‘Nobody left’: Afghanistan’s Panjshir is now the area of ghost cities and outdated males

Warring parties in Afghanistan’s Panjshir vowed to struggle the Taliban to the remaining guy, however just about two weeks after the hardline Islamists celebrated victory, portions of the rugged valley lie empty and deserted.

In lots of villages, handiest outdated males and farm animals stay.

Sitting underneath the awning of a closed store, Abdul Ghafoor contemplates his abandoned village, perched at the facet of a rocky hill within the district of Khenj.

“Sooner than, virtually 100 households lived right here,” he stated. “There are handiest 3 left now. Everybody has left.”

Maximum had fled south to the capital Kabul prior to the Taliban swept in remaining month, he stated.

Additional up the valley at Malaspa, alongside a strip of inexperienced alongside the tumbling river, villagers as soon as met to proportion gossip and information.

Now just a donkey and Khol Mohammad — elderly 67 and limping with a foul leg — stay in Malaspa with a couple of others left within the neighborhood.

“A couple of households stayed, however some 80 others all left,” he stated.

It’s the identical tale in village after village visited by way of AFP, travelling via 3 of the hardest-hit of the province’s seven districts.

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‘NO ONE LEFT’

A couple of retail outlets or stalls, principally bakeries, are nonetheless open however the markets — typically crowded with buyers and consumers — most commonly lie empty.

“There is not any one left, with the exception of the elders, and the deficient who can not come up with the money for to go away,” stated Abdul Wajid, 30, who stayed at the back of to look at over the circle of relatives house.

The one other people busy are the heavily-armed Taliban gunmen who now lay declare to many of the mountain valley.

They guard roadblocks or patrol the dusty roads in pickup vans seized as spoils of warfare throughout their lightning rout of presidency forces.

Panjshir combatants earned a mythical popularity for resistance, protecting their mountain houses first from the Soviet army for a decade, then right through a civil warfare, then the remaining Taliban regime from 1996-2001.

The 115-kilometre-long (70-mile-long) valley surrounded by way of jagged snow-capped peaks gives defenders a herbal army merit.

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CRUSHING DEFEAT

However the Taliban had been emboldened by way of their sweeping victories throughout the remainder of the rustic, the place they seized a huge arsenal of guns and army package that the now-departed US supplied to the defeated Afghan military.

A number of Panjshir leaders, together with Ahmad Massoud — the son of the overdue veteran fighter Ahmad Shah Massoud — vowed by no means to give up to the Taliban.

They submit some combat, with the proof in their resistance within the twisted and charred stays of Taliban armoured cars and pickups.

However the Taliban, outnumbering the Panjshiri combatants and significantly better provided, shrugged off the losses to energy up the valley.

Previous this month the Taliban declared victory, hoisting their white flag.

It’s unclear what stays of the resistance and whether or not its leaders are even nonetheless within the nation.

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HUMAN SHIELDS?

The coming of the Taliban was once brutal, citizens say.

“They shot useless a motive force at the back of the wheel of his automobile, and a father who had long past to search for meals for his kids,” stated an elder, announcing he noticed the stays close to the village of Khenj.

Different Panjshiris say they counted 19 killings of civilians — cut loose the ones killed in crossfire exchanged with opposition forces — between the villages of Khenj and Bazarak, experiences unattainable to ensure and denied by way of the Taliban.

On this conservative valley, many say the presence of Taliban squaddies is observed as intrusive and unwelcome.

“How do you are expecting us to go away our circle of relatives right here, when the Taliban are on the finish of the lawn?” stated Haji Mohammad Younus, 75, within the just about abandoned village of Omerz.

“Folks now not be at liberty, and like to visit Kabul.”

Citizens say the Taliban have arrange roadblocks to forestall other people from leaving, with the Islamists reportedly asking other people to deliver members of the family again house.

“We inform folks that they are able to come again to their houses and that they’re going to no longer be afflicted,” one Taliban commander in Khenj marketplace stated.

Nonetheless, AFP noticed a truck loaded with mattresses and furnishings grew to become again after looking to go away Panjshir.

One elder stated the Taliban sought after other people to stick to give protection to them from assaults.

“The Taliban want that villagers stay, in an effort to have human shields and no longer be bombarded by way of the resistance,” he stated.

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