Taliban Attacking Shias in Afghanistan with US Greenlight
In an interview with IQNA, Seyed Ahmad Mousavi Moballeq, director of Afghan media outlet Atlas Press, said the Taliban and the US government have been holding direct talks over the past couple of months in which it was agreed that the militant group gradually become part of the country’s government.
He said that during the talks, Washington has also agreed that the Taliban be given free hands in more areas in Afghanistan than they currently control.
US-Taliban talks are aimed at renewing the Afghan peace process and eventually winding down America's longest war.
Seventeen years after the US-led invasion that ended Taliban rule, the militants control nearly half of Afghanistan and carry out near-daily attacks on local security forces and government officials.
Referring to the recent attacks by the militant group against Hazara-populated areas, Moballeq said such attacks have been on the rise following the US-Taliban negotiations.
The Hazara Shia community, the poorest of the country’s ethnic groups, accounts for about 22 percent of Afghanistan’s population.
Its members have been targeted in several large-scale kidnappings and killings across Afghanistan in the past, prompting demonstrations and sit-ins in Kabul and elsewhere.
Elsewhere in the interview, Moballeq highlighted the Taliban’s attacks in the province of Ghazni in central Afghanistan that has a large Shia population and said one aim of such attacks is undermining the presence of Shia representatives in the Afghan parliament.
He said 11 Shia Muslims have been elected from Ghazni to represent the Hazaras in the parliament and this is not something everyone can bear.
According to Moballeq, some in the Afghan government tacitly seek to see conditions in Ghazni to move in a direction that elections cannot be held in the province and the number of Shias and Hazara seats in the parliament shrink.
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