Doubts grow over Afghan war crimes amnesty

Doubts grow over Afghan war crimes amnesty
By Aunohita Mojumdar in Kabul
Published: February 12 2007 19:50 Last updated: February 12 2007 19:50
Haji Safar still remembers vividly the day in 1993 that his 19-year-old son was gunned down in fighting between rival mujahideen groups in the area of western Kabul where he lives and works. He also remembers who was responsible for the fighting.
Abdul al-Rasul Sayyaf and his Ittihad-e-Islami faction “was located in that area,” Mr Safar says, as he points down a road in his neighbourhood. “[Former Afghan President Burhanuddin] Rabbani and Rabbani’s Shura-e Nazar [were] rocketing from that mountain.”
In a newly democratic Afghanistan both factions are now members of parliament. They were also part of a group which on January 31 successfully pushed legislation granting immunity from prosecution to “all people involved in the conflict of the past two-and-a-half decades” through the lower house of the Afghan parliament, the Wolesi Jirga.
The proposed amnesty would also be offered to any anti-government forces now fighting Nato and Afghan troops, as long as they joined a process of reconciliation.
To the normally soft-spoken Haji Safar, the two MPs and others responsible for Afghanistan’s lost decades of violence deserve not amnesty, but death. “I would not just like to see them die. I want them to be hanged more than 10 times,” he says.
The memories of the past 30 years remain fresh for many Afghans, and critics say if the amnesty becomes law it is unlikely that millions of Afghans will ever get a sense of closure. Rough-and-ready retribution may instead become the way to settle decades-old scores.
“The voices of the victims must be heard – and they have spoken out clearly for the culture of impunity in Afghanistan to end,” Louise Arbour, UN Commissioner for Human Rights, said soon after the amnesty resolution was passed by the Wolesi Jirga.
“Experience has shown time and again that effective and durable national reconciliation must be based on respect for international human rights standards and the rule of law, and must not come at their expense.”
Western officials say the resolution’s passing appears to have been a pre-emptive move aimed at averting growing pressure from both inside and outside Afghanistan for the prosecution of war crimes.
A plan endorsed in December by President Hamid Karzai would have seen any war crimes or gross human rights violations prosecuted, and a recent Human Rights Watch report identified a number of Jihadi leaders implicated in past war crimes who were occupying key positions in the government and legislature.
Shukria Barakzai, one of a small minority of MPs who opposed the resolution, calls its passage “a sign of growing extremism and a big threat for democracy, for human rights and for the future of this country”.
The issue has also highlighted the problems underlying the efforts to rush a parliament into being following the US-led 2001 ousting of the Taliban.
The result, critics say, has been a body dominated by a minority of warlords who wield power far disproportionate to their standing with the electorate.
Human rights activists initially dismissed the charter which passed the parliament as a non-binding resolution with no legal standing. Now they say it appears to be a draft law which will be presented to the upper house.
A group of MPs opposed to an amnesty is trying to challenge the resolution’s constitutionality. President Karzai, who would have to sign the legislation into law, has declined to take a position and asked for legal advice, although any presidential veto could be overridden by a two-thirds majority in the lower house.
The position before international law is also unclear. UN officials insist the UN cannot be party to a blanket amnesty and that it would violate Afghanistan’s obligations to international law. However, supporters in the Afghan parliament cite examples such as South Africa as models for granting an amnesty.
“The principle of amnesty in itself is not a bad one,” points out one western observer. “What is problematic is the process which has led to it.”
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007