So long Geneva, hello Kandahar

Have we lost sight of the Geneva Conventions? Nyier Abdou tracks the atrocities left in the wake of Afghanistan's Northern Alliance
The Taliban prisoner revolt at Qala-i Jhangi, the 19th-century fort outside the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif, is the first glaring question mark in the US-led military engagement in Afghanistan. The current seat of power for regional warlord and Uzbek Northern Alliance (NA) commander Abdurrashid Dostum, Qala-i Jhangi entered the history books last week as the detention site where more than 400 predominantly foreign Taliban fighters decided to make their final stand. Mercilessly well-documented by the band of determined journalists at the scene, the outcome of the prison uprising is well-known. What remains a mystery is how it all began.
The incident stands out in the two-month-old war for both the sheer tenacity of the Taliban fighters involved and the scale of the bloodbath most were resolved to see through. Apparently set rolling by the killing of a NA general -- reportedly with weapons concealed during the soldiers' surrender at Kunduz -- the battle lasted a full three days, with after-shocks stretching as far as a week later. Some 2,000 NA fighters, aided by US Special Forces and the British SAS on the ground and US military planes from above, pounded the fort relentlessly until the last few men standing hunkered down in the fort's underground quarters. All manner of unsavoury methods were used to dispatch these stubborn survivors, from pouring fuel down and setting it on fire, to dropping rockets down the drainage chute, as Guardian correspondent Luke Harding reported witnessing.
By Wednesday, reporters were combing the fort, detailing the carnage that lay within. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), along with the Afghan Red Crescent Society, arrived to coordinate the removal and burial of the bodies that lay strewn throughout the site. Bernard Barrett, the ICRC spokesman in Kabul, affirmed to Al-Ahram Weekly that the operation was suspended on Thursday when it became evident that there were survivors among the dead. Some 175 bodies had been collected before an Afghan public health worker was shot and killed -- a grisly announcement of unexpected survivors. The final surprise came on Saturday, however, when a startling number of injured and exhausted detainees finally surrendered. Some 85 prisoners had survived.
It is the fate of these prisoners that will set the tone for the rest of this rapidly progressing military campaign. The London-based human rights watchdog Amnesty International (AI) has called for an immediate inquiry into the events at Qala-i Jhangi and warns that failing to do so sets an unspeakable precedent for the future of the military campaign, particularly in Kandahar. Maya Catsanis, Amnesty's spokeswoman for Asia, notes that it is crucial for the future of Afghanistan that there is an end to the "impunity" so far enjoyed by Afghan commanders. "Everyone knows that the United Front [the NA] has a poor track record on human rights, and it is no surprise that there are reports now of executions," Catsanis told the Weekly.
Speaking about prior warnings by human rights groups regarding assistance to the NA, Catsanis said that AI has not seen "any indication" that the NA's human rights record was taken into account by the US-led coalition. She added: "And given the negative response to our calls for an inquiry, it would seem that the US-led coalition is still not concerned with potential human rights violations."
The events at Qala-i Jhangi have thrown into relief the reports of other atrocities committed by Northern Alliance forces as Taliban-controlled cities began to fall across the north. Hundreds of Taliban soldiers were said to have been slaughtered after the take-over last month of Mazar-i Sharif. The fall of Mazar emboldened NA forces to take back cities in a gleeful rush, but the consequent power vacuum left locals at the mercy of warlords and even smaller-time criminals -- gangs of robbers and cutthroats who are answerable to no one, least of all international humanitarian law. Refugees fleeing to Pakistan and Iran tell horror stories of those that didn't make it and reporters entering key fallen cities found mutilated corpses of foreign Taliban fighters.
These killings, despite the obvious cruelty and breach of the so-called laws of war, made no detectable dent in the US and Britain's close cooperation with the Northern Alliance. The deaths were written off as sadly inevitable: an unfortunate circumstance of a war-torn nation with a brutal history. And because they were predicted well ahead of time, this seemed to make their actuality less shocking -- and, curiously, not worthy of investigation. With the US focused on its hunt for Osama Bin Laden and his top men, there was little time to pause for an impromptu lesson on the precepts of the 1949 Geneva Conventions, which enshrine the right to humane treatment for prisoners of war (PoWs).
