IRIN
AFGHANISTAN: Focus on public consultation on criminal justice
1 February 2005


[This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United 
Nations]

KABUL, 1 February (IRIN) - Human rights activists and political analysts 
have called on government to identify and bring to trial war criminals 
ahead of parliamentary elections to be held in spring. The calls came 
after a new survey on criminal justice by the Afghan Independent Human 
Rights Commission (AIHRC) was released on Saturday.

Sima Samar, the chairwoman of the AIHRC, and Louise Arbour, UN Human 
Rights Commissioner, presented the results of a national survey on war 
crimes and human rights abuses to President Hamid Karzai.

The commission concluded that more than 70 percent of Afghans had 
suffered loss of a loved one or injury over the past two decades of war 
and that the majority of those questioned urgently wanted to see war 
criminals brought to justice.

CALLS FOR ACTION

Observers called the document a blueprint for action. "The study is 
useless without immediate action to identify these criminals to the 
public," Abdul Hamid Mubarez, former deputy information and culture 
minister told IRIN.

Mubarez, said the government should assign an authorised commission to 
review the list of abuses and other available reports in order to begin 
the process of prosecuting past criminals. "Without justice and the 
trial of past crimes we cannot bring lasting stability and peace," he 
added.

The report urged the government to take action to address the abuses of 
the past, including supporting criminal investigations and prosecutions, 
arranging for reparations for the victims, as well as vetting public 
officials to keep perpetrators of abuse out of power.

"Of central importance is the need to address past and present human 
rights violations so as to ensure that those responsible for egregious 
abuses do not succeed in wielding power," the UN human rights 
commissioner said as she launched the study.

But the commissioner was clear that contemporary human rights abuses had 
to be addressed. "Most human rights issues [in Afghanistan] today are 
related to the absence of the rule of law, the lack of security and 
deficiencies in the judicial and legal law enforcement infrastructure. 
Also several women's issues need to be addressed" Arbour told IRIN 
following the release of the study.

LACK OF ACTION FUELS IMPUNITY

In the last three years Karzai's government has avoided pursuing 
suspected war criminals in the interest of national stability. Indeed, 
many suspects were co-opted into his interim government. Others accused 
of war crimes remain in powerful positions in the provinces, with their 
own private armies and links with the flourishing opium trade. But 
failure to act against such alleged perpetrators has strengthened the 
culture of impunity in the country, observers say.

Given its violent recent history, stories of serious abuse and mass 
murder are common in Afghanistan. "We have witnessed several mass 
killings, slaughter and systematic torture in recent years," Samandar 
Shah, a shopkeeper in the Jadamaiwand district of Kabul told IRIN.

BLOODY RECENT PAST

Shah said his brother disappeared during the communist era and his son 
and wife were killed during the subsequent civil war. "I know exactly 
who killed my family members, the human rights commission should expose 
these murderers and they should pay [for their crimes].

Under the communists, tens of thousands disappeared into prisons. In 10 
years of Soviet occupation, which ended in 1989, more than 1.5 million 
died and 5 million - a third of the population - were forced to flee 
Afghanistan as villages across the country were indiscriminately bombed.

The period after the Soviet occupation saw endless faction fighting 
which is believed to have killed nearly a hundred thousand people in the 
capital alone. It also destroyed many towns and much of Kabul. The 
Taliban followed, instituting a repressive fundamentalist rule, waging 
war against its opponents for seven years.

The AIHRC's report, "A Call for Justice", is based on interviews and 
focus groups with more than 6,000 Afghans in 32 of 34 provinces, it is 
the first national public consultation conducted in Afghanistan on what 
action ordinary people want to see on war criminals. Afghan refugees in 
Pakistan and Iran were also consulted.

"Those consulted stressed the urgent need for a break with the past, for 
an end to ongoing abuses, and for measures designed to bring about 
justice and the rule of law in Afghanistan," Nader Nadery, an AIHRC 
commissioner, told IRIN.

The study recommends the establishment of a Special Prosecutors Office 
to investigate and prosecute mass atrocities and systematic violations 
of human rights, such as crimes against humanity and war crimes, Nadery 
added.

Throughout the report, the AIHRC urged the United Nations, the 
International Criminal Court (ICC) based in the Hague and governments to 
provide support, technical assistance, and political pressure to ensure 
the implementation of an appropriate transitional justice strategy in 
Afghanistan.


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Copyright (c) UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs 
2005


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