Human Rights Watch revealing report on abuses in Afghanistan
(Image HRW)
Human Rights Watch recently published an important new report on Afghanistan entitled,“Today We Shall All Die: Afghanistan’s Strongmen and the Legacy of Impunity” detailing the profiles of eight “strongmen” linked to police, intelligence, and militia forces responsible for serious abuses in recent years. Phelim Kine, deputy director of the Asia division at Human Rights Watch wrote an opinion piece on the report for Al Jazeera entitled, “Who will police Afghan’s policemen?” pointing out that “Afghanistan’s US-backed killers are on the loose…and on the payroll”. He stated,
“the cozy relationship between the U.S. and other Afghanistan allies and Afghan commanders implicated in human rights abuses are not exceptional. In a report released on March 3, Human Rights Watch details the abuses of eight strongmen from the Afghan National Police, the ALP and government-affiliated militias. The atrocities perpetrated by people, from local militia commanders to ministerial rank officials, underscore a pervasive lack of accountability for Afghanistan’s security forces.
Among them is Brig. Gen. Abdul Raziq, the Kandahar province chief of police who has been directly implicated in ordering extrajudicial executions. Another recipient of U.S. government largesse has been the former head of Afghanistan’s security agency, Asadullah Khalid, who maintains a close relationship with the U.S. government despite numerous credible reports that he has participated in torture, extrajudicial killings and sexual violence against women and girls. In December 2013, when he sought medical care in the United States for wounds incurred in a suicide bomb attack, he received a visit from President Barack Obama, reaffirming U.S. support for a notorious human rights violator.”
I contacted the Islamic Emirate (Afghan Taliban) that tend to be the main focus of foreign media when it comes to accusations of human rights abuses yet other perpetrators are virtually ignored. I asked them for a response to the report. Taliban have often highlighted rights violations under occupation in their own media releases. They have also been accused of certain incidents which they strongly denied such as the poisoning of schoolgirls. Inquiries at the time, led some researchers to suspect that certain elements were attempting to frame the Taliban at a time when their office was being opened in Qatar. Taliban accounts of human rights violations are usually unfairly dismissed as “propaganda” however all allegations of abuse must be considered and investigated especially considering the contents of both HRW and Unama reports. This is what they had to say:-
The Occupation is a Source of Humanitarian Sufferings and Grievances
(Article from Islamic Emirate, March 13th, 2015)
US often supporting local militia that carry out atrocities (Image Al Jazeera)
“Recently, the Human Rights Watch published a 96-page report on 4th March 2015, exposing a number of human rights violators.
Meanwhile, it has called on the Kabul Puppet Administration to put the human rights violators on trial and urged American President Obama and other invaders to exert pressure on the Kabul Administration to implement their demand.
Whether the Kabul Administration is able or not to try some one (the violators), is a different question eligible for pondering.
But it is a fact that occupation of and aggression against independent countries is, in general, a source of sufferings, grievances and calamities.
It is because invaders usually resort to inhumane acts in order to achieve their nefarious goals.
They divide societies, favor a faction with privileges to suppress another one and then target another flank of a society.
Thus they try to scale down the trajectory of resistance of people in face of the invaders’ atrocities and entrap attention and thoughts of people in a dragnet of internal strife.
For example, yesterday on March 8, a horrendous incident took place with a gruesome report appearing in media that three persons were killed and more than ten injured in Shiberghan Prison.
In another report about attacks on women, 281 incidents of violence against women have been registered only in Balkh province. It is a report of incidents of only one province.
The most vital right of a man among other human rights is the right of life and freedom. Those who threaten life of a man and violate his freedom are, in fact, ringleaders among the violators of human rights.
The invaders on the one hand have occupied the land of Afghanistan, have control over land and air and have snatched away freedom from the Afghan people while on the other hand, have forced the most incompetent and corrupt persons on the oppressed people.
Furthermore they have given them training in torture.
Robert Grenier, former CIA officer writes in his book: ‘These person (warlords) perpetrated atrocities against people because of the support they received from the Americans… The Americans condoned their atrocities as they were assisting them in their operations against Taliban’.
In his memoirs, Grenier writes that the CIA imparted training to its Afghan supporters on torture of detainees and encouraged them to commit torture.
It is a matter of shock and wonder that the Human Rights Watch has not mentioned the invaders as human rights violators.
However they are the real violators of human rights and trainers of other violators of human rights but HRW wants them to put pressure on the powerless Kabul Administration to bring to account those who are involved in violations of human rights.
Apt to say that they have handed over to them the scales of justice when the invaders themselves are those who have carried out raids on houses in the stillness of night, brutally killed sleeping children, women and men, have buried men alive under the rubble and inflicted people with sufferings under various charges and they are still bent on doing the same.
The Islamic Emirate calls on its noble people to adhere to their Islamic, national and social values, strengthen their fraternity on the basis of faith, intensify and extend their efforts for the establishment of an honorable independent Islamic state and make distinction between friend and foe.
All success comes from Allah (SwT) only.”
End
The Islamic Emirate raise some key questions and concerns…. and highlight a disturbing reality, how do people get a fair investigation and justice when they are forced to rely on the same system set up by those who support and carry out human rights abuses? To whom can the people turn to address these issues? The US has spent billions overturning the Taliban, deceiving the public that they are improving human rights however the picture on the ground tells a very different story. The irony is the west is funding a system which is oppressive to many civilians and Afghanistan is now stuck in yet another quagmire of human rights abuses with no end in sight!
Links
“Afghanistan:New report from Human Rights Watch Questions Afghan, US government support to “notorious human rights abusers”
“Who will police Afghan’s policemen?”
http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2015/3/who-will-police-afghanistans-policemen.html
“UNAMA” report: The state as an agent of torture, abuse and killings of detainees in Afghan custody.
Carol Anne Grayson is an independent writer/researcher on global health/human rights/WOT and is Executive Producer of the Oscar nominated, Incident in New Baghdad . She is a Registered Mental Nurse with a Masters in Gender Culture and Development. Carol was awarded the ESRC, Michael Young Prize for Research 2009, and the COTT ‘Action = Life’ Human Rights Award’ for “upholding truth and justice”. She is also a survivor of US “collateral damage”.
Carol Anne Grayson (Radical Sister) blog 