The Taliban have killed an Afghan folk singer in a restive mountain province under unclear circumstances, reigniting concerns that the insurgents will return to their oppressive rule.
Fawad Andarabi was shot and killed on Friday in the Andarabi Valley, for which he was named, his family said on Sunday….
Andarabi’s son Jawad told the Associated Press that the Taliban had previously come to his father’s home and searched it, even drinking tea with the musician. But something changed on Friday.
‘He was innocent, a singer who was only entertaining people,’ Jawad said. ‘They shot him in the head on the farm’….
Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid told the AP that the insurgents would investigate the incident, but said he had no other details on the killing.
Andarabi played the ghichak, a bowed lute, and sang traditional songs about his birthplace, his people, and Afghanistan as a whole.
A video shared online showed him during one performance, sitting on a rug and surrounded by mountains as he sang.
‘There is no country in the world like my homeland, a proud nation,’ he sang. ‘Our beautiful valley, our great-grandparents’ homeland’….
Agnes Callamard, the secretary-general of Amnesty International, also decried the killing.
‘There is mounting evidence that the Taliban of 2021 is the same as the intolerant, violent, repressive Taliban of 2001,’ she wrote on Twitter. ’20 years later. Nothing has changed on that front.’…
