In this bulletin:

• Afghanistan under scrutiny at UN-sponsored meeting
• Iranian, Chinese weapons seized in Afghanistan
• Bundestag Majority Favors Extending Germany's Afghan Mission
• NATO not planning for a reduction in Canadian forces in Afghanistan, says top general
• UN Vaccinates Polio in S. Afghanistan
• Afghan govt and Taliban strike rare deal on health
• Canadian soldiers injured by roadside bomb
• Canada can't find 50 Afghan detainees
• Afghan Legislators Want Control Over Rights Body
• Afghan women seek justice

Afghanistan under scrutiny at UN-sponsored meeting

UNITED NATIONS (AFP) — Eighteen countries meet here Sunday to review six years of efforts to spur reconstruction and good governance in Afghanistan at a time when the restive country is beset by a resurgent Taliban insurgency and soaring opium output.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai and UN chief Ban Ki-moon are co-hosting the three-hour high-level meeting, set to open at 10:00 am (1400 GMT), which comes two days before world leaders begin summit talks during the UN General Assembly session. The Afghan leader is due to address the assembly Monday.

Joining Afghanistan at the talks are Britain, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Iran, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, Norway, Pakistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Spain, Turkey and the United States.

Also invited are the Asian Development Bank, the European Union, the European Commission, NATO and the World Bank.

Organizers say the talks are to focus on ways the international community and the United Nations can help the Kabul government tackle issues of security, good governance, regional cooperation and drug trafficking.

Afghanistan was in tatters after the 2001 fall of the Islamist Taliban regime, which led the international community to spend billions of dollars on development and send in tens of thousands of troops to fight a growing Taliban insurgency.

Participants at the meeting will review progress toward implementing the Afghanistan Compact, a five-year development blueprint launched in January 2006 by Kabul and some 70 foreign partners.

Under the deal, Afghanistan promised to take specific steps in the areas of security, governance, rule of law and human rights, and economic and social development in return for military and economic support.

Voicing concern about increased violence and terrorism in Afghanistan, the UN Security Council Wednesday voted overwhelmingly to extend for one year the mandate of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) there.

The UN-mandated ISAF force is at 39,000 people from around 37 nations, its most powerful since 2001, even though original estimates of troops and equipment requirements still have not been met.

It operates alongside a US-led coalition of about 15,000 and the fledgling Afghan security forces. Around 168 international soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan this year -- the bloodiest since the insurgent Taliban were removed from government.

US-led forces in October 2001 toppled the Taliban, which was funded by and sheltered the Al-Qaeda extremist network, for refusing to hand over Osama bin Laden following the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States.

Opium production meanwhile reached a record high in Afghanistan this year and more people are being killed in a Taliban insurgency that has seen suicide attacks spiral.

Iranian, Chinese weapons seized in Afghanistan

HERAT, Afghanistan (AFP) — Afghan authorities said they had seized dozens of Iranian and Chinese-made weapons after a brief battle Saturday with Taliban fighters near the border with Iran.

The weapons found in the western province of Herat included about 40 mines and rocket-propelled grenades, the government's intelligence agency said in a statement.

They were found in a vehicle that Taliban fighters abandoned following an exchange of fire in the province's Ghoryan district on the Iranian border, it said.

"The weapons were seized after Taliban escaped and left one of their vehicles behind with the weapons," it said.

An intelligence official told AFP separately and on condition of anonymity that the arms appeared to have been manufactured in Iran and China.

Some of the rockets showed to reporters carried Persian writing and the coat of arms of Iran, which reads "Allah."

US and British officials have alleged that the Taliban are being supplied by weapons that arrive from Iran, although not necessarily from Tehran, which denies involvement.

A sizeable convoy carrying explosives was seized early this month by NATO troops in the western province of Farah, which also borders Iran, the top NATO general here, General Dan McNeill, said last week.

"The geographic origin of that convoy was clearly Iran but take note that I did not say it's the Iranian government," the US general told AFP.

Officials with NATO's International Security Assistance Force told the Washington Post the weapons stash included armour-piercing bombs, which have been especially deadly when used against foreign troops in Iraq.

The NATO-led force interdicted two smaller shipments of similar weapons from Iran into southern Helmand province on April 11 and May 3, the Post said.

US Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte reiterated last week concern about weapons from Iran supplying the Taliban and said Washington was also discouraging China from selling arms to that country.

