Addressing the past

Post-Taliban Afghanistan's efforts at coming to grips with its conflict-ridden past continue to face enormous challenges, writes Negar Azimi
Following over 20 years of routine instability -- war, drought, and near ubiquitous civil strife -- a widely-touted post-Taliban Afghanistan faces uncomfortable questions surrounding its future. What exactly is to become of a past replete with injustice, and a vicious cycle of impunity? Is the Afghan case without precedent, or can past experiments in post- conflict justice be emulated within the context of the fledgling Karzai administration?
And what of a significant new trend in the realm of transitional justice -- that of a truth commission? In early March, United Nations Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson, on a visit to Kabul, recommended the creation of such a body for the war-ravaged nation. The body would investigate atrocities committed by all parties -- not exclusively the Taliban. In the meantime, December's Bonn agreement set stipulations for a preliminary Human Rights Commission to be established under United Nations auspices.
"It's not acceptable in the context of Afghanistan to look at a partial truth," Robinson told reporters in Kabul.
Although human rights literature often favours criminal prosecution as an ideal guarantee against such abuses recurring in the future, crimes against humanity carried out en masse and over an extended period, as has been the case in Afghanistan, may benefit from a deeper examination of the social climate underlying such events. A truth commission, thus, serves as an unconventional means of addressing the past; whereas criminal prosecution tends to focus on a single incident, truth commissions do not concentrate on a specific event, but rather, attempt to create an overall picture of human rights violations over a discreet period of time.
Proponents of truth commissions argue that a traumatized populace may be better equipped to move on as the collective conscience is exposed to truth. In effect, a truth commission may serve as a reflection of a nation's desire to heal. Priscilla Hayner, author of "Unspeakable Truths" and programme director for the New York-based International Centre for Transitional Justice (ICTJ), told Al-Ahram Weekly, "The act of stating the truth lifts the veil of silence and denial. It changes the nature of what happened."
Nevertheless, in a practical sense, laying oneself open to scrutiny is obviously uncomfortable. Questions are raised as to whether the Northern Alliance- dominated Karzai team is too fragile to withstand a truly probing investigation. After all, the Alliance, characterised by its own brand of vigilante justice borne of its decade-long battle with the Taliban, has much to hide. Alex Boraine, President of the ICTJ and former Deputy Chair of South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), stressed the importance of preventing destabilisation in an interview with the Weekly: "Security is fundamental today in Afghanistan and nothing should be attempted which would affect this ... we absolutely must move slowly and carefully so as to prevent further outbreaks of violence."
Many anti-Taliban leaders, such as Uzbek general Abdul Rashid Dostum, presided over atrocities; reports of mass rapes, looting, and executions date back to the mid-1990s. Meanwhile, conventional wisdom seems to dictate that the international community has swept such knowledge under the proverbial rug. It would not be the first time that the world's superpowers have hopped into bed with less than savoury characters in a bid to deal with people they assume are the lesser of two evils.
And what of impartiality? Because the Karzai team is dominated by Alliance factions, with a strong accent on those groupings emanating from the Panjshir arm of Jamiat-I-Islami, a truth commission could be abused for the purposes of consolidating political control. Indeed, without guarantees in the realm of justice, such a commission could become a virtual witch-hunt. Thus, were a commission to be created, countless questions would have to be addressed -- particularly surrounding the time period to be covered and the nature of the crimes to be investigated. Politics, it seems, would be inextricably linked to such a body's designs.
In November of last year, Robinson and others, including international human rights watchdog Amnesty International, called for a formal inquiry into the execution of hundreds of pro-Taliban prisoners at Mazar-e-Sharif -- most of whom were killed by Alliance forces. In the end, however, no inquiry materialised.
Adding to concern surrounding the possible vigilante nature of a truth commission are reports that ethnic Pashtuns returning home today are faced with threats -- more often that not bearing the brunt of a 'pay-back' targeting the since-ousted Pashtun-dominated Taliban. The American-led campaign may have left Afghanistan free of the Taliban and Al-Qa'eda, perhaps, but also awash with weapons. Armed members of anti-Taliban factions, unsurprisingly, are left far more powerful than ever before, while vendettas have assumed unprecedented proportions.
Only last week, vendettas jumped to the fore as the interim administration announced the arrest of 160 men in the capital, Kabul. The men in question, most of them hailing from the hard-line Hezb-i- Islami faction headed by former prime minister and mujahedeen commander Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, had allegedly been plotting a coup attempt. Although Afghan Foreign Minister Dr Abdullah Abdullah mysteriously played down the incident in subsequent days, it managed to raise serious questions surrounding the stability of the interim government--and the factionalism that is well and alive within the country at the moment.
