RIGHTS-AFGHANISTAN: Taliban Accused of Hazaras Massacre

By Farhan Haq Reprint | | Print |

UNITED NATIONS, Sep 15 1998 (IPS) - U.N. officials and human rights groups have accused Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban of killing thousands of ethnic Hazaras in recent fighting – even as neighbouring Iran massed troops near the Afghan border.

U.N. spokesman Fred Eckhard confirmed Tuesday that there have been reports of massacres in Bamiyan, the last main city held by the Iran-backed Shi’a group Hezb-e-Wahdat, which was seized by the Taliban on Sunday. The Taliban, an extremist Sunni Muslim group which has often attacked members of Islam’s Shi’a sect, now holds more than 90 percent of Afghanistan.

Eckhard also noted that, in recent months, the Taliban have blocked aid convoys from travelling to Bamiyan and other parts of the central province of Hazarajat, and that the United Nations has called on the authorities in Kabul to allow humanitarian access to that population.

The watchdog group Human Rights Watch (HRW) called on the United Nations to take action to prevent further slaughter, after accusing the Taliban of killing thousands of Hazaras in the city of Mazar-e-Sharief, which Taliban militias seized last month.

HRW reported that aid workers witnessed the killings of Hazara men, many of whom were killed in front of their families after Mazar-e-Sharief fell. Aid workers reported that men over the age of 16 had their throats slit, while younger boys and women had their hands chopped off by the Taliban fighters.

“The outside world has for too long ignored the crisis in Afghanistan,” said senior HRW researcher Patricia Gossman. “Meanwhile, Afghanistan’s neighbours have kept the war going. Intervention by the UN now might help ensure that one day the victims obtain justice and the cycle of violence is slowed, if not stopped.”

U.N. diplomats worried that time for easing tensions in Afghanistan was becoming short as Iran threatened to be drawn into the conflict. The predomintyaly Shi’a Iran – which supported anti- Taliban parties – has urged the United Nations to investigate the killings of nine Iranian diplomats during the fall of Mazar-e- Sharief, and has warned that their murders could provoke military action.

“All should know that a very great and wide danger is quite near,” Ayatollah Ali Khameini, Iran’s supreme leader, said Monday. Speaking on an Iranian TV programme, he implored his audience, “Do not let thousands of Afghanistan’s disinherited people become victims of the Taliban’s mischief.”

At the same time, Iran deployed more than 70,000 troops near the Afghan border – including units of the elite Revolutionary Guards – and planned to dispatch 200,000 more troops in coming days to carry out what it calls “military exercises” involving live ammunition.

In response, a Taliban spokesman, Wakil Ahmed, told the independent Afghan Islamic Press Tuesday, “We do not want a war with Iran, but if Iran attacks, we will take all possible necessary measures.” He dismissed Khameini’s statements as a sign of the Iranian leader’s “mental ineptitude”.

The war of words increasingly concerned U.N. diplomats, who have been unsuccessful in efforts to broker a peace between the Taliban and a coalition of divided Islamist groups called the Northern Alliance. Now, with the Alliance faring poorly on the battleground, the Taliban’s success is sharpening regional divisions between Iran, which backed the Alliance, and Pakistan, the main Taliban ally.

Pakistan – which failed, to protect the lives of the Iranian diplomats in Mazar-e-Sharief – has been blamed by Iran’s foreign ministry for its support of the Taliban. (The Taliban attributed the killings to “rogue elements” among its fighters and promised an investigation, sources told IPS last week.)

Gossman added that some Pakistani fighters may have directly been involved in massacres of Hazaras and other groups. Human Rights Watch contends that some extremist Pakistani groups – including Sipah-i-Sahaba, a Sunni militia which has attacked Shi’as in Pakistan – fought alongside the Taliban in Mazar-e- Sharief.

Pakistan, however, has denied involvement in the killings of the Iranian diplomats or other atrocities committed in Mazar-e- Sharief. “Pakistan cannot accept this accusation as it cannot be held responsible for events in a third country,” the foreign ministry said in a statement.

The Taliban has promised not to harm civilians in Bamiyan; but U.N. officials expressed concern at reports of Taliban attacks on Hazaras in that city. Since the city fell Sunday, Taliban spokesman confirmed that their militias were conducting house-to- house searches for weapons but contended that people in Bamiyan were voluntarily surrendering their guns to the Islamist group.

However, with few outside sources present in Bamiyan, Taliban promises that anyone who desired to leave the area could do so cannot be independently verified, U.N. sources said.