Sending this along as a reminder of what the Taliban and their cohorts are
really like.

> By Priscilla Cheung
> Associated Press Writer
> Friday, Oct. 26, 2001; 6:20 p.m. EDT
> UNITED NATIONS -- Taliban soldiers executed Afghan civilians
> indiscriminately after taking over the strategic Yakoalong district
> this year, according to a U.N. report released Friday.
>
> Kamal Hossain, author of the report, said about 130 civilians were
> executed - most of them by firing squad - during three days of
> carnage after the Taliban took over Yakoalong from opposition forces
> in January.
>
> Hossain's report is one of the most detailed accounts yet of alleged
> Taliban atrocities. He is investigating rights abuses in Afghanistan
> for the U.N. Human Rights Commission.
>
> Fifty more people were reported killed later in January.
>
> "Most of the killing at this stage seems to have been indiscriminate,
> in the sense that all adult males in areas searched were rounded up
> and taken for execution," Hossain said.
>
> The district has changed hands several times since last December. The
> Taliban retook Yakoalong from allied opposition forces in May,
> leading to the massacre of 180 more people in the region, Hossain
> reported.
>
> Hossain, who visited Pakistan in March to investigate reports of the
> killings, found "a substantial body of evidence gathered from
> reliable sources."
>
> His report also details developments in Afghanistan between
> March-August 2001, before the Sept. 11 terror attacks on America
> brought world attention to the war-ravaged nation.
>
> U.S.-led troops have been bombing targets in Afghanistan, where the
> ruling Taliban are fighting opposition forces based in the north.
>
> Yakoalong is in Bamiyan province, where Taliban leader Mullah
> Mohammed Omar in February ordered the destruction of all statues of
> Buddha, including two mammoth carvings in a Bamiyan mountainside made
> in the 3rd and 5th centuries.
>
> The district links central Bamiyan to northern regions.
>
> Between Jan. 8-13, Taliban commanders sent out search parties to
> villages in the area to round up male civilians, including some
> prominent local figures.
>
> Some were killed on the spot, while others were taken away to face
> the firing squad.
>
> "The old were detained for one or two days; the young were sentenced
> to death by firing squad," the report said.
>
> Some victims "were tortured prior to execution, particularly through
> bayoneting and mutilation by knives," it said. At least one firing
> squad victim was skinned, it said.
>
> A number of execution sites and mass graves have been identified, as
> have some of the commanders, the report said. While some victims were
> combatants, "the evidence overwhelmingly suggests that the target of
> the attacks was the civilian population," it said.
>
> The soldiers also broke into homes, "where women and children were
> terrorized and in many cases food stocks and valuables were looted,"
> the report said.
>
> "Evidence of the scale and method of execution suggests that it could
> not have been done without the knowledge of the Taliban commanders,"
> it said.