Bundestag Majority Favors Extending Germany's Afghan Mission – DW

Just hours after the UN Security Council authorized NATO troops to remain in Afghanistan for another year, Germany's parliament began clearing the way for an extension of its soldiers' deployment there.

Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier called on lawmakers Thursday, Sept. 20, to vote in favor of prolonging the German army's mandate in the realm of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan as well as that of its six Tornado reconnaissance jets, which currently assist the mission.

"Anyone who demands withdrawal of the troops from Afghanistan puts at risk everything that we have built up in the last six years," the Social Democrat (SPD) said, though he conceded that "the way has been harder than many of us had hoped."

The SPD, Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Union and the free-market liberal FDP expressed their support for extending the mission in the Bundestag, Germany's lower house of parliament. Their combined votes are enough for the extension to be approved when lawmakers decide the issue in three weeks.

The Left party's parliamentary leader Gregor Gysi reiterated his party's rejection of the mission, referring to polls that showed that a majority of Germans wanted their soldiers to leave Afghanistan.

Germany's Green party has been in disarray over the deployment, with many members opposed to the government's plans for the two, currently separate missions to be combined into one mandate. Green parliamentary group chief Fritz Kühn stressed that his party backed ISAF, although most Green party parliamentarians are expected to abstain or oppose the extension because they disagree with the Tornado deployment.

a letter to be published in the tageszeitung daily on Friday, Green party head Claudia Roth called on Afghan Foreign Minister Rangin Dadfar Spanta to remain a member of the political organization despite members' disagreement over Germany's mission in his country.

Spanta had previously told the paper he had written a letter of resignation from the party but was not yet entirely sure about sending it. The minister lived in Germany for some 20 years as a refugee and joined the Greens in the city of Aachen in 1994.

Around 3,000 German soldiers have been deployed to Afghanistan.

NATO not planning for a reduction in Canadian forces in Afghanistan, says top general

CanWest News Service - Saturday, September 22, 2007KANDAHAR - Canada's top general in Afghanistan says NATO is making plans based on the assumption that Canada and the Netherlands will extend their combat missions here past their 2008-09 deadlines.

"We do not plan for a reduction of battalions. It is as simple as that," said Brig.-Gen. Marquis Hainse, deputy commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan's war-torn south. "We have to remind ourselves why we are here in the first place. After 30 years of war, (Afghanistan) was a failed state and a clear breeding ground for terrorists - and all nations know that terrorists do not stop at their borders."

Hainse, who arrived in Kandahar four months ago, was replying to a question about political debates now heating up in the Netherlands and Canada over whether to continue with neighbouring combat missions set to expire in 2008 and 2009.

Four Canadian soldiers and their Afghan interpreter were wounded early Saturday when their armoured vehicle was struck by a roadside bomb as they were travelling to west of Kandahar City.

Two of the Canadians, who were part of a routine supply convoy, were taken by a U.S. Army helicopter to the main Canadian base at Kandahar Airfield, where they were listed in stable condition with non-life-threatening injuries.

Hainse, who spent his career with the Quebec-based Royal 22nd Regiment, acknowledged the issue of future Canadian military involvement in Afghanistan is particularly contentious in his home province.

"In my experience, the people of Quebec are 120 per cent behind their soldiers, but not necessarily the cause," he said. "This is the disconnect, but we're making progress. They're understanding the mission more. The people of Quebec are rational. They will understand."

NATO's European commander, Gen. Bantz Craddock of the U.S., asked NATO countries last week to contribute two additional combat battalions to Afghan's south, where the Royal 22nd Regiment has responsibility for the province of Kandahar.

"Kandahar could easily take another battalion," Hainse said.

"Frankly, so could Helmand, Zabul and even Uruzgan. We could reinforce all of them with one battalion each."

Additional soldiers could also be sent to the two southern provinces where NATO's International Security Assistance Force does not have any presence, he said.

If NATO got the additional ground forces it has long asked for "we would do the same things we are doing now, but we could it faster," he said.

"We realize progress, loud and clear. The insurgents don't have the initiative and can't concentrate forces because when they have done so they have lost big time. We have diminished some of their leadership and their re-supply capability. We go where we want to go."

One reason the future of the mission is so hotly debated at home, he said, was "a perception that there was more fighting that a year ago," but "we have double the number of troops now so there has inevitably been more combat in some places. We also have a lot more freedom of movement.

