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No Quick Justice for Afghan

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By Barry Neild

Agence France Presse
October 23, 2002

Afghanistan is locked in a cycle of violence, with justice for the victims of war crimes over the past 23 years still only a distant possibility, a UN human rights expert said Wednesday.


Asma Jehangir, the United Nations special rapporteur on human rights and arbitary executions, said investigations into abuses allegedly committed by all sides could only begin after an overhaul of Afghanistan's deeply flawed justice system.

"The people of Afghanistan are collectively rebuilding a society and a country which has suffered from 23 years of conflict and a series of grave human rights violations," she said. Although progress was slow, she hailed the efforts as "truly admirable", adding that Afghanistan was shortly expected to sign up to the statute of the International Criminal Court.

Jehangir, a former head of Pakistan's Human Rights Commission, called on the "friends of Afghanistan" to commit greater resources to help the country respond to victims' need for justice.

"The cycle of violence has not completely ended and impunity remains entrenched," she warned, citing recent reports of arbitary killings. Jehangir said an "atmosphere of fear" prevailed throughout Afghanistan and women remained among the most vulnerable.

"There are reports of killings of women by their family members in the name of morality. The authorities have looked away and have taken no action to investigate such murders," she said. Such reports were "a clear discrimination of the right to life of women."

Jehangir said alleged use of excessive force by coalition troops in their hunt for al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters was also cause for concern. "Allegations of indiscriminate and excessive use of force by coalition forces in villages in Uruzgan province during July 2002 are also a matter of grave concern," she said.

Some 48 people were killed and dozens more injured when US jets attacked wedding celebrations in central Uruzgan after the pilots claimed they came under hostile fire.

During her 10-day fact-finding tour of Afghanistan, Jehangir met families of victims and witnesses to extra-judicial killings in the main Afghan cities of Kabul, Herat, Kandahar and Mazar-i-Sharif.

In Mazar-i-Sharif, the principal city of northern Afghanistan, she toured alleged mass grave sites said to contain scores of ethnic Hazara victims massacred by the hardline Taliban regime.

Some 125 kilometers (78 miles) west of Mazar, in the sands of Dasht-e-Leili near Shebarghan, hundreds of Taliban prisoners believed to have suffocated while being transported in trucks by the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance last December are said to be buried.

"During my visit I met a number of men and women who have witnessed summary executions carried out be the previous Taliban regime. The accounts were horrifying. There are a number of mass graves lending credibility to their accounts," she said. "In addition, the spectre of impunity (surrounding) the alleged extrajudicial executions of prisoners during the fall of the Taliban, who are allegedly buried at Dasht-e-Leili, is disturbing.

Jehangir, who has stressed that her visit was not an investigation, shied away from calling for a full war crimes tribunal. However she would recommend the setting up of an independent inquiry commission in her report to be published next year.


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FAIR USE NOTICE: This page contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. Global Policy Forum distributes this material without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. We believe this constitutes a fair use of any such copyrighted material as provided for in 17 U.S.C § 107. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond fair use, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.