Three years after the U.S. withdrawal, former Afghan forces are hunted by the Taliban
The Taliban are still hunting down former Afghan soldiers and police officers, three years after the chaotic American withdrawal. Many of the men, who were trained by U.S. and NATO forces, simply disappear from homes and villages. Others are on the run, or in hiding. Mohammed, a former police officer, is one of them.
In the summer of 2021 he was on his police shift, and heard the Taliban were closing in on the capital. He knew that anyone working in law enforcement was a target. Mohammad told NPR he had worked as a police officer for seven years, after graduating from the police academy. People knew him well.
He didn’t feel safe at home in Kabul, and he fled to Iran alongside hundreds of exiled Afghan law enforcement officers. Mohammad says the Taliban considered them “a force for America,” “traitors, trained by NATO,” and “nonbelievers.”
Life in Iran was equally challenging. Moving from place to place, unable to secure work and stay legally, he was faced with an uncertain future. He says he was told that to stay in Iran legally, he would need to join the Fatemiyoun Brigade, an Iran-backed militia group made up, in part, of Afghan refugees. He was a police officer, not a soldier – he didn’t want to fight. The alternative, however, was deportation back to the Taliban, if he was caught illegally in Iran. He weighed his options and slipped back over the border to hide in Afghanistan. He’s been hiding for a year.
