Dark pasts of Afghans are kept quiet

KABUL, Afghanistan -- A sensitive UN report that has been shelved for the past 18 months accuses leading Afghan politicians and officials of orchestrating massacres, torture, mass rape, and other war crimes in the country over 23 years of conflict.

The 220-page draft report by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights details atrocities allegedly committed by communist, mujahideen, and Taliban fighters. The UN has repeatedly delayed publication of the report, which was commissioned by the world body and was originally scheduled for release in January 2005.

Human rights activists involved in producing it allege that the international body has been worried about identifying former warlords who are now in positions of power and who could upset Afghanistan's fragile political balance. Among those identified in the report are an ethnic Uzbek warlord whom President Hamid Karzai appointed as an adviser and several former mujahideen commanders -- linked to the deaths of thousands of civilians -- who were elected last fall to the country's new parliament.

``The UN has been intimidated. It is afraid to rock the boat because of these guys," said Saman Zia-Zarifi of Human Rights Watch, who served on a committee that oversaw the report. ``But the boat is taking on water, and they are going to pull it down."

A UN spokesman in Kabul, Aleem Siddique, said the report had been presented to the Afghan government and was awaiting a ``green light" for publication from Karzai.

Jawed Ludin, Karzai's chief of staff, said the report had been received ``a long time ago" but added that he was unaware that the UN was awaiting the president's authorization before releasing it.

Much of the information in the report is not new, but it offers the first comprehensive survey of wartime atrocities during Afghanistan's various conflicts between 1978 and 2001. The report, based on testimony collected by human rights groups and press accounts, carries the imprimatur of the United Nations, which activists say makes it an important source as rights groups seek justice for past crimes in Afghanistan.

The report, a draft copy of which was provided to the Globe by a Western diplomat, includes allegations about the activities of some of the most prominent personalities of Afghanistan's past and present.

One is Abdul Rasul Sayyaf, a commander in the mujahideen struggle against Soviet occupation of the 1980s who became embroiled in factional fighting after the Soviets withdrew in the 1990s. The UN report quotes a former Sayyaf commander who testified that before a massacre of Shi'ite civilians in west Kabul in February 1993, Sayyaf told his officers ``Don't leave anyone alive -- kill all of them."

The report states that at least several hundred civilians, most of them ethnic Hazaras, were rounded up and executed. According to the report, ``One eyewitness reported . . . he had seen an elderly Shi'a man nailed to a tree and then shot in the head."

Sayyaf was elected to the new parliament in 2004 and now leads a pro-Karzai faction there.

The report states that the forces of ethnic Uzbek warlord Abdul Rashid Dostum captured hundreds of Taliban fighters as they fled US bombing in 2001. At least 200 subsequently died in overcrowded containers and were buried in mass graves. A full investigation has never taken place, the report says.

Dostum, who ran unsuccessfully in the 1993 presidential election, was appointed military chief of staff under Karzai last year.

Sayed Muhammad Gulabzoi was minister of the interior during the puppet communist regime of the Soviet occupation of the 1980s. According to the report, he oversaw the Afghan intelligence service notorious for torturing and killing civilians. Gulabzoi is now a member of parliament for the southern province of Khost.

The UN report alleges Taliban war crimes as well. A Taliban commander who participated in the massacre of 240 civilians in northern Afghanistan in 1997 described how Taliban executioners stood one meter from their victims to save bullets. Soon their beards were covered in blood, he said.

The report also touches on notorious fighters who have not joined the new government, including Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a mujahideen commander who battled the Soviets and then other Afghans in the ensuing civil war. Forces loyal to Hekmatyar, a former Afghan prime minister, fired thousands of rockets on Kabul in the 1990s, ``reportedly killing tens of thousands of people, the vast majority of whom were civilians," the report says.

Hekmatyar is now fighting US forces in southeastern Afghanistan, where a surge in violence in the past month prompted US-led forces to launch a large-scale offensive yesterday.

But for Afghans, one of the most difficult sections of the report details atrocities allegedly committed by forces loyal to Ahmed Shah Masood, Afghanistan's national hero, during the battle for Kabul in the early 1990s. It accuses his troops of indiscriminately shelling civilians and of torturing prisoners.

Masood, who commanded Northern Alliance fighters who eventually helped to oust the Taliban, was assassinated by suspected Al Qaeda operatives on Sept. 9, 2001.

Patricia Gossman, a human rights activist based in Amman, Jordan, who coauthored the report with New York University academic Barnett R. Rubin, said it was ``not a bill of indictment," but rather a ``truth-telling" exercise designed to help Afghans decide how to confront their past. ``It is a beginning and not an end point," she said.

Gossman said that delays in publishing the report ``send the wrong signals. This is something Afghans wanted to see."

The importance of accountability for past crimes has been underscored in recent weeks.

Several European diplomats representing three different missions in Kabul said they were angered that days after riots rocked Kabul last month, Karzai appointed 13 former commanders with alleged links to drug smuggling, organized crime, or illegal militias to senior police positions across the country. The diplomats, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the president had added the 13 names at the last minute to a list of 86 new officers selected by a board of US, German, and Afghan officials.

The most controversial appointment was that of the new Kabul police chief, Amanullah Guzar, who Western diplomats believe is linked to land theft and extortion in his home territory on the Shomali plains north of Kabul.

Speaking recently at police headquarters, Guzar staunchly defended his reputation. ``President Karzai appointed me and he knows all about my past. Let anyone with allegations bring them to court," he said.

Ludin, Karzai's chief of staff, said the government made the additional appointments to ensure ethnic balance and greater representation of former jihadi groups.

The dispute is indicative of the dilemma facing the Karzai government: how to balance the demands of international donors who seek accountability for past crimes and merit-based appointments for government jobs with the ethnic or political demands of powerful interest groups such as the former mujahideen fighters.