Iraq, Afghanistan failing in human rights, US says

WASHINGTON -- Fledgling US-backed democracies in Afghanistan and Iraq are failing to protect human rights, despite huge flows of American aid to improve conditions after the ousters of the Taliban and Saddam Hussein, the State Department said yesterday,

In its annual global survey of human rights practices, the department criticized the two US allies for their records last year, when they were beset by increasingly bloody insurgencies and saddled with weak administrations and poorly trained security forces.

"Too often in the past year we received painful reminders that human rights, though self-evident, are not self-enforcing," Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said in presenting the report.

The report cited poor human rights conditions in several other US allies and partners, including China, Egypt, Pakistan, Russia, and Saudi Arabia. It also criticized the records of foes Cuba, Iran, Venezuela, and North Korea.

The genocide in Sudan's troubled western Darfur region was the "most sobering reality of all," the report said.

Afghanistan and Iraq have received millions in US aid for human rights and democracy programs -- $102.9 million for Afghanistan last year alone and $183 million for Iraq since 2004, according to State Department figures.

In Iraq, where deadly attacks have surged despite the formation of an elected government after Hussein's removal in a US-led invasion in 2003, "both deepening sectarian violence and acts of terrorism seriously undercut human rights and democratic progress," the report said.

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's government "was unable to diminish these violent attacks" despite enhanced security steps taken after the Feb. 22, 2006, bombing of a Shi'ite shrine in Samarra, which provoked a major rise in Sunni-Shi'ite attacks, it said.

The report said the Iraqi defense and interior ministries were responsible for "serious" human rights violations, including severe beatings, electrocutions, and sexual assaults of detainees.

In Afghanistan, President Hamid Karzai's government made progress on human rights in 2006, but its performance "remained poor," the report said, attributing lapses to a weak central administration, abuses by authorities, and Taliban and Al Qaeda insurgents. The United States deposed the country's Taliban rulers in 2001.

The report said there were persistent reports of "politically motivated or extrajudicial killings by the government or its agents" in addition to atrocities by insurgents.

The report said Pakistan, another key US counterterrorism ally, had a poor record, citing extrajudicial arrests, executions and torture, and dealing with rape cases. It faulted Egypt, a moderate Arab nation, for cracking down on dissent in court decisions and through the Internet.

It criticized Russia for its poor rights record in Chechnya and superficial probes of suspected contract killings of government foes, including reform-minded officials and journalists. It also took China to task for clamping down on cyber dissent and suppressing demonstrations and protests for liberalization.