"Climate
of fear" rules Afghanistan
Reuters,
April 22, 2003
By Robert Evans
GENEVA - Warlords terrorise the population with a "climate of
fear" and religious fundamentalism is rising in Afghanistan 18 months
after U.S. forces toppled the ruling Taliban regime, a rights watchdog says.
Even the opening of schools and colleges for women -- a widely hailed product
of the collapse of the Taliban in late 2001 when U.S. troops entered the
country -- was also under threat, New York-based Human Rights Watch said.
"The international community has allowed warlords and local
military commanders to take control of much of the country," its
representative Loubna Freih told the U.N. Human Rights Commission, now ending
its annual six-week session in Geneva.
She said that instead of providing security, the warlords were
terrorising the local population in many parts of the country, with
kidnappings, arbitrary arrests, armed robbery, extortion and beatings
widespread.
Freih said the warlords had in some places maintained law and
order "by creating a climate of fear, not unlike under the
Taliban..."
Political opponents, journalists and ordinary Afghans "are
attacked and intimidated into silence," she added.
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The United Nations
Assistance Mission for Afghanistan (UNAMA) and the Afghan Independent Human
Rights Commission (AIHRC) has announced that serious human rights violations
had taken place in Bala Morghab District in the northwestern province of
Badghis. "According to reports,
during the recent conflict in Akazayi village, 38 civilians died, while 761
homes and 21 shops were looted," David Singh, a media relations officer
for UNAMA, told Integrated Regional Information Network in the Afghan
capital, Kabul. |
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NNI, April 22,
2003 |
An Afghan regional commander said on Tuesday the Afghan government
needed to take courageous action against unruly warlords if it was to extend
its rule around the country. He said the government's authority did not extend
much beyond the capital, Kabul.
Soldiers and police -- who were to have been retrained by U.S. and
other troops involved in an international security force also largely limited
to the capital -- "regularly abduct and rape women, girls and boys,"
Freih said.
GIRLS' EDUCATION AT RISK
"Religious fundamentalism is on the rise, with new
restrictions on freedom of expression and movement of women and girls. Gains in
education are now at risk as many parents, afraid of attacks by troops and
other gunmen, keep their daughters out of school," she said.
Under the hardline Islamic Taliban, women and girls were largely
restricted to their homes and were only allowed out if fully veiled and in the
company of a male relative.
Washington sent troops into Afghanistan to try to destroy the
Taliban which was accused of harbouring Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network. The
United States blames bin Laden and al Qaeda for the September 11 attacks.
The Bush administration hailed education for women as one of the
successes of the operation.
There are some 11,000 U.S. and allied troops still in Afghanistan,
many hunting Taliban leaders and members of al Qaeda. Bin Laden and Taliban
chief Mullah Omar are still at large.
The U.N. Human Rights Commission is considering proposals to
replace its current investigator who has a special mandate to look into the
rights situation in Afghanistan with a "special expert" whose mandate
would be much less clearly defined.
Sources close to the commission say the United States has been
opposed to any resolution at all on Afghanistan this year as well as to
creation by the U.N. body of an international commission of inquiry into past
rights abuses in the country.
In her speech, Freih said creation of such a commission was
"crucial in establishing the rule of law". Without it, efforts to
break a "cycle of impunity and the stranglehold of gunmen are unlikely to
succeed," she added.
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