Afghans urged to confront bloody past
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) – Afghanistan’s top human rights official urged the country to confront the horrors of its past, saying Saturday that war crimes dating back more than 20 years should be prosecuted and rights abusers should be purged from public office. In a step toward a national reconciliation drive that the U.S. military hopes will defuse a Taliban-led insurgency, Afghanistan’s rights watchdog launched a report calling on the government to meet ordinary Afghans’ “desire for justice.”
“Proper attention has not been paid to a fundamental element of peace and stability,” Sima Samar, chairwoman of the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission, said in a statement. “We at the commission believe that it is impossible to achieve peace without justice.”
Afghan President Hamid Karzai welcomed the report and said his new government was obliged to “treat the wounds of the Afghan people.”
Some parts of the report “need to be studied very deeply,” he said after Samar and the top U.N. rights envoy presented it to him in his Kabul palace. “But generally this report is acceptable and I accept it, and to maintain social justice for the people we will work on it.”
Few Afghans escaped suffering during the country’s long and complex conflict, from the communist coup of 1978 through Soviet occupation, the fighting between warlords that followed, the rise of the repressive Taliban and the U.S. bombing campaign that toppled Taliban at the end of 2001.
In all, more than a million Afghans are believed to have died, while six million more fled the country to become refugees.
The government-mandated rights commission said that of the thousands of Afghans it consulted last year, 90 percent wanted human rights offenders removed from government posts while 40 percent demanded the prosecution of “notorious perpetrators.”
The report recommended that Afghanistan set up a special prosecutor’s office similar to one established in Mexico in 2004 and a war crimes tribunal like that used in Bosnia. Both should be up and running within three years.
It also called for government officials to be vetted for their human rights record.
Some observers caution that a public examination of past crimes could inflame dangerous ethnic tensions. Faction leaders who stand accused of responsibility for past atrocities remain powerful.
But others argue that continued impunity for suspects – including warlords who helped the United States drive out the Taliban – is a stain on the international community’s efforts to rebuild Afghanistan and is sowing the seeds for future turmoil.
The U.S. military, which is reducing its dependence on militia forces suspected of continuing abuses, is pressing Karzai to kick-start a national reconciliation process to include “non-criminal” Taliban. However, it remains unclear how the U.S.-backed leader will proceed.
Afghanistan still faces violence being waged by remnants of the Taliban regime. A freshly planted land mine exploded as a pickup truck carrying Afghan soldiers passed by Saturday, killing nine soldiers, one of the bloodiest attacks in months.
Elsewhere, an Afghan border guard was killed when a gunman opened fire on a car at an illegal checkpoint in the southeast, police said. The gunman also was fatally shot.
Louise Arbour, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, said the world body would support the effort by the rights commission and called on Afghanistan’s international sponsors to provide financial, technical and security support.
Reading the 82-page report, she said she was most struck by “the poignancy of how Afghans were thankful for being asked their opinions for the first time on these issues. That in itself is a very important step. The Afghan government and the international community must not let them down.”