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Posted on 11/17/2001 5:53:51 PM PST by Pokey78

Pressing a rag against his face to keep out the stench of human waste, the prison director at what was one of the Taliban's most feared institutions pointed at a group of 30 men cowering in a cramped cell. The building, known as Department Three of Kabul's Security Minister before the Taliban were driven from power, used to hold opponents caught breaking the stern religious edicts of the regime.

By yesterday the Taliban's prisoners had been freed and the jailers had themselves been jailed. They were joined in the fetid cell by soldiers accused of backing the Taliban and generally associated with Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda.

'Our security forces didn't capture these people,' said Abdul Qayun, the prison's new boss. 'They are all Taliban handed over by Kabul citizens. They were cruel people who made trouble for us.'

The boot was firmly on the other foot yesterday. With their heads bowed and dressed in rags, some prisoners clutched copies of the Koran; others rocked back and forth on the floor of the cells. A few wanted to speak, but only to declare their innocence.

In the corner, 18-year-old Shafura Rakhman, from the south-western Pakistani city of Quetta, was fixated on his copy of the Koran.

'I am not thinking anything. I am just reading the holy Koran,' he said numbly when the prison director pushed him to speak. 'I know I am in jail, but I don't care. I just want to read the holy Koran.'

Foreign volunteers - Pakistanis, Arabs, Chechens, Uzbeks, even Filipinos - who joined the hardline Islamic Taliban were the most loathed by ordinary Afghans.

In a separate cell, a Saudi citizen who said that his name was Zabeen pulled back the blanket covering his chest to reveal a deep, open wound below his left shoulder - a sign that he may have been a fighter for the Saudi-born millionaire terrorist leader.

But no one present could understand his Arabic shouts. Prison director Qayun was unperturbed. 'These Arab people belong to Osama,' he said. 'They were terrorists working for al-Qaeda. We will bring a doctor to him later.' Zabeen was still shouting as the steel door slammed shut.

The men in jail were some of the lucky ones. Across the areas conquered by the Northern Alliance, accounts emerged yesterday of brutal acts of vengeance against fighters suspected of being linked to the Taliban. From Jalalabad to Kabul, hundreds were believed to have been killed, caught by advancing forces.

The evidence was not hard to find. Some bodies had become tourist attractions as inquisitive locals came to view the fate of their former rulers. Two Arabs, both Taliban volunteers, had been caught and killed a few hours before I found them, lying in the bright sunshine near the Salang Highway outside Kabul.

For four days they had hidden, like dozens of others, in the hills north of the city. That morning they made their break and got caught. The first body had been hit by something so powerful it blew off his leg. There was less doubt about the second corpse. He had been shot and had a single red mushy hole in the middle of his forehead. Hundreds of Afghans came to see, jumping out of the fleets of buses and trucks bringing refugees home to Kabul.

'Arab! Arab!' they shouted. Then someone picked up a stone. In seconds a cascade of rocks were being slammed down on to the body, one bouncing off and hitting me in the chest. There was a moment's pause, a profuse apology, then they resumed their efforts to mutilate the body.

In Kabul on the day of liberation there was not much doubt that the five Pakistani Taliban dead in the central Sharinow Park had been randomly killed: one corpse had a banknote stuffed up his nose. Another had one stuck in what remained of his skull. Journalists who got to the front line reported seeing Taliban prisoners killed on the spot.

The people hurling the rocks were happy to be photographed doing so.. The reasoning is simple, and any Northern Alliance soldier here will happily spell it out. Ordinary Afghans who are Taliban are not killed because of the nature of war in this country. Generally, there is a short sharp battle after which the loser, seeing the way the wind is blowing, makes a deal with the winner.

Not so foreigners: the Arabs and Pakistanis fighting alongside the Taliban in the lines north of Kabul were seen as invaders here to dominate the country. They therefore get what they deserve.

Not everyone is happy with this growing list of atrocities. Yonus Qanuni, the eloquent Northern Alliance Interior Minister, is well travelled enough to know how such killings look to Western eyes. He spent weeks before the Mazar offensive reminding the Alliance's most bloodthirsty warlord, Rashid Dostum, to restrain his men: 'Not once, but several times.'

But Qanuni is in the minority. If anyone in the crowds watching the mutilation of those Arab corpses had any feeling of sadness, they were doing a good job in hiding it.

Additional reporting by Rosalind Russell/Reuters

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