"The trend is that there is a lot more activity in Helmand than any other place. On the other hand, there are more (British) troops there. The Dutch have had it pretty tough in Uruzgan but nothing that they cannot cope with. Kandahar has been steady. There have been lulls and peaks and we are now back to a more normal level of activity."

UN Vaccinates Polio in S. Afghanistan

By ALISA TANG – 1 day ago

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — Afghan elders have given safe passage to thousands of volunteer vaccinators immunizing children against polio in Afghanistan's violent south, a region health workers haven't worked in for months, UNICEF said Saturday.

The vaccinators are working in violent areas of Kandahar and Helmand provinces through the help of Kandahar's governor and local elders, who worked to ensure the health workers could travel safely, said Catherine Mbengue, UNICEF representative in Afghanistan.

"So far we have not had any reports of any incidents contrary to what has happened in each (previous) campaign," said Mbengue, who went with vaccinators door-to-door in Kandahar.

Health workers have been abducted in the past, but Taliban spokesman Qari Yousef Ahmadi has said the militants would allow the workers access in southern Afghanistan for the current campaign.

The vaccinators had not been able to work in parts of Helmand province — the region that has seen the heaviest fighting between the Taliban and international forces — for a year and a half, Mbengue said.

"This is an incredible, happy development," she said.

Some 10,000 vaccinators began the weeklong campaign on Wednesday with the aim to vaccinate 1.3 million children.

On International Peace Day, which was recognized Friday, "we were able to see that vaccination was taking place all over the country, even in places we were not able to access because of security," Mbengue said.

Afghanistan is one of four countries — along with Pakistan, India and Nigeria — that suffers endemic polio, a preventable disease that can cause paralysis in children.

Mbengue said there have been nine cases of polio in Afghanistan this year, all of them in the south and east. Last year there were 29 cases, 21 of which were in the south.

She said she hopes that because UNICEF has been able to reach previously inaccessible districts the number of polio cases will be lower than last year.

The World Health Organization registered 1,999 cases of polio around the world last year, an increase from 1,749 in 2005. The vast majority of cases were in the endemic countries.

Polio mainly affects children under the age of 5 and is spread when unvaccinated people come into contact with the feces of those with the virus, often through water. It usually attacks the nervous system, causing paralysis, muscular atrophy, deformation and sometimes death.

Afghan govt and Taliban strike rare deal on health

By Jon Hemming

LASHKAR GAH, Afghanistan, Sept 21 (Reuters) - Afghan health officials said on Friday they had brokered a deal with Taliban leaders to allow the immunisation of children in rebel-held areas in a rare sign of cooperation between the warring sides.

The deal was made as part of a programme by UNICEF to vaccinate more than a million Afghan children against polio after a recent outbreak of the debilitating viral infection that has been eliminated from all but four countries in the world.

The Taliban insurgency against the Afghan government and its mainly Western allies has hampered the construction of hospitals and clinics after 30 years of war and prevented health workers reaching many of the sick and injured.

But even as fighting raged in the most violent southern province of Helmand, government health officials in the provincial capital Lashkar Gah decided to try to help children on both sides of the frontlines and extend their polio vaccination programme to the rebel-held town of Musa Qala.

"We approached elders and tribal leaders and went to Pakistan to get a religious ruling from a mullah, but still the Taliban refused to allow us to conduct immunisations," said Dr. Enayatullah, Helmand director of public health.

Then they hit on the idea of contacting the only medical professional they knew on the Taliban side -- Mullah Ahmad who used to run a 400-bed emergency hospital under the Taliban.

He then persuaded the Taliban governor of Musa Qala.

"Before we couldn't vaccinate because of just one or two people in charge," Dr. Enayatullah told a meeting with U.N. workers. "When they changed their minds, it all became possible."

Other health workers in Lashkar Gah also contacted the medical Mullah Ahmad to use his influence to overturn a threat by one Taliban commander to burn down a clinic in government-held territory because male doctors there had helped women give birth.

Helmand, a long fertile river valley etching its way through parched barren desert, has been the scene of some of the fiercest fighting in Afghanistan since the Taliban rebounded from their 2001 defeat and resumed large-scale attacks two years ago.

The UNICEF vaccination programme was aimed to coincide with United Nations peace day, but came as mainly British troops launched a major offensive between Musa Qala and Lashkar Gah.

