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The Taliban take Afghanistan
Democracy Dies in Darkness

Taliban wages campaign of targeted killings against former members of Afghan security forces

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Updated December 1, 2021 at 12:05 a.m. EST|Published November 30, 2021 at 5:52 p.m. EST
The father of the former police officer outside his home's front gate in Helmand, where a group of men he said were Taliban fighters abducted and killed his son. (Susannah George/The Washington Post)

LASHKAR GAH, Afghanistan — It was dark and the streets deserted one night in late August when the former intelligence officer heard banging on his neighbor’s gates. Then, women screaming.

“Please don’t kill them,” they pleaded, “have mercy.” The former officer crawled to his roof to see three attackers pulling two men out into the street below him. The gunmen wore Taliban insignia and drove a confiscated green pickup truck, previously issued to Afghan police and now used exclusively by the Taliban.