Seventeen civilians, including two women, were brutally murdered in Helmand on Sunday night. They, men and women together, were attending a music party. Local officials say Taliban beheaded all the participants. The incident occurred in Musa Qala District, in a Taliban-controlled village.
It is the worst kind of cowardice and brutality committed by Taliban redefining evil. They do not show any mercy on civilians, regardless of the fact that either they were government supporters or neutral villagers having an evening of entertainment. But the fanatics disapproved the celebrations as immoral with most brutal punishment.
Recently Deputy UN Special Envoy to Afghanistan Nicholas Haysomhad said militants, mainly the Taliban, are responsible for over 80 percent of overall civilian causalities in Afghanistan this year so far.
Mullah Omar in his Eid message recently had directed his evil fighters to respect civilians' lives, but apparently his forces do not give a damn about their Amir.Despite their claim in regular press statements, militants do not show any serious respect for civilian lives or steps to avoid casualties. For propaganda, they issue statements about protecting civilians, but in practice they use indiscriminate destructive weapons.
They justify the brutal merciless killings of civilians in the pretext of the ongoing militancy propagated as Jihad by the Taliban leadership and their foreign puppet-masters to further their national interests on the cost of blood of innocent Afghans.
During the last ten years of current conflict after the US/NATO arrival in Afghanistan, Taliban have been responsible for larger civilian casualties. Whenever a roadside bomb, landmine blast or suicide bomber blow among crowds, its ordinary poor civilian Afghans who suffer the most.
On the other hand, our outrage has always been selective. Whenever any civilian causality is caused by an ISAF or Afghan National Security Forces operation, strong condemnation follow from government authorities and some of our opportunist political elements, but when it comes to Taliban atrocities, people keep mum or ignore.
Taliban kill civilians every day. People never bother to come out to streets chanting against Taliban when their suicide bombers kill only breadwinners of poor families. They have made hundreds of children orphan and women widow, but the guardians of our national honor never come out of the shell of hypocrisy to condemn such atrocities.