By Ferdows Andishmand*
Farhad* was a sixth-semester dental student at Kabul Medical University when he was arrested by the Taliban in November 2022. He had joined other student activists, as well as university professors, located inside and outside Afghanistan in taking to social media to criticize the Taliban when they banned girls from attending school beyond the sixth grade and then forbade them from attending any educational facility.
“A leadership that has lived in the dark holes and terrorist bases of Pakistan will certainly not allow the children of Afghanistan to study. Therefore, the people must rise and claim their rights. Education is the right of all humans, as Islam and the Quran have called people to education. Remember, rights are not given; they are taken,” Farhad wrote on social media.
His messages were popular, with other critics adding their own angry messages in his comments. Farhad’s trouble began when someone following his online accounts reported him to the Taliban. He was arrested on campus one November afternoon. “Two men in civilian clothes came to our college and asked me, ‘Are you Farhad?’ I said yes. One of them slapped me hard in the face and asked, ‘What nonsense are you saying on Facebook?’” he recounts to Zan Times. Taliban intelligence took the 23-year-old to their intelligence headquarters.
Farhad is one of an untold number of people detained and abused by the Taliban for posting online even the mildest of criticisms of the regime. In the two years since the Taliban returned to power, 3,329 cases of human rights violations in Afghanistan have been registered with Afghan Witness, an international media organization documenting human rights in Afghanistan. The exact toll is likely much higher, experts believe.
Farhad’s family didn’t know what happened to him for two weeks. Although some students and university staff had seen him being arrested, they didn’t inform his family out of fear of Taliban reprisal. His family only found out when they came for a visit and were informed by the university’s administration that Farhad was in a Taliban prison. Farhad’s father, who was already ill, suffered a fatal heart attack upon hearing the news.
Elders and religious leaders from Farhad’s home province pleaded for his release to high-ranking Taliban government officials, including those in the deputy prime minister’s office and the court. Their efforts were in vain.
The Taliban charged Farhad with insulting their leader and government, spying for foreigners, and using his social standing to disrupt public order. During his first interrogation, two soldiers and a cleric questioned him about which foreign organization he was spying for, and accused him of insulting their leader in exchange for a few dollars. In addition to the interrogation, they subjected him to severe physical torture. For three weeks, he was questioned and tortured, including beatings, suffocation, and sleep deprivation. They held him in solitary confinement, isolated from other detainees. Then, without trial, he was transferred to the infamous Pul-e-Charkhi prison.
He was given little food and water, Farhad tells Zan Times in an interview: “They only gave me one meal a day, which consisted of a little water and bread. Later, in the Pul-e-Charkhi prison, they alternated between giving two meals one day and one meal the next. They would say that no more bread was left or, if they brought some, it was very little.”
Farhad’s cell in Pul-e-Charkhi prison was dark and damp. He fell sick multiple times but wasn’t given medication or treatment. During his detention, his family members weren’t allowed to visit. His legal appeals went nowhere. “No trial was held for me, and neither my defence lawyer nor my family had the right to follow up on my case,” he explained.
After nearly eight months in custody, Farhad was released due to a pardon from the Taliban leader on Eid al-Adha in July 2023.
Taliban intelligence imposed conditions on his release, including biometrically registering Farhad and his brother, and deleting all his social media accounts. They warned that he would face even more severe consequences if he engaged in similar activities again. He was also expelled from university. The loss of his father and his education were two heavy prices that Farhad paid for saying what he thought. In addition, the torture he endured in prison has severely affected his mental and physical health. “I am tired of everything; I see nightmares, especially when I heard my father died due to the oppression of the Taliban,” he recounts. “It was truly unbearable for me.”
Farhad isn’t the only student arrested and tortured for criticizing the Taliban. Saluhuddin* still bears the scars from torture. In September 2021, he was arrested by Taliban intelligence a day after he protested in Kabul against the crimes committed by Taliban fighters in the Panjshir war. His family lived in the province of Panjshir, but at the time the 25-year-old was arrested, he was a theology student at Kabul University.
He and his roommates, who were also detained, were blindfolded and sent to the infamous Directorate 40, where they were brutally tortured. Saluhuddin’s description of those sessions is horrifying: “Every time the Taliban mullahs came for a torture session, they started by flogging, then put my head in a plastic bag, and finally hung weights on my genitalia. They always threatened to kill me during the torture sessions.” Saluhuddin says that two other men, one from Baghlan and the other from Kapisa, were tortured with him at Directorate 40.
After his release from detention, he was accused of collaborating with the National Resistance Front (NRF), expelled from university, and his name was added to the Taliban’s blacklist, meaning he will face severe repercussions if he commits even a minor infraction.
Of the human rights violations carried out by the Taliban, Afghan Witness has reported instances of arbitrary detentions, torture, and murder. In addition, the human rights organization has confirmed 70 cases of Taliban suppression of street protests undertaken by women and girls. In addition, it has registered 67 reports of arrests of civil activists and protestors from January 2022 to July 2023.
It was the 10th day of the holy month of Muharram, 1402 (July 29, 2023) when Jawad* was arrested by the Taliban while performing chest-beating rituals with a large group of mourners in the Dasht-e-Barchi area of Kabul. Nineteen-year-old Jawad says that Taliban militants sought to disperse the Muharram mourners by hitting them with batons and firing their guns in the air. Then they started detaining people, including Jawad and six others. For two weeks, they were detained in a dark and cold room with inadequate food and water. “During the interrogation, they told us that we were arguing with the mujahideen [the Taliban] and trying to turn Afghanistan like Iran. They concluded their talk by whipping us,” Jawad tells Zan Times. The Taliban inflicted 15 lashes on Jawad and each of his companions, who were all released into the custody of tribal elders.
In addition to the mental and physical injuries inflicted on them, their named were added to the Taliban’s intelligence blacklist and they were biometrically registered.
And now, the Taliban have added to the punishment of anyone thrown into one of their prisons or detention centres. On July 31, 2023, the Taliban’s Passport Directorate issued a statement that read, in part, “Individuals who the Taliban courts have convicted do not have the right to receive a passport; they have lost both educational and employment opportunities in Afghanistan and cannot legally leave the country.”
Farhad had been trying to leave Afghanistan ever since his release from Taliban prison. Though he is now barred from acquiring a passport, he knows he has no future in Afghanistan: “I am tired of this country and being around these kinds of people. I have to leave.”
*Names have been changed to protect the identity of the interviewees and writer. Ferdows Andishmand is the pseudonym of a freelance journalist in Afghanistan.
