Taliban foot soldiers will face sharia justice if they kill or injure innocent civilians without taking precautions, the fugitive leader of the Afghan insurgency has warned.
Mullah Omar, the Taliban’s supreme cleric, released a 1,800-word statement that dwelled at length on the need to protect civilians in a sign of the insurgency’s growing defensiveness on the issue.
Human rights workers described the statement, published in five languages on Friday to mark the Islamic festival of Eid al-Adha, as extremely significant. They said it went into far more detail about the issue than any other previous pronouncement.
The mujahidin, as the rebels style themselves, are ordered to “take every step to protect the lives and wealth of ordinary people.”
The decree said: “Scholars should be employed every now and then to preach protection of civilian life, wealth and honor to mujahidin and promote virtue ... All civilian casualties which are caused or are believed to be caused by mujahidin should be reported to the superiors.”
It also called for investigations by the movement’s “legal offices” of cases where locals say civilians have been hurt by landmines, suicide bombings or other attacks.
“If it is irrefutably proven that the blood of innocent Muslims is spilled by the negligence of mujahidin then a penalty should be implemented in accordance with sharia,” the statement said. The family of the victims should also be compensated, it suggested.
Afghan civilians are also ordered to protect themselves by not “moving in close proximity to Americans who patrol in villages and countryside.”
Kate Clark, a researcher at the Afghanistan Analysts Network, said even though the statement was in part propaganda it could also help civilians trapped in the middle of fighting between NATO and Taliban forces.
“It is much, much more specific than ever before on the Taliban’s system of internal discipline,” she said.
“And they admit that they themselves are causing civilian casualties, not just people doing it in their name,” Clark added.
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