Musa Qala was the scene of intense fighting last year between British forces holed up in the town and besieging Taliban fighters until British troops pulled out in a deal under which tribal elders took control and agreed to keep the Taliban out.

But in February the rebels moved in and have set up a shadow fiefdom with their own administrators, courts and officials.

United Nations officials and international health workers hope the deal with the Taliban might be a first step to peace.

"I hope these vaccination campaigns will continue to be used as a bridge towards peace," said Arshad Quddus, a medical officer with the World Health Organisation.

Canadian soldiers injured by roadside bomb

DENE MOORE - THE CANADIAN PRESS September 22, 2007

MA'SUM GHAR, Afghanistan — One Canadian soldier was seriously injured and three others slightly hurt by a roadside bomb explosion early Saturday.

A supply convoy was headed to Canadian forward operating bases in Kandahar province from the international base at Kandahar Air Field when the blast occurred at 12:30 a.m. local time.

Two wounded soldiers and an Afghan interpreter were taken to the forward operating base at Ma'sum Ghar, seven kilometres away, and later evacuated by helicopter to the hospital at Kandahar.

Two other Canadian soldiers were treated at the operating base and released.

Military officials said none of the injuries was life-threatening.

Improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, have become the weapon of choice for Taliban insurgents as they increasingly turn to guerrilla tactics.

A conservative estimate is that one vehicle a week is hit with a roadside bomb. More often, the bombs are discovered and defused by Canadian troops.

Most of the time there are no serious injuries but 38 of the 70 Canadian soldiers killed in Afghanistan since 2001 have been killed by roadside bombs, along with thousands of Afghans.

Canada can't find 50 Afghan detainees

GRAEME SMITH - From Saturday's Globe and Mail September 22, 2007

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan — Canada still can't account for at least 50 prisoners it captured and turned over to Afghan authorities, several sources say, frustrating efforts to put to rest concerns the detainees were subject to torture.

Canadian sources offered a benign explanation for their disappearance, blaming the Afghans' shoddy record-keeping and suggesting the detainees have likely returned safely to their homes.

Prisoners often buy their freedom from Afghanistan's corrupt jails, which may also explain the lack of records. The Canadians say they have not received any indication the missing detainees ran into trouble inside Afghan jails.

Still, officials familiar with Kandahar's medieval justice system say the Canadians must not dismiss the possibility of foul play.

“There are lots of possible explanations for how people get lost in the detention system,” a Western official said. “Some are benign, others much less so.”

After stories of torture were published in The Globe and Mail this year, Ottawa asked for a full accounting of the approximately 200 people transferred by Canadian forces into Afghan custody before May 3.

Detainees transferred after May 3 have been monitored under a deal struck in reaction to uproar over the issue, but the Canadians were also anxious to know about the earlier transfers. Sending detainees into places where they face abuse or torture might constitute a violation of the Geneva Conventions.

Months later, however, a quarter of those 200 detainees remain missing, neither listed as released nor still in custody.

Canada's own diplomatic reporting has already warned of complaints that captives are sometimes killed inside Afghan prisons.

“Extrajudicial executions, disappearances, torture and detention without trial are all too common,” a report last year said.

Those problems have persisted in Kandahar. Provincial police chief Sayed Agha Saqib says he arrested 67 of his own uniformed officers in the past three months, on charges ranging from corruption to kidnapping and extrajudicial execution.

The most spectacular of these arrests was a sweep in August that rounded up 33 members of a rogue police unit on the main highway west of Kandahar city, he said.

Two of the unit's commanders were arrested in Kabul at the same time and one remains at large.

All of the captured police have been transferred to custody in neighbouring Helmand province so their local allies can't help them escape, Chief Saqib said. Alongside the arrests, he said, his men discovered the rogue officers had been operating a small private jail in the northern slums of Kandahar city.

“They were corrupt, killing people and taking bribes,” the police chief said.

He says he isn't aware of any other private jails operating in Kandahar, though the city is full of rumours about them. An Interior Ministry source recently named two warlords he suspects of holding prisoners in the same slum, Loy Wiyala.

This spring, a convicted Taliban prisoner at Kandahar's main jail said in an interview that he was arrested by local police in Maywand district and bundled into a Toyota Landcruiser that took him to an unofficial jail in the city, where he was tortured for days before being transferred to an official jail at the headquarters of the National Directorate for Security.

