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| Afghanistan |
| Talibs running press gangs |
| 2001-10-04 |
Desperate Taliban troops are taking thousands of boys and men from their families and forcing them into the military in an attempt to bolster their thinning ranks, according to recently arriving refugees in Pakistan. "Eight members of my family have disappeared and been taken away to fight," said Said Anwar, a 40-year-old Kabul resident who staggered into a refugee shanty town here just three days ago. "They were young people, 12 or 13. The older ones, the teenaged boys, are being taken away, too." Anwar and dozens of other refugees have arrived here in the last week telling disturbingly similar stories of how Taliban forces, faced with hundreds of defections, have abandoned the towns, looted the markets and are turning on their own people. |
| Posted by:Fred Pruitt |