Afghan president seeks to soothe concerns over violent video

KABUL, Afghanistan — President Ashraf Ghani Sunday sought to soothe concerns over a disturbing video showing government soldiers beating the bodyguards of a district police chief who was arrested earlier this month in the northern Faryab province, an incident fueling ongoing protests over the arrest that have shut down roads and forced several government offices to close.

The video, which has gone viral since it was released Friday, shows the aftermath of a small battle that occurred between Afghan Special Forces and bodyguards for Nizamuddin Qaisari, a police chief in Faryab who was arrested after, among other things, he threatened to kill government officials.

In the video, what appear to be government soldiers can be seen repeatedly kicking the handcuffed bodyguards as they lay prone on the ground while bleeding from wounds that go untreated. Four of Qaisari’s men were killed in the skirmish, government officials have said.

Ghani, fresh from a NATO summit in Brussels that secured funding for the Afghan government through 2024, said he has called for an investigation into the incident that critics say shows that human rights violations have gone unchecked within his administration.

“For me as the commander in chief of the armed forces, any treatment of security and defense forces which are in contradiction with the enforced principles and laws of the country, by no means is acceptable,” Ghani said during a news conference. “We are all responsible and I assure you that the violators will be dealt with.”

A steady wave of protests has rolled through a portion of northern Afghanistan near the Uzbekistan border since the arrest of Qaisari, a protege of Afghan vice president Abdurrashid Dostum, an ethnic Uzbek.

Dostum, a lion of Afghanistan’s civil war during the 1990s who has been living in Turkey after he was accused in 2016 of sexually harassing a political rival, has called for Qaisari’s release, further energizing the street protests.

On Sunday, more than 100 protesters marched through the streets inside Faryab and two neighboring provinces that also have large Uzbek populations, with some setting up tents and others staging sit-ins outside government buildings.

Meanwhile, critics accused Ghani on social media of trying to cover up abuses committed by the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces to stay in the good graces of Afghanistan’s NATO funders.