The idea of people disappearing in custody is not unusual for ordinary Afghans, who have learned to fear the police almost as much as the Taliban.

Haji Shaista Gul, 48, a wealthy landowner who lives west of Kandahar city, said his younger brother, Sher Mohammed, was arrested by the same rogue police unit described by the police chief.

The landowner sent his brother to water the family's grape vines near the main highway on May 12, when a roadside bomb exploded and killed five policemen. The surviving officers quickly captured two people standing nearby: Mr. Mohammed and his friend, Jema Gul.

When the older brother learned what had happened, he made frantic efforts to discover where his sibling was detained. It turned out to be a complicated job, he said, because Mr. Mohammed was not held at any of the legitimate jails in the city.

When the landowner finally managed to secure his brother's release, he heard that the younger man and Jema Gul had been taken with their faces covered to a mud-walled house somewhere in Loy Wiyala, and thrown into the basement together. Nobody else was held there, and although they occasionally saw men in police uniforms, they also had visits from children who wandered into their makeshift cell and looked at them curiously. The private jail was apparently a room in a family home.

Although Mr. Mohammed was released, Jema Gul was not fortunate enough to have a rich brother looking for him. His mutilated body was discovered in a canal on May 29.

“The skin was falling off him,” said the landowner, who saw the body at the morgue. “His neck was cut, and it looked like they cut him with knives all over his body.”

The fact that the police unit involved in the killing has now been arrested does little to reassure him that this sort of thing won't happen again.

“These problems will belong to the Canadians in the end,” he said. “You have friendships with killers.”

Afghan Legislators Want Control Over Rights Body

Parliament tries to rein in the national human rights watchdog in what many see as an attempt to protect its members from war crimes allegations.

By Hafizullah Gardesh in Kabul (ARR No. 266, 21-Sep-07)

The Afghan parliament’s attempt to wrest control of the national human rights watch body has seen a bitter debate between supporters of the move and those who believe some legislators want to avoid future accountability for past abuses.

In a vote on September 3, the lower house of parliament amended legislation to give itself the right to approve or veto appointments to a number of independent institutions including the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission, AIHRC.

A minority of deputies continue to insist that the constitution grants them no powers to over appointments to independent commissions. The bill needs to be approved by the upper chamber and by President Hamed Karzai before it enters into force, and the AIHRC has urged the president not to do so.

AIHRC is headed by Sima Samar, one of the country’s most prominent women.

Before chairing the AIHRC, Samar was a deputy prime minister in the interim government that took over after the fall of the Taleban, and also served as minister for women’s affairs.

Now Samar and her commission are under attack. During the fierce debate in parliament, some deputies accused the AIHRC of being in league with foreign intelligence agencies, and of being biased in favour of the Hazara ethnic group to which Samar belongs.

They originally demanded that the commission be dissolved. Failing that, they insisted that parliament should control the appointment of its head.

Opponents of the move say the real bone of contention is the AIHRC’s repeated calls for an investigation into the human rights violations committed during decades of brutal war.

Many parliamentarians come from the mujaheddin factions which fought and ultimately triumphed over the Soviet Union, only to begin a vicious battle for primacy amongst themselves in the early Nineties.

In the process, tens of thousands of Afghans lost their lives, and many more were displaced. Kabul was largely destroyed as the various factions pounded each other and civilian residential areas. This phase of internecine warfare ended when the Taleban took over much of the country, capturing Kabul in 1996.

The civil war years have left a legacy of anger and bitterness that persists to the present day.

In spring 2005, the AIHRC issued a report entitled “A Call for Justice”, which documented the overwhelming desire of many Afghans to see those who perpetrated the heinous crimes of the war years brought to account.

Human Rights Watch, in a 2005 report called “Blood-Stained Hands”, named several prominent figures in government whom it accused of war crimes - an allegation that parliamentarians have dismissed as baseless and inaccurate.

In January 2007, parliament passed a resolution that exempts all who participated in the 25 years of “jihad” from prosecution for war crimes. The move provoked indignation among human rights groups including the AIHRC.

After the September 3 motion was passed, AIHRC member Mohammad Farid Hamidi said it was illegal.

“This decision has no basis in the law,” he said. “I do not think the president will accept it.”

He reacted angrily to accusations that the AIHRC had ties to foreign intelligence services.

