Former Taliban Commander: We Planned to Kill All Journalists | A Reporter’s Account of Torture and Ear Cutting

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Mohammad Omar Mukhlis, a former Taliban commander in Paktia province and a member of the Haqqani Network, admitted during his farewell ceremony that the group had been tasked with killing all journalists. He said that many journalists managed to save their lives by fleeing the country.

In his speech, Mukhlis stated: “We were killing all journalists. They were not journalists, they were traitors. We pursued them, but they escaped and reached their masters.”

After being dismissed by Taliban leader Hibatullah Akhundzada, he has now been appointed as the head of the Third Security District of Kabul. Sources confirm that this reshuffle had caused serious tensions between Hibatullah and Sirajuddin Haqqani.

Systematic Torture of Journalists

While the Taliban constantly speak of a so-called “general amnesty,” Afghan journalists have shared painful and shocking accounts of detention, torture, and death threats at the hands of this group.

“Ahmad” (a pseudonym), a journalist who was arrested by the Taliban, recounts:

“After being taken to prison and locked in a horrifying cell where the sounds of torture could be heard at every moment, it felt like the soul was leaving the body. I was so terrified that my body went numb. When my turn came, they beat me with electric cables, burned me with hot rods, spat on my face, and even urinated on me. I fainted, and when I regained consciousness, the beatings continued. This went on for several days.”

He adds:

“One day, a Taliban member I had never seen before came and asked, ‘How many reports have you published about our Mujahideen?’ I said, ‘I am a cameraman, not a reporter.’ Even though my entire body was wounded, he ordered, ‘Cut off his ear.’ At that very moment, they cut my ear, and I fainted again.”

The Policy of Silencing Independent Voices

This account is only one of dozens of documented examples of how the Taliban have treated journalists. Over the past three years, a number of journalists in Afghanistan have been arrested, tortured, disappeared, and even killed. The recent confession of a former Taliban commander shows that the physical elimination of journalists was not an individual act, but part of the Taliban’s systematic policy to silence independent voices.