- Title: Pulitzer Prize-winning Afghan journalist warns of Taliban atrocities
- Date: 23rd August 2021
- Summary: DORDRECHT, THE NETHERLANDS (AUGUST 21, 2021) (REUTERS) (SOUNDBITE) (English) PULLITZER PRIZE-WINNING AFGHAN JOURNALIST WHO FLED THE COUNTRY, MASSOUD HOSSAINI, SAYING: "When Taliban won and then they claimed the victory of over all the world and make emirate, which killed a lot of women, beating them up and kill youth and just order to people, never listen to them. That's against all Western philosophy, right? The other countries also will try to do it, we already had one Iran, right? It's another one really, really worse than that. Unfortunately the U.S. and the West were listening to Pakistan. Pakistan and (U.S. envoy for Afghanistan, Zalmay) Khalilzad specifically fooled them, just to get their own interest."
- Embargoed: 6th September 2021 14:34
- Keywords: Afghanistan NATO Pakistan Taliban genocide interview islamist journalist
- Location: DORDRECHT, THE NETHERLANDS / KABUL, HERAT, BAMIYAN AND BETWEEN BAMIYAN AND SAIGHAN, AFGHANISTAN
- City: DORDRECHT, THE NETHERLANDS / KABUL, HERAT, BAMIYAN AND BETWEEN BAMIYAN AND SAIGHAN, AFGHANISTAN
- Country: Netherlands
- Topics: Conflicts/War/Peace,Europe,Military Conflicts
- Reuters ID: LVA007ERI1PAF
- Aspect Ratio: 16:9
- Story Text:A Pulitzer-prize winning Afghani photographer who escaped Kabul on the day it fell is calling on Western countries to scale up evacuations 20-fold -- and warning that the Taliban will commit atrocities as they consolidate power.
"It has started already," said Massoud Hossaini, who got on the last commercial flight to Istanbul on August 15 and is now in the Netherlands.
"We have reports from some human rights activists that they have started killing Hazara men," he told Reuters on Saturday (August 21), referring to the country's third-largest ethnic group. "This is genocide."
He said the Taliban did the same when they were in power in 1996-2001 and any idea they will behave differently now and not promote their ideology abroad via terrorism or otherwise, is wishful thinking.
Taliban influence is "not something that will stay there," he said.
He said the U.S.'s abrupt withdrawal had sent the Taliban the message "you win," and their victory will inspire other Islamic countries to consider religious government.
"We already had one, Iran, right? This is another one, really, really worse than that."
"They will start funding other groups, or other activities in the world. You won't be safe in The Hague, or Paris, or I don't know, (Washington) D.C. or anywhere else."
Hossaini's last major project before leaving, published in Foreign Policy magazine in July, detailed the behaviour of Taliban fighters after a victory in Bamyan province, west of Kabul.
The group had begun to compile lists of young women, widows, and wives of men who had served in the national armed forces -- a first step toward forced marriages with Taliban fighters or sexual slavery.
Hossaini estimated that up to 200,000 people in the country of 35 million should be evacuated immediately, including not only those that assisted U.S. and NATO troops directly, but public critics of the Taliban, including human rights activists, academics and journalists.
Many more Afghans will want to flee Taliban rule, and the international community should be lobbying the group to let them leave peacefully across the country's land borders after the air campaign is over, according to Hossaini.
The best way to exert any economic pressure on the Taliban may be via Pakistan, Hossaini believes, but he acknowledged that may be ineffective with no military might to back it up.
"So I hope that they just think again. It's not too late now, they can go back. Just to rescue all 35 million people. This is what I really ask and request NATO and European countries and Canada, Australia."
Hossaini won the 2012 Pulitzer for breaking news photography for an image of a girl crying after a suicide bomb attack on a shrine in Kabul.
(Production: Esther Verkaik, Manuel Ausloos) - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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