“We do our job for God and country, with honesty, and according to the law,” he said. “We deny any allegations that we are serving foreigners. Accusing someone without proof is itself a crime.”

Part of the problem is that the AIHRC’s independence is not enshrined by clear legislation. The body was set up by the government to oversee the transitional justice process, but Article 58 of the constitution does not spell out the extent of government oversight, stating merely that “the structure and functions of the commission shall be regulated by law”.

Presidential spokesperson Humayun Hamidzade does not accept that this wording gives parliament the right to appoint or reject commission members.

“The commission is not a government institution,” he said. “It is semi-governmental. Parliament’s decision is in violation of the constitution.”

Parliamentarian Shukria Barakzai also condemned the decision.

“Those who are doing this are people who have been accused of crimes against humanity,” she told IWPR. “They want to dominate this commission, burn its files and interrupt the process of transitional justice.”

Barakzai added that parliament’s actions do not reflect well on its members.

“Our people and the people of the world know this parliament well, and they do not trust it,” she said. “Parliament has lost its prestige and authority, and it is leading the country towards crisis.”

But another deputy, Alam Gul Kuchai, one of the architects of the resolution, disagrees. In his opinion, the AIHRC and other independent institutions should be monitored and controlled by lawmakers.

“The constitution does not clearly state [that parliament has control],”he said. “That is a defect in the constitution.”

Parliament, he said, has the right to make whatever laws it feels are in the interests of the nation.

He said the commission’s members and its record were the problem, not the existence of a human rights institution as such.

“Dozens of women, children, and old people are attacked every day,” he said. “But the commission has never raised its voice for them. All they talk about is the mujaheddin.

“We do not oppose the human rights commission. We only oppose the commission’s members. They act contrary to Islamic law and they do whatever the foreigners tell them to do. We have evidence of this, which we will reveal to the nation very soon.”

Fazel Rahman Oria, a political analyst and editor of the Erada newspaper, also believes parliament has the right to take control of official institutions.

“The directors of Da Afghanistan Bank, the Red Crescent and so on all have to be confirmed by parliament. The Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission is a government institution, so why should it be any different?”

In any case, he alleged, the AIHRC, was politically biased and the “independent” in its title was “just to fool people”.

“Since its inception, it has been neither independent nor impartial,” said Oria. “Sima Samar was a member of Hezb-e-Wahdat and still has relations with that party.”

Hezb-e-Wahdat is a political faction dominated by the Hazara ethnic group. Some of its leaders have been implicated in human rights abuses.

“All of Samar’s work displays linguistic, ethnic, and regional bias,” continued Oria. “Almost all of the posts are given to people from the one ethnic group.”

Oria also criticised the commission for being largely ineffectual.

“In the past five years, not a single war criminal has been put on trial, and they haven’t even published a list of war criminals,” he said. “All they have done is come up with some high-sounding slogans.”

An opposing view was voiced by another analyst, Mohammad Qasim Akhgar, who sees the parliamentary decision as revenge for the commission’s vigorous calls for the prosecution of suspected war criminals.

“The human rights commission has stuck like a bone in the throats of the parliamentarians with its call for justice,” he said. “Those who murdered more than 60,000 Kabul citizens and looted the capital - have they ever admitted that this was against Islam? What evidence do they have for calling the commission un-Islamic?”

Hafizullah Gardesh is IWPR’s regional editor, based in Kabul

Afghan women seek justice

Ending their silence, protesters demand that Kabul probe atrocities stemming from decades of conflict

September 22, 2007 - Bruce Campion-Smith Ottawa bureau chief

KABUL–Wira Darwishi's sad brown eyes betray decades of worry and questions.

More than 20 years ago, three members of her family – a brother, uncle and cousin – vanished. For years, Darwishi wondered silently about their fate.

But this Kabul woman and hundreds like her are silent no more.

In a remarkable move, Darwishi and some 100 other women of all ages demonstrated outside the United Nations office here last month, clutching pictures of loved ones – mostly husbands and sons – who have gone missing in Afghanistan's decades of conflict.

The mass graves being found around the country – three alone in the last two months – hint at the fate of many of them.

"Thousands of people in Afghanistan lost their loved ones," Darwishi said in an interview.

"During these years, they are just thinking that they will return back to their families and they cannot accept that they are killed," she said.

