Law students and lawyers in Afghanistan are filing reports with JURIST on the situation there after the Taliban takeover. Here, a Staff Correspondent for JURIST in Kabul comments on Taliban moves to form a permanent police and security force within the country. For privacy and security reasons, we are withholding our Correspondent’s name. The text has been only lightly edited to respect the author’s voice.
Following their takeover of Afghanistan in August, the Taliban are now attempting to establish forces to maintain the country’s security. Their first step was to form the 313-Badri Unit, a special unit formed from the Haqqani network’s 5,000-man forces. Sirajuddin Haqqani, the Taliban’s Interior Minister, is in charge of the network. The main responsibility of the Unit, according to local media, is to protect the Taliban’s top leadership and key facilities. This unit employs military equipment from the previous government.
According to Taliban sources, they are planning a police force of 30,000 to 40,000 people, which they believe will be sufficient because the war is over.
Former Taliban insurgents are now joining their police forces. This is a gradual process that will necessitate training for these individuals. The average number of so-called Taliban police in the districts is roughly 20 to 30 people who are in charge of guarding the district center and occasionally patrolling on motorcycles. Taliban police are not present in the villages, and the Taliban have chosen one or two Arbaki representatives from each village to report to them on what is going on in the villages. If the Arbakis are unable to solve problems at the village level, the center will dispatch a larger force.
The Ministry of Interior’s personnel are concentrated in cities, particularly Kabul, where they work to maintain public order and combat ISIS. According to Taliban sources in Kabul, the main challenge is tracking down terrorist cells and ISIS-K. ISIS-K has been able to increase the intensity of its attacks in Kabul and Jalalabad. In the last three days there were three major attacks by the ISIS–K in Kabul which killed at least ten people and injured many others. According to the Aamaq website, which is affiliated with the ISIS-K group, members of the group carried out “three attacks” on vehicles in Kabul’s Shiite neighborhood on Saturday. Saeed Khosti, a Taliban spokesman for the Interior Ministry, told reporters that a bomb had exploded in Kabul’s Barchi neighborhood, killing two civilians and injuring three others. Another woman was injured in another blast in the same area, he said.
Because the Taliban is unable to effectively track down the perpetrators of these attacks, it appears that they are killing any suspected members of the group as well as any suspected supporters. The justice system is currently almost paralyzed. So far, there have been several cases of people being hanged without even a formal trial. The Taliban recently announced the reactivation of the judiciary, which will be entirely based on Sharia law. They also stated that the majority of judicial staff would be Taliban members, who had previously been part of the Taliban during the insurgency.
So far, the Taliban have not made any official statement on the number of police forces as well as how they are planning to fund their military forces in the country. It is to be noted that almost all of their current soldiers are illiterate and they need training and education.