All three major Northern Alliance factions -- the ethnic Uzbek Junbish party, the ethnic Tajik Jamiat party, and the ethnic Hazara Hizb-i-Wahdat party -- are implicated in offenses against Pashtun civilians, particularly in the country's north. Peter Bouckaert, senior researcher at Human Rights Watch told Al-Ahram Weekly: "America helped put these abusive warlords back in power. They provided the Afghan troops the United States needed to get rid of the Taliban and Al-Qa'eda." He continued, "Now America and its allies need to act fast to ensure that these same warlords do not destroy what has been accomplished so far."
But even if an Afghan truth commission were to materialise, it is unlikely that it would be done wholly internally as the country does not have the requisite resources to launch such an initiative. Presumably, international assistance -- what Afghan expert Ahmed Rashid has deemed the "hands-on approach" -- will be critical in providing both financial resources and technical expertise in effectively establishing such an infrastructure in Afghanistan. Nevertheless, restorative justice, carried out in this manner, would surely be less expensive than trials -- which may drag out for years on end and ultimately further demoralise an already jaded populace.
Furthermore, with the necessity to draw upon the international community's resources in establishing such a body, the question of impartiality is raised again -- would a US-funded truth commission be likely to investigate the crimes and atrocities committed by US-installed leaders against the Taliban and other factions?
Nevertheless, the creation of the interim administration provides an unprecedented opportunity to invest in human rights protections -- embedding them within neophyte political structures. Particularly in rural areas, existing law statutes are wholly inadequate to address injustices encountered during the rule of the Taliban. Village shuras, in the end, operate as only quasi-political entities. A proposed truth commission, thus, can help plug such gaping holes in the justice system.
Over 20 truth commissions have run their course since 1974, while Argentina's experiment in 1983 perhaps set the tone for what has become en vogue in the realm of transitional justice. Since then, truth commissions seem to have become the hallmark of every fledgling democracy, having played a crucial role in the reconstruction of a number of countries coming to terms with past conflict, civil strife, and massive human rights abuses; new truth commissions are now functioning or are being established in Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Panama, Bosnia- Herzegovina, the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, East Timor and Peru. In the meantime, groups and individuals in Cambodia, Colombia, Indonesia, Jamaica, Mexico, Morocco, Uganda and Zimbabwe have clamored for the establishment of truth commissions or similar bodies in their respective countries.
Though the term 'truth commission' is tossed about in standard human rights parlance, there is, in fact, nothing standard about its constitution. In fact, the concept of a truth commission is still evolving. Such commissions may come into existence as the result of negotiated peace agreements and be conducted by an international panel -- much like the 1992 Truth Commission for El Salvador -- or a result of public interest group pressure to account for past abuses, often a feature of mature democracies. Such has been the case in countries like the United States, Germany, Japan, France and Switzerland which have examined slavery, war crimes, collaboration with Nazi extermination efforts or failures to prevent human rights abuses in their own countries among other things.
Mandates also vary, as does the definition of what exactly constitutes the truth -- is it one absolute truth or a multiplicity of perspectives? Some commissions have had charters that have left countless abuses untouched. Argentina's commission, for example, focused only on "disappearances," neglecting victims of detention and torture whose method of demise had not been disappearance. Chile's commission, meanwhile, probed incidents of torture leading to death -- wholly ignoring those who were tortured and managed to survive.
Undoubtedly the most celebrated, if not controversial, truth commission to date is that of post- apartheid South Africa. The TRC, established in 1995, has heard confessions from over 7,000 perpetrators and taken roughly 20,000 statements from victims of human rights abuses committed in the apartheid era. The South African model was arguably a vast improvement over past experiments as it forced abusers to apply for amnesty and make a full disclosure of crimes committed; the TRC is the only commission that has determined the granting of amnesty on a case-by-case basis. Bouckaert told the Weekly, "In Latin America, the blanket grants of amnesty before the process even started meant that few people had an interest in appearing before the truth commissions. South Africa changed that model."
But to the extent that the TRC was helpful, it relied on a political consensus among the newly- empowered African National Congress, the previous government, and other major parties. No such consensus seems to exist or be developing among Afghanistan's factions; almost everyone's hands are dirty, and it is not likely that anyone will be eager to take a sincerity bath in public.
Despite Robinson's comments last month and Karzai's subsequent endorsement of the prospect of a truth commission, addressing Afghanistan's past will be no simple matter. Beyond gaining the requisite political will and financial resources to establish such a body, there remains the question of human nature. After all, it cannot be that easy for a country ravaged by two decades of instability to take a long, honest look in the mirror -- even if it is carried out under the banner of justice and in search of catharsis.
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