced many residents of these provinces from their homes.
Actively policing the population, including repeated house searches, intrusive behaviour such as body searches on the streets and looking into people’s mobile phones are common methods of Taliban governance. Recently the Taliban have gunned down several members of families who resisted Taliban’s intrusive house searches.
