Taliban Conducting Door-to-Door Raids to Confiscate Guns

Members of Afghanistan’s Taliban conducted door-to-door raids of homes in the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif on Thursday in part to search for and confiscate weapons, including firearms, deemed “illegal” by the terror group, which seized control of Afghanistan’s government in August 2021, the Kabul-based Khaama Press News Agency reported.

The raids took place on the morning of August 25 in Mazar-e-Sharif, which is the capital of Afghanistan’s Balkh province, Khaama Press reported citing unnamed sources. The news agency said Taliban spokesman Asif Waziri, who serves Balkh’s “office of the chief of police” confirmed the raids in the northern capital.

“The Taliban’s 209th Al-Fath Corps and the Intelligence Directorate are working together to conduct house-to-house searches in Mazar-e-Sharif,” Khaama Press quoted Waziri as saying on August 25.

“Taliban forces are conducting door-to-door searches in an effort to combat ISIS, obtain state weapons and collect undocumented guns, as well as track down suspected criminals,” the Taliban spokesman added.

Waziri referenced the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), which is an international jihadist terror group present in Afghanistan in the form of an offshoot called ISIS-Khorasan Province (ISIS-K). ISIS-K claimed responsibility for a deadly suicide bombing at Kabul’s Hamid Karzai International Airport on August 26, 2021, that killed 13 U.S. servicemembers and hundreds of Afghans.

The attack took place as the administration of U.S. President Joe Biden oversaw a chaotic withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan after the Taliban seized control of Kabul, the nation’s seat of government, on August 15, 2021.

The Taliban had previously ruled Kabul from 1996 to 2001 before Washington launched a nearly 20-year-long War in Afghanistan in late 2001 that ousted the Sunni Islam-based terror group from the capital and replaced it with a U.S.-backed Afghan government administration. In a reversal of the action almost two decades later, the Taliban reconquered Kabul last summer and have since reestablished sharia, or Islamic law, as the basis of Afghanistan’s legal system.

The Taliban’s interpretation of sharia has seen the group ban again women and girls from working or attending school. The policy also forces females to completely cover their bodies and faces in burqas (Islamic garments) and have a male chaperone if they leave their homes. Sharia additionally allows for corporal punishments, such as chopping off a convicted thief’s hand if he or she is caught stealing.

The Taliban has exercised violent and even deadly retribution toward members of Kabul’s former U.S.-backed government, as well toward people closely aligned with the now-defunct administration.

The August 25 door-to-door raids by Taliban members in Mazar-e-Sharif included searches for such individuals, according to Khaama Press. The news agency confirmed that “25 young people were allegedly detained without evident or announced justifications” during the roundups.