Around a conference room table, young Taliban fighters quietly listen to an instructor teaching them how to behave with civilians.
Awkwardly armed with notebooks and pens, most of the 25 fighters turned policemen have never been in a classroom before. They have spent most of their young lives as combatants in rural areas, and under their ample traditional outfits, their wrist-sized ankles betray how undernourished they are.
“What is the problem with bringing weapons inside a hospital?” trainer Raouf asks.
“People will be scared,” a young Taliban member answers.
“It will have a bad effect on sick people,” another says.
This two-day class on international humanitarian law (IHL), organised by Geneva Call, a humanitarian organisation, takes place in Kandahar, southern Afghanistan.
“Did you ever bring your gun inside the hospital?” Raouf asks. All the fighters laugh. “Yes,” they say, “of course!”
The rules of IHL can seem obvious: you cannot punish someone you arrest before they go to court; boys under 18 are children and should not fight; or “if someone is not fighting against you, you should not fight them”.
But, Raouf says, these students “have no knowledge of all these things, they were in the mountains with only guns”.
Since October, Raouf has trained 250 men in Kandahar. “If we continue, I am sure they will change. I have seen a lot of changes already.”
After class, the fighters say they will modify some behaviours. “I will not enter hospitals with weapons any more,” says Barakatullah, 28. “It was also new for me to hear that we have to respect the human dignity of prisoners.”
During the course, Barakatullah had stood up to speak about the torture he’d endured at Bagram jail, where he spent eight years.
But the young man, with his long black beard and soft eyes, seems more weary than angry. After losing all his family except his mother in a US airstrike, all he wishes for is “a normal life”.
“If I can find another job, I would leave the police. I can be a shopkeeper or work for an NGO.”
According to Ashley Jackson, co-director of the Centre for the Study of Armed Groups at the Overseas Development Institute, it is important to keep engaging with the Taliban.
“Even small changes to their behaviour could save lives,” she says.
In the classroom, all students wear a turban or a small traditional hat. Some regularly raise their hands to answer. Others fidget with their prayer beads at the back, struggling to sit still.
Fighters readily agree with preventing gender violence, but some topics call for more tact, like the use of improvised explosive devices (IED), suicide bombers or any act that may hurt civilians.
Taliban soldiers, since their return to power, have often killed civilians because their vehicles didn’t stop at checkpoints.
“The Taliban have transitioned from a fighting force to a government almost overnight – with almost no preparation, training or understanding of things like human rights norms,” says Jackson.
“There are horrific problems with torture and beating in Taliban detention. And the Taliban isn’t doing much to address that, so it’s really up to others to try whatever they can to prevent more suffering.”
Kefayatullah, 22, one of those on the course, now works in a jail.
“I learned yesterday that we should behave humanely with prisoners,” he says.
“When I went back to the prison where I work, a person called saying that the mother of a prisoner wanted to talk to her son. Before, we were not allowing this. But because of the training, I gave my mobile to the prisoner to speak to his mother.”
About 60% of the students cannot read, some have only attended religious classes in rural madrasas.
“I’d like to restart my education and learn English. After class yesterday, I told my friends we should ask for a teacher to come to the police headquarters,” says Kefayatullah.
During the break, the fighters stay seated, laugh and take pictures of each other. It is an image far removed from the one they often project in propaganda videos.
According to Faryaneh Fadaei, Geneva Call’s director for Afghanistan, the key to the training’s success is to adapt the material to cultural sensitivities, with each rule linked to Islamic references
“Because it is contextualised, developed with community leaders and religious scholars, it is accepted,” says Fadaei.
“Usually after the training, the participants ask for more training and booklets to give to their friends.”
Geneva Call trains between 200 and 400 people a month across Afghanistan, half of them members of armed forces.
Maiwandi, 21, is in the Taliban’s elite special forces. Seated at the back in his military jacket, he struggles to concentrate. Maiwandi joined the Taliban at 12. At 19, faced with brutal US raids in his village, he enrolled as a suicide bomber.
“This war took the best years of my life, my childhood and my education,” he says. “Now when I see people who are educated, who went to university, I feel bad and wish I was them.”
Like Barakatullah or Kefayatullah, Maiwandi represents the importance of Geneva Call’s training for young Taliban members who have only known violence.
After the course, Maiwandi says he would love to study more in future but adds that, if asked by his leadership, he would do what he’d signed up for, as a suicide bomber.
Still, perhaps, he hopes “there will be no more war”.
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