Afghanistan

The aims of the first Petersberg conference have not been achieved. Warlordism and Islamic fundamentalism threaten to take over Afghan politics. The ISAF counterinsurgency strategy aims to co-opt local power brokers. These days the decision of NATO to stop the transfer of prisoners to the Afghan National Directorate of Security (NDS) prisons as a means of avoiding torture speaks for itself.

Refugees

One manifestation of the worsening situation is a new mass exodus. UNHRC’s „Global Tends 2010“counts three million Afghan refugees in 75 countries. However, in Iran for example there are 1.5 million unregistered Afghan refugees, who after having been deported back to Afghanistan often return to Iran within a short period. In autumn 2010 for example an Afghan woman who has been deported from Karaj/Tehran to Herat, returned to Iran within two weeks together with her young daughter. In Germany, 20% of all new asylum-seekers are Afghans. Among the Afghan refugees there are not only members of the upper class, but also illiterates, and the highest rate of infant refugees worldwide.

Brain drain

The mass exodus means a dangerous brain drain. People who work for democracy and human rights are forced to leave Afghanistan to escape political persecution despite the strong presence of international troops. The renowned Sayed Yaqub Ibrahimi for instance - who last year got the Leipzig Media Award, had to leave Afghanistan late in 2009 in response to threats from the new Vice President Mohammad Qasim Fahim. The editor of the Afghan daily newspaper “Payman Daily” Sayed Ahmad Hashemi joined his wife, the Afghan poet Mahsa Taee, in exile on 31st May 2010.

Impunity

Abdul Rabb al-Rasul Sayyaf presumably will become the new chief justice of the Afghan Supreme Court. This would mean that one of the most prominent Afghan war criminals who committed ethnic cleansing with his militia in the 1990s would be made responsible for the Rule of Law in the country. Back in 2001 Sayyaf urged President Karzai to appoint his ally, the Wahhabi Faisal Ahmad Shinwari as the Afghan Supreme Court’s chief justice. Shinwari’s rule between 2001 and 2006 meant a massive handicap for the Rule of Law in Afghanistan. Sayyaf also is behind the 2009 law that grants an amnesty for perpetrators of war crimes.

Abuse of power by warlords

Warlords and local commanders continue to commit human rights violations with impunity. The killings of 18 adherents of Hezb-e Islami in Alam Khel in 2008, presumably ordered by Balkh province Govenor Atta Muhammad Noor were never prosecuted. According to a new report of the NGO Human Rights Watch, many of the new Afghan Local Police (ALP) - in fact a militia - committed human rights violations in many Afghan provinces instead of performing their duties as police men. In northern Afghanistan many of the attacks against ISAF or Afghan authorities and the civilian population in northern Afghanistan attributed to the Taliban are committed by warlord militia.

Islamic fundamentalists

The Afghan President Hamid Karzai uses Islamic fundamentalists to achieve his political goals. The Ulema council of Herat for instance was ordered early in 2009 to recommend the closure of the critical daily newspaper “Payman Daily”. Even though Hezb-e Islami-milita are said to be responsible for many insurgent attacks on ISAF, there is an increasing influence of the party headed by the notorious warlord and Islamic fundamentalist Gulbuddin Hekmatyar on the Afghan government. Since March 2011, Abdul Karim Khorram Khuram, an associate of Hezb-e Islami is the head of the presidential office.

Women’s and children’s rights

Women and children have to suffer from the rule of fundamentalism, warlords and an ineffective security and justice system. A Shia family law featuring extreme anti-women features came into effect in July 2009. The inmates of women’s prisons in Afghanistan most times are merely victims of family conflicts. An example may illustrate what difficulties orphans of the conflict suffer: Seven children of a family in Kabul, who survived an attack of a local milita-group in 2004 nowadays partly live in an orphanage and partly in the village the family came from. There they can’t use the fields the family possessed because there aren’t any adults to protect them. The police officer who wanted to see the killer of the parents and older siblings tried before a court was dismissed.

__________

In relation to bilateral and EU-relationships as well as the UN Human Rights Council we expect the German government to:

• urge the international community to fulfill its obligations to enhance the capacities for human rights in Afghanistan, and therefore

   

   

• to implement preconditions for reigning in the misuse of power

   

   

• to resume programs for disarmament and to prevent rearmament of private or semi-private militia

   

   

• to adopt concepts against impunity for past and present gross human rights violations;

   

   

• to shift the aim of support from anti-democratic power brokers to a democracy- and human rights-oriented civil society.

   

   

• call on ISAF and the Afghan government to reconsider the ALP-program and to

   

   

• close down those who have been correctly accused of human rights violations and try the perpetrators

   

   

• put the program on hold as long as it serves the development of new local militia who fuel a renewed Afghan civil war.

   

   

• call on Afghan authorities to reconsider cases of apparent arbitrary judicial decisions like the 20-year-verdict for Sayed Parvez Kaambakhsh (Blasphemy) or the 20-year-verdict for Ghaus Zalmai (Blasphemy).

   

   

• call on Afghan authorities not to involve Hezb-e Islami into the Afghan Government unless

   

  their leadership does not unequivocally reject violence.

   

• provide Afghan authorities with sufficient help for monitoring those institutions who are supposed to prevent human rights violations.

   

   

• reorganize women prisons in accordance with CEDAW.

   

   

• implement a special reintegration program for war- and conflict-orphans.