Frustrated residents stage anti-Taliban uprising

PUL-I-ALAM (Pajhwok): Residents of the Barak-i-Barak district in central Logar province have picked up guns to drive insurgents from their areas, an official said on Monday.

Numbering more than a thousand, the gun-wielding residents made the uprising against the Taliban a day earlier, the governor’s spokesman, Din Mohammad Darwesh, told Pajhwok Afghan News.

He said the uprising came after residents lost patience with atrocities unleashed on them by armed insurgents.

The gubernatorial spokesman said the government was ready to assist the uprising group in whatever manner it could.

Barak-i-Barak administrative head Mohammad Rahim Amin said the uprising occurred in Chaltan area. He said residents laced with arms, wooden sticks and other things stood to resist insurgents, who had made their lives miserable.

He said the residents had vowed not to allow insurgents to enter their villages and carry out their activities.

A number of high security officials on Sunday reached the area from Pul-i-Alam, the provincial capital, he said.

Abdul Khalil Faizi, who leads the uprising, told Pajhwok the Taliban had been subjecting them to violence of varied natures over the past decade.

He accused the rebels of killing innocent people, kidnapping them and forcibly entering civilian houses to be served meal.

He said residents made the uprising a day earlier in self-defence because they could no longer tolerate the atrocities. Faizi said any assistance from the government would be accepted with pleasure.

However, a Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid rejected the uprising as a government’s propaganda.

He said whenever the government wanted to create a local police force in an area; the move had often been preceded by a so-called uprising in order to distribute weapons to locals.

Previously residents of several villages in the town, 20km south of Pul-i-Alam, have staged uprising against the Taliban.

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