These are courageous women, taking on not only a government that seems unwilling to tackle the country's dark history, but also the very warlords accused of atrocities, some of whom now sit in parliament.

Darwishi has about 200 women in her fledgling victims' group but knows that the fear of reprisals is keeping many others silent.

"They know all over Kabul and all around Afghanistan there are these criminals," she said.

"If the international community supports us with this action, then I am sure there will be thousands of people around Afghanistan who will have their voice with us," she said through an interpreter.

As Afghanistan struggles with the present, it is also haunted by its past, a legacy of violent regimes dating back to 1978 that included communist rule and Soviet occupation, a bitter civil war and the religious crackdown under the Taliban.

In a 2005 report titled "Bloodstained Hands," Human Rights Watch said documenting serious atrocities committed in the 1980s and 1990s "will not fit within the covers of a book; it will fill bookshelves. The two-decade period was marked by widespread human rights abuses, war crimes and crimes against humanity."

Now victims of those atrocities are demanding answers. In the words of one United Nations official here, the demonstration by the women was "stunning."

"Success in `transitional justice' depends upon the ability of victims to demand justice. That was an amazing development – I think it's a great achievement," said Javier Leon-Diaz, a human rights officer with the United Nations assistance mission in Afghanistan.

It evoked memories of the Mothers of Srebrenica, who sought answers about the disappearance of 8,000 Muslim men and boys at the hands of Bosnian Serb forces, and Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, who pressed to learn the fate of their children who vanished during the 1976-83 dictatorship in Argentina.

There's been no response from President Hamid Karzai's government to the demonstration. But it casts a spotlight on the growing push from Afghan residents to discover the fate of their loved ones.

And it's a search with a Canadian connection. Ottawa is providing money and much-appreciated staff expertise to the United Nations mission, which is spearheading "transitional justice" efforts, diplomatic lingo for the process to confront the violent past.

But getting to the truth here won't be easy. For starters, while Karzai's government has formally adopted a plan to implement a transitional justice plan, which includes a vetting system meant to keep accused war criminals out of office, there's been little real progress.

"The Afghan government is not all to blame. I think there is not enough pressure put on the Afghan government and on President Karzai by the international community," said one foreign official who is active on the file.

"The attitude of the international community is that it is too soon, that vetting current office-holders or prosecution could destabilize the country and therefore shouldn't be pushed too hard."

The country lacks the sophisticated forensic capability needed to exhume mass graves. UN experts have done preliminary examinations of a few sites but a full excavation would require a formal invitation from Karzai's government, something that's not been forthcoming.

Add to that the fact that there's not one single regime accused of the atrocities but several, dating back to before the Soviet invasion in 1979. The victims of one era became the accused of the next. And now, human rights advocates say, some of those perpetrators sit in the Afghan parliament or serve in senior government positions.

International observers concede Afghanistan's rudimentary justice system just isn't up the task of fairly prosecuting accused war criminals.

"It is now widely recognized that there cannot be peace without justice," Leon-Diaz said in an interview at the UN compound in Kabul.

"That said, the current status of the judiciary in Afghanistan does not allow for domestic trials for war crimes or crimes against humanity. International fair trial standards cannot be observed at this stage," he said.

Still, Noveed, 23, said it angers her to see alleged criminals sitting in parliament.

"We wish that all the ones who did these crimes in Afghanistan should be jailed and judged," said Noveed, who doesn't have a last name.

"Whenever I see the faces of mujahideen criminals, I'm getting so angry and really so sad, not only me but there are many, many other families who have lost their beloveds during these regimes," she said in an interview.

Her aunt and uncle were the victims of a military raid on their house to steal their belongings. Her uncle tried to prevent the attack.

"They hit him too much and he died," she said.

Meanwhile, Darwishi's brother Ibrahim was seized along with two classmates in 1979 from Kabul's college. He was engaged and his fiancée waited 15 years before marrying someone else.

Her uncle, a retired military officer, was seized from his farm and kept in jail for six months before disappearing. His son, an air force technician, was taken too.

"These are the three lost ones. We have no information. It's been 27, 28 years," she said.

[Disclaimer: The content of this news bulletin does not necessarily reflect the view or policy of the Afghan Government, unless specifically stated as such. The collection of articles and commentaries from Afghan and international news sources is provided for informational purposes, and accuracy of the news is the responsibility of the original source.]