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Chief Afghan Opposition Commander Joins Taliban
KABUL, Feb 24 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - A notable Afghan opposition commander has split to join the ruling Taliban affirming reports he had changed sides due to of Russian support for resistance leader Ahmad Shah Masood.
Three days ago, Mohammad Karim Abed, known as Karim Qarabagh, joined the Taliban along with 100 others armed men under his former command, he said in a Taliban organized press conference Saturday in Kabul.
Moscow recently supplied four military helicopters to Masood and the opposition military strongman was said to be masterminding "un-Islamic" plots in an alleged conspiracy with the Russians, Qarabagh said.
"This is the motive which has dragged me here. I would continue my Jihad [holy struggle] as I did in the past," he said.
"There is no doubt there is interference more in Afghanistan, but the Russian's interference is very overt," he told reporters.
The commander had been fighting against Taliban troops in the Qarabagh district, 45 kilometers (28 miles) north of Kabul. He said he had covert contacts with the ruling party beforehand.
Opposition spokesman Mohammad Habeel acknowledged Karim Qarabagh was a "known commander" but added he had defected with 15 people only.
The Taliban assumed power in Kabul in 1996 and are currently struggling against Masood loyalists fortified in pockets in the rocky northeast.
Qarabagh described the Masood-Taliban struggle as an "outside war" which he believed could only come to an end once foreign interference stops.
According to the commander, some Afghan neighbors were destroying the war-torn country in the name of Islamic brotherhood.
Iranian advisors were organizing the logistic and publicity affairs of the opposition while Indians came up with medical and financial support, he said.
However, he added that he has not seen any Iranian or Russian advisers on the Masood side. The commander described the Afghan people as "poor and defenseless people whom nobody protects."
Moreover, he signaled out his wish "to serve this people and to uphold them," he said.
Qarabagh had also served as commander of Masood's foe, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, during the 1979-89 Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.
In other news in the region, the Taliban publicly executed two women convicted of prostitution Friday.
Hundreds of people watched as the women were hanged in a sports stadium in the southern city of Kandahar.
Although public execution has become a common form of punishment in the country, it's relatively rare for women to be executed in this way, a BBC correspondent in Kandahar reported.
Two other women and ten men who were found guilty of adultery were publicly flogged. Some were also sentenced to prison terms.
The London-Based Amnesty International has denounced the Taliban's discriminatory policies against Afghan women, saying they are forced to comply with severe restrictions on their education, employment and freedom of movement.
"Tens of thousands of women effectively remained prisoners in their homes, with no scope to seek the removal of these restrictions. Women who defied them were subjected to systematic ill-treatment," stated Amnesty International's annual report for the year 2000.
Moreover, in the same report, Amnesty denounced the Taliban's Sharia' courts, saying they continued to impose cruel, inhuman or degrading punishments.
At least a dozen people convicted of murder have been executed by shootings - usually carried out by the victims' families, the report stated.
"More than a dozen people were subjected to amputations and at least six were flogged. Thousands of people, among them children as young as five years old, were either encouraged or forced to attend the public execution of these punishments in former sports stadiums," the report added.
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