Human Rights

Human Rights Deferred

A climate of fear prevails in Afghanistan. Human Rights Abuses continue unabated two years after the U.S.-led Operation Enduring Freedom. Decisive action by the international community could ameliorate the worst instances of torture, intimidation, and needless slaughter. Inaction will certainly exacerbate human rights violations.

Warlordism

The refusal of the international community to expand the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) peacekeeping mission beyond Kabul has created a desparate human rights and security vacuum and has strengthened the position of the Afghanistan's warlords. Human Rights Watch has cataloged the lawlessness that has engulfed the provinces. Arbitrary arrest, torture, murder, rape, and looting are commonplace. Children do not escape torture. Aid agency workers are under constant threat and intimidation by local authorities and commanders and NGOs are routinely "taxed" by local warlords in exchange for safety and passage through the provinces. NGOs have had to suspend their activities because aid workers have been attacked and murdered. Over sixty aid agencies, including Oxfam and Christian Aid, have petitioned the UN Secirity Council to expand ISAF. Despite the support of UN Secretary General Kofi Anan, ISAF is not likely to be expanded because the measure lacks US support. (Burrows, 2002) Two years after the fall of the Taliban and despite American rhetoric, Afghanistan is returning to the chaotic violence which threatens civil society.

Persecution of Ethnic Minorities

The police, security and intelligence forces in Herat are all former militia men under the leadership of tribal warlord Ismail Khan, now governor of the province. Using American weapons and support, Khan rules via violence, intimidation, political repression, and murder. Ethnic Pashtuns, a minority in Herat, are subject to random violence, arbitrary arrest, and torture. Children are often targeted for persecution. In Northern Afghanistan, minority Pashtun communities are vulnerable to attack, looting, and extortion by the Uzbek and Tajik majorities. The Taliban were largely associated with the Pashtuns and now other ethnic groups who suffered at the hands of the Taliban exact vengeance on Pashtuns. (HRW, 2003) There is little or no accountability for past or current human rights abuses committed in Afghanistan. The interim government in Kabul doesn't represent the spectrum of ethnic groups and there is no guarantee that commanders and combatants implicated in war crimes will be excluded from serving in the police, military, or government. A formula for reconciliation is not in the offing.

Prisoners of War and Child Exploitation

AP Photo Archive of an image of prisoners detained in Afghanistan being transported by US marines.

Groups of unidentified men, alleged terrorists, are drugged, bound, and flown out of the country by the American military to an island camp at Guantanamo Bay. There they will face a military tribunal which has the right to kill them. Lawyers cannot appeal for their release, nor challenge their extradiction. Initially paraded before the international media, they have fallen off the media's radar. The US has refused to extend the rights and protection of the Geneva Convention or the US Constitution. (Beaumont, 2002)

Both the Northern Alliance (US allies) and the Taliban exploited children as child soldiers. Militias continue to absorb unemployed and orphaned youths. This violates the Optional Protocol to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, which prohibits the involvement of children in armed conflict. (Amnesty International, 2003) Children from the age of 6 often work to help support their families by herding animals in rural areas and by collecting paper and firewood, shining shoes, begging, or collecting scrap metal among street debris in the cities. Some of these practices expose children to the danger of landmines. (Global March, 2003)

Civilians and Cluster Bombs

Afghanistan is one of the most heavily mined countries in the world after 23 years of warfare. Now the US military is putting civilians at additional risk of harm by the widespread use of a particular ordinance known as the cluster bomb. United States cluster bombs have left an estimated 12,400 explosive duds which are de facto antipersonnel landmines. They resemble the food packets which were also air dropped by the Americans. Bomblets continue to take civilian lives long after they are dropped and clearance is of bomblets in populated areas is uneven. A report by Human Rights Watch found that the United States did not take all feasible precautions to avoid civilian casualties. Despite the United States' efforts to deploy cluster bombs in a more precise manner, widespread civilian casualties still result from the impact of the bombs and later contact with bomblets. According to the Red Cross, children represent an estimated 69% of the casualties but shepherds, farmers and other civilians also fall victim to the bomblets. The Human Rights Watch report questioned the necessity of deploying this particular ordinance given its long-term catastrophic impact. (HRW, 2003)

Women and Girls

The lack of security across the country continues to impede progress in the rehabilitation of Afghanistan and the advancement of women. The Bonn Conference of 2001 called for a gender-sensitive government which respects the human rights of all Afghans. To this end, the Ministry of Women's Affairs was established. Like the interim government itself, this ministry gives cause for some concern. As part of the concessions made to religious extremists, the Ministry of Religious Affairs has a formed the Department of Islamic Teaching. This department is the heir to the Taliban-era Department of Vice and Virtue and has trained women to monitor "un-Islamic" behavior among Afghan women in public.

Women face repression and harrassment from local authorities. Travel without a male relative is often restricted. Women are intimidated by the police and forced to undergo gynecological examinations to determine their chastity. Honor killings, early and forced marriages, domestic violence, kidnapping of young girls, rape and gang rape all commonly ocur. Women and girls who are internally displaced are especially vulnerable to this violence. Other measures of well being such as high illiteracy rates and high maternal mortality rates indicate that women still face an unbearable burden in Afghan society. Despite the best intentions of the interim government, in some regions women are once again being banned from holding jobs and there has been a spate of violent attacks on the newly established schools for girls. (UN News Service, 2003) The inability of the interim government to exert its influence beyond Kabul suggests that women are facing an uncertain future in Afghanistan. (UN Commission on the status of Women, 2003)

Political Repression

The political repression of the Taliban era is being resurrected in the context of a power struggle between Western-backed moderates and conservative religious fundamentalists. In a bold move to introduce censorship, the chief Justice of Afghanistan's Supreme Court, Mawlavi Fazl Hadi Shinwari, banned five fledgling cable television networks in Kabul on grounds that some of the programming was un-Islamic. Shinwari also refused to consider an appeal against a ban on cable television in Jalabad and has supported a decree issued by Ismail Khan of Herat which effectively prevents women from receiving an education. (Synovitz, 2003) In Afghanistan, enforced disappearance has long been a common means of eliminating opponents and cajoling the population. (UN General Assembly, 2002) With the Northern Alliance still wielding dominant control of the interim government, progress on human rights may well be a long, arduous process at best in Afghanistan.