Human Rights Watch says the Taliban detained 6 staff of a women’s and children’s rights group

ANKARA, Turkey (AP) — Afghanistan’s Taliban authorities have “forcibly disappeared” six staff members of a local organization working on women’s and children’s rights, a U.S.-based advocacy group said, following a separate U.N. report that two Afghan employees of its mission in the country were detained.

The reported detentions come as Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers prepare to mark the fifth anniversary of their return to power on Saturday.

The six men — employees of the Women and Children Legal Research Foundation — were detained on July 18 after they were told to come to their office to retrieve confiscated laptops and phones, Human Rights Watch said in a statement released late Wednesday. Their families were given no information about their whereabouts, their condition or possible charges.

Human Rights Watch called on the Taliban to allow family and lawyers to visit the detained and for them to be “immediately released unless they have been charged with a recognizable offense.”

The statement came after the U.N. said two Afghan members of its political mission were detained on Sunday in the western city of Herat by the Taliban’s General Directorate of Intelligence. The U.N. mission has not been informed of the charges against the two men or been able to visit them, U.N. deputy spokesman Farhan Haq told reporters.

The mission has called on the Taliban “to ensure compliance with the privileges and immunities of the United Nations and its officials,” Haq said.

There was no immediate comment on the two incidents from the Taliban, which seized power on Aug. 15, 2021, as U.S. and NATO forces withdrew from the country after two decades of war.

Shortly after taking power, it barred girls from secondary schools and later extended the restrictions to higher education, employment and other sectors, effectively excluding women and girls from public life.

“The Taliban seems to consider any effort to assist women and girls a threat to their abusive rule,” said Macarena Sáez, women’s rights director at Human Rights Watch. “They should immediately provide information on the six staff members’ whereabouts and release them if held unlawfully.”

Human Rights Watch said the detention of the six employees came a month after the security forces searched and sealed their office in Kabul and interrogated staff members about their work.

The U.N. mission in Afghanistan, UNAMA, said Thursday it had no information on the reported six detentions or whether the two incidents were connected.

The detentions come as a humanitarian crisis in the poverty-stricken Asian nation is worsening and as Taliban forces are engaged in cross-border fighting with Pakistani forces. Clashes escalated sharply in February when Afghan forces launched a raid into Pakistan in retaliation for Pakistani airstrikes inside Afghanistan. Islamabad later declared it was in “open war.”

The U.N. mission’s mandate from the U.N. Security Council includes promoting and supporting humanitarian assistance to the Afghan people, promoting human rights, equality for women and girls, inclusive governance and economic stability.