Video of militant shooting civilians enrages Afghans (News Feature)

By Farhad Peikar Feb 23, 2011, 10:42 GMT

Kabul - The increasing violence of the Taliban is failing to win the hearts and minds of many Afghans, as a video of a shooting in a bank has prompted calls for terrorists to be publicly executed.

Surveillance footage shot on Sunday in the Kabul Bank branch in Jalalabad, in the eastern province of Nangarhar, showed a man dressed in police uniform and six accomplices repeatedly shooting unarmed civilians.

In one of the clips broadcast late Tuesday, the bogus policeman is seen shooting two men in civilian clothes as they try to leave the bank, and then walking all around the room, firing indiscriminately at customers, staff and unarmed security personnel.

The attack triggered a standoff with police that lasted several hours and left 38 civilians, four security staff and six of the attackers dead. Afghan police arrested the remaining attacker in police uniform.

Tolo, an Afghan broadcaster, aired a report on Tuesday night which included the surveillance footage and an interview with the suspect, in which he said that the killing 'gave me pleasure.'

The attack came amid an increase in Taliban actions against civilians, as war-weary Afghans the length and breadth of the country struggle to see the Islamic justification for the violence.

'Believe me, I could not sleep last night after I saw the report on the Jalalabad attack,' said Abdul Qadir, 50, a carpenter in Kabul city. 'Those who are real Muslims, they never carry out suicide bombings against innocent and defenseless civilians, or women and children.'

Hussain Ali, a 60-year-old street porter in the capital, agreed. 'These attacks that the Taliban or whoever else carries out are un-Islamic and inhuman,' he said.

More than 100 people - mostly civilians - have been killed in a wave of suicide attacks in major cities in the past two weeks. The Taliban has claimed responsibility for all of them.

A farmer from the northern province of Kunduz, where the latest suicide bomber claimed 31 lives on Monday, said he had no sympathy for the insurgents.

'From what I heard from my elders and ulema (Islamic scholars), the killing of civilians has no justification in Islam or any other laws,' Mohammad Sardar said.

Hundreds of kilometres to the south, Kandahar city resident Mohammad Daoud expressed similar doubts. 'Islam says that the killing of one innocent person is like killing the whole of humanity, so I don't think these attackers are Muslims or know anything about Islam,' he said.

Daoud and several other interviewees called for the public execution of militants arrested during attacks on civilians.

Nangarhar's police chief Ali Shah Paktiawal, who took part in the police operation at the bank, said that 'in order to set an example for others' the government must 'publicly punish the perpetrators of these crimes.'

Analysts said that the recent spate of attacks has been a show of force by the Taliban, which lost its southern stronghold to NATO operations last year.

'As spring is about to start, the Taliban militants want to prove their presence and show the world that they are still strong,' said Abdul Hadi Khalid, a security analyst and former deputy interior minister.

He said the Taliban also wanted to demonstrate the weakness of Afghan official forces ahead of their planned takeover of responsibility from the 140,000 NATO-led troops.

President Hamid Karzai is expected to announce the start date of the transition next month, which is scheduled be be completed by the end of 2014.

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