IN AIDING NORTHERN ALLIANCE, US MUST ADDRESS PAST WAR CRIMES
Patricia Gossman: 10/03/01

The United States has announced a covert aid package for its new allies in Afghanistan, the Northern Alliance, aimed at bolstering its ability to topple the Taliban. But it is unclear how much thought is being given to Afghanistan’s post-Taliban political order. A military strategy by itself is not sufficient; in the absence of any transitional political process, the imminent collapse of the Taliban could create a dangerous power vacuum that could destroy what is left of Afghanistan.

No one group can provide the answer to governing Afghanistan. The challenge is to craft a political process in which Afghans from the broadest possible range of constituencies can participate. Such a political coalition would also have to ensure that those responsible for war crimes and other abuses over the past 22 years of warfare in Afghanistan are held accountable for their crimes.

While many Afghans are anxious to see an end to Taliban rule, they remain feaful about the prospect of a return of the Northern Alliance, also known as the United Front. When the factions that comprise the Northern Alliance – together with some who have since been excluded – took power in Kabul in 1992, they turned on each other almost immediately, plunging the capital into anarchy.

From 1992-95, Gulbuddin Hikmatyar, a warlord who was shunted aside almost immediately after the alliance took power, repeatedly ordered his fighters to rain rockets on Kabul, resulting in thousands of civilian deaths. Now, Hikmatyar is threatening to mobilize Pashtuns against the United States, which, ironically, supplied his mujaheddin forces during their resistance to the 1979-89 Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.

Meanwhile, Abdul Rasul Sayyaf, who remains with the Northern Alliance, was responsible for ordering the massacres of hundreds of ethnic Hazaras. The forces of Ahmad Shah Massoud, recently assassinated by Osama bin Laden operatives, also engaged in the rape and murder of Hazaras and the indiscriminate bombardment of west Kabul.

Many Northern Alliance loyalists are ethnic Uzbek and Tajik. Commanders of the predominantly Hazara Hizb-i Wahdat, one of the groups in the alliance, raped and murdered Pashtun civilians and executed Pashtun prisoners. Pashtuns live predominately in southern areas of Afghanistan.

Some of the worst alliance commanders from this era have themselves been killed in combat. But many others remain alive and in command positions in the alliance. They should be excluded from any future government of Afghanistan and should instead be indicted for war crimes and tried—a step many Afghans would welcome. And this is precisely what has been missing in all the plans so far for rooting out terrorism in Afghanistan.

In recent years, of course, it has been the Taliban who have been responsible for war crimes and crimes against humanity. Human rights researchers have completed extensive dossiers on Taliban commanders who have ordered the massacres of Hazara, Ismaeli and Uzbek civilians.

In the first months of 2001, Taliban commanders summarily executed civilians in the town of Yakaolang, then returned to kill more before finally burning down the town. In many cases of abuses against civilians, the Taliban troops responsible were accompanied by Arab fighters, including those associated with bin Laden. As events unfold, and the Taliban’s hold on the country continues to weaken, it is now conceivable that many of them could be captured and tried—an unthinkable prospect even a few months ago.

But would pursuing justice threaten the prospect for peace by sowing further division among Afghanistan’s already divided parties? Such an effort, whether it be through a truth commission or a war crimes tribunal, or a combination of the two, is always fraught with peril, especially when a country has been ravaged by war. But if the approach is genuinely even-handed, and it is clear that the goal is to prosecute those responsible for grave abuses, and not hold the parties themselves or the ethnic groups they claim to represent responsible, a serious effort to end impunity in Afghanistan could accelerate a peace process.

It is clear that the Northern Alliance also has to be part of whatever government follows. While many top leaders in the alliance have committed serious human rights abuses, the parties themselves have also fought for and represented important minority interests in Afghanistan. Accommodating these interests and ensuring the security of different ethnic groups will be crucial to the stability of any new government.

The United Nations must take a proactive role to coordinate various networks of Afghans and provide logistical support to those willing to cooperate from inside Afghanistan. Unlike the United States, the UN can command the moral authority inside Afghanistan to give legitimacy to the process. It can require that those willing to work within a transitional framework accede first to basic guarantees to protect human rights and abide by international humanitarian law. Parallel efforts to indict known war criminals and to establish a human rights monitoring framework could help deter future abuses by all parties to the negotiations.

So far, the debate over "justice" has been limited to concern for the American victims of terror. Afghans themselves have been the victims of terror for almost 22 years – starting with the Soviet invasion of 1979. Public exposure of this might dissuade other would-be warlords from trying to carve up the country anew. The Afghans, too, want to see justice done.

Editor's Note: Patricia Gossman is an independent consultant on human rights issues in South Asia, an adjunct professor at Georgetown University and a professorial lecturer at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.

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Posted October 3, 2001 © Eurasianet
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