Foreign Correspondence

[Amaunet]

Afghanistan fighting the past
By Jim Lobe

Jul 14, 2005

WASHINGTON - As an unexpected resurgence of fighting by Taliban and allied forces against the US-backed government of President Hamid Karzai raises new concerns over Afghanistan's stability, Human Rights Watch (HRW) has repeated its call for the prosecution of past atrocities by key warlords, a number of whom continue to hold senior posts under Karzai.

In a 133-page report released in Kabul, HRW charged that many of those implicated in serious abuses that occurred in one of the worst phases of what has become a nearly 30-year-old civil war - the year after the defeat of the communist-led regime in April 1992 - are now well ensconced in the country's Defense and Interior ministries, while others are running for office in parliamentary and local elections set for September.

Still others continue to hold power as regional warlords whose authority remains, for the most part, unchallenged by either the central government or the some 30,000 US and North Atlantic Treaty Organization-led soldiers who have been operating in Afghanistan since the ouster of the Taliban government in late 2001.

"This report isn't just a history lesson," said Brad Adams, HRW's Asia director, of the intra-mujahideen fighting that virtually destroyed Kabul from April 1992 to March 1993 and that is the main focus of the new report. "These atrocities were among some of the gravest in Afghanistan's history, yet today many of the perpetrators still wield power."

This period, when various mujahideen factions began fighting among themselves, set the stage for the rise and eventual victory of the Taliban in 1996.

The report comes amid growing concern both in the US and in the Afghan capital over the resurgence of Taliban forces, particularly in the predominantly Pashtun southern and eastern parts of the country.

In the highest US toll of the Afghan campaign, insurgents shot down a US Chinook helicopter near the Pakistani border, killing 16 US Special Operations Forces (SOF) troops. The helicopter was on a mission to reinforce a detachment of four other SOF troops.

Several days later, as many as 17 civilians in the same area were killed as a result of a US airstrike on a suspected terrorist compound, prompting a rare public criticism by the Karzai government, which is increasingly on the defensive from its political foes over many of the tactics used by US forces, just three months before scheduled parliamentary elections.

At the same time, more than 450 Afghan government troops have reportedly been killed in clashes with Taliban and allied forces since March, amid indications that the insurgents are adopting tactics, such as the use of improvised explosive devices and even suicide bombings, which have proven effective in Iraq.

Analysts warn that Afghanistan could begin to look more like Iraq, with an entrenched insurgency that seriously disrupts reconstruction and becomes a magnet for Islamic extremists.

The Taliban's resurgence coincided with a sharp rise in anti-American sentiment exacerbated by Karzai's failure to persuade President George W Bush during a visit to Washington in May to give his government more control over US military operations and detention practices, as well as reports of US abuses against Muslim detainees and the Koran itself.

The HRW report does not suggest that the situation today compares to that of the 1992-93 period, but does hint that the continued impunity enjoyed by mujahideen commanders and warlords of that time may be working against US and Karzai's hopes of stabilizing the country.

The abuses committed during the year in question, Afghanistan's calendar year of 1371, were among the worst of the entire civil war. Among them were indiscriminate shelling and rocketing of civilian areas that reduced entire neighborhoods to rubble, and the robbery, abduction, murder and rape of civilians, including women and children.

Amid the most-responsible commanders and leaders were Abdul Rabb al-Rasul Sayyaf, a radical Islamist commander who currently acts as an adviser to Karzai and who has placed a number of key followers in the Afghan judiciary and elsewhere in the government. He was and remains the leader of the Ittihad-e Islami faction.

Abdul Rashid Dostum, the warlord and ethnic Uzbek who continues to rule over several northern areas around Mazar-i-Sharif, also holds a senior post in the Defense ministry and has also been implicated in atrocities committed against suspected prisoners during the US-backed campaign against the Taliban in 2001.

Mohammad Qasim Fahim, a Tajik who served as defense minister from 2001 to 2004, also continues to play a leading role in the Jamiat-e Islami/Shura-e Nazar faction of former president Burhanuddin Rabbani and the late Ahmed Shah Masoud.

Karim Khalili, a commander of the Hezb-e Wahdat faction, is now one of Karzai's two vice presidents.

All of these men played major roles in the 1992-93 violence, according to the report, which details specific incidents. Former commanders of Sayyaf's Ittihad-e Islami and Fahim's Shura-e Nazar factions are running as candidates in the upcoming elections.

Nor are individuals in the Karzai government the only ones who contributed to the mayhem. Another key commander, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, whose Hezb-e-Islami faction received the greatest covert support provided by the US and Pakistan, committed some of the worst crimes of the period, according to the report. Self-exiled to Iran after the Taliban victory, he has now joined its insurgency.

(Inter Press Service)

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/GG14Ag01.html