RIGHTS: Experts Caution About Afghanistan ‘Truth Commission’

By Thalif Deen Reprint | | Print |

Thalif Deen

UNITED NATIONS, Mar 29 2002 (IPS) - It is premature to establish a U.N.-backed “truth and reconciliation commission” for Afghanistan with military action continuing in the country and the United States dominating international security issues, say experts.

U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mary Robinson, has already set aside 50,000 U.S. dollars for the proposed body. She says Afghanistan’s interim leader, Hamid Karzai, and other senior Afghan officials have given her the impression that a commission “is certainly going to be set up”.

The body could be modelled on previous U.N. efforts, says Robinson. “We have helped create, in different contexts, truth and reconciliation commissions in Sierra Leone and East Timor, and we now have a lot of experience.”

“It is extremely important for the families of those who have suffered terrible violations. It is the beginning of respect for the dignity of the individual,” adds Robinson.

“Obviously, it is for the interim administration and the people of Kabul to decide when the time is right, but I would certainly encourage it,” she says.

But others say the world community should not rush to set up a commission.

The move would be premature, says Francis A. Boyle, professor of international law at the University of Illinois College of Law. Afghanistan “is still an active war zone subject to international laws of war and belligerent occupation, as well as the four Geneva Conventions of 1949 (that lay down the rules of war)”, he says.

As’ad AbuKhalil, associate professor of political science at California State University, says truth commissions are “morally necessary and politically feasible”. But he warns that a commission for Afghanistan could become a ” sham” because of the current international climate.

The United States, he says, is picking and choosing which international treaties and obligations to abide by in order to suit its own purposes. It is also providing only conditional support for an International Criminal Court (ICC) demanding that its own soldiers be exempt from its jurisdiction.

“One wonders if such a truth commission would investigate the crimes and atrocities by current U.S.-installed leaders of Afghanistan,” says AbuKhalil, author of “Bin Laden, Islam, and America’s New War on Terrorism”.

Truth commissions can only be effective and credible when U.S. world hegemony ends and the United Nations is empowered to play its role without manipulation from Washington, he adds.

Robinson admits that setting up the commission may be difficult because international human rights activists have charged that those now governing in Kabul also have records of human rights violations.

In November last year, Robinson called for an inquiry into the killings of hundreds of Taliban prisoners at a prison in Mazar-e-Sharif. Most were killed by forces of Afghanistan’s Northern Alliance, an U.S. ally in the ongoing war.

But despite the plea – and a similar request by Amnesty International – no inquiry was held.

In a statement released in December, Kamal Hossain, U.N. special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Afghanistan, said reports of death and summary execution of prisoners were a source of serious concern.

“It is important that the international action against global terrorism be viewed as a campaign to uphold the international rule of law,” Hossain said, adding, “Forces engaged in this campaign must thus be seen themselves as complying with international humanitarian law.”

In a report titled “Discrimination against Women and Girls in Afghanistan”, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan catalogued a long list of human rights abuses over a 23-year period, which included several civil wars and the Soviet occupation of the country.

The study, released last January, said the overall state of women’s mental health was poor, with more than 70 percent of women exposed to Taliban policies meeting the criteria for major depression.

Furthermore, women and girls were forced to attend public executions, floggings, and other forms of cruel and inhuman treatment, which contributed to the psychological damage, creating a highly traumatised population with no access to mental health care.

These “massive abuses”, Annan said, constitute “gross violations of (the) international human rights law and standards” that Afghanistan has supported.

In a report released last year, Radhika Coomaraswamy, special rapporteur on violence against women, discussed instances of rape, sexual assault, forced prostitution and forced marriages under the Taliban government.

The civil war and the militarisation of society led to an increased number of abductions of young girls and women by Taliban fighters, the report noted.