As more cities fell and US and NA forces pushed south into the Pashtun heartland, the need for even more proxy forces presented itself -- local leaders familiar with the terrain and towns where NA commanders were as foreign as US Special Forces. Pashtun strongmen like Gul Agha, the feared tribal leader and former mujahid (holy warrior) who once lorded over Kandahar, are now being advised and aided by the US. "People need to be held to account for committing human rights violations, both in the past and in the current conflict," AI's Catsanis told the Weekly. She stressed that human rights abusers "cannot be trusted to lead a government" and insisted that commanders accused of war crimes should not have a say in any post- Taliban planning. "It is bad enough to ignore human rights violations in conflict, but to ignore them in considering the future of a country is effectively putting a whole population at risk," Catsanis said.
United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson joined AI's call for an inquiry last Friday in an online interview with the BBC. Robinson's endorsement is a long way away from the responses of the US and UK, who have chafed at the notion of an investigation. British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw dismissed the idea "in these difficult circumstances" as "frankly not on" and a US coalition spokesman in Islamabad rejected outright any reports of wanton killings, saying on Friday that there is "no evidence" the NA has carried out mass executions "in Mazar-i- Sharif, Kabul, Kunduz or anywhere else."
Stephanie Bunker, who heads the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) mission in Islamabad, warns that Robinson's comments to the press remain just that. "I've heard about the call for the inquiry," Bunker told the Weekly, "but I haven't seen it." Bunker suggested that the efforts to set up an inquiry could lie with agencies like AI and the ICRC, but both organisations have claimed that they could not run such an investigation. General Dostum has reportedly invited AI to conduct an inquiry, but the group has laid this responsibility at the feet of "the three parties who were responsible for what happened ... namely, the United Front, the US and the UK." If the inquiry were to go ahead, Catsanis says, "Amnesty would consider sending a forensic expert or observer, but we do not feel that AI could conduct its own inquiry."
The ICRC, as a solely humanitarian organisation, is unlikely to step into the political fray. Kabul spokesman Bernard Barrett told the Weekly that the ICRC prefers to "make any concerns it has known directly, through private discussions with the authorities concerned." He added that the ICRC maintains a policy of keeping away from any "quasi- judicial role" as such efforts could jeopardise the organisation's "primary humanitarian duty to assist and protect the victims of armed conflicts."
Asked if she thought the siege in Kunduz was a harbinger of worse to come in Kandahar, the UNDP's Bunker noted there was no way of saying, but that events in recent weeks "certainly aren't a very good sign." Bunker stressed that the NA has shown "no indication" that it can ensure law and order and emphasised that this is exactly where the UNDP is most affected. "We need safe roads," Bunker said. "We need to get in there."
Pressed on whether recent events meant a breakdown of the Geneva Conventions, Bunker again pointed to a possible inquiry, to "get to the bottom of it." When it was noted that the US and UK had brushed aside calls for an inquiry, Bunker replied: "Well, I don't know if it's a matter for them to decide." She said that the issue was in Robinson's hands, and perhaps human rights groups like AI and the New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW).
HRW has been adamant in demanding fair treatment for PoWs. Holding up article three of the Geneva Convention -- to which both the US and Afghanistan are signatories -- as the "minimum standard", HRW recommends that the UN Security Council should set up a commission to gather and analyse evidence of war crimes and crimes against humanity. A recent HRW report covering the legal issues arising from the war in Afghanistan also clearly notes that the US is "directly responsible for any forces over which it exercises effective control" -- a none-too-subtle reference to the NA.
One of the gravest problems of a possible inquiry into the Qala-i Jhangi revolt is that there is no way for human rights groups to document the situation before it is washed clean from Dostum's headquarters. There have been repeated reports that several bodies were found with their hands tied behind their backs, above the elbow. They were either executed directly or simply unable to defend themselves in the melee of the aerial bombardment and direct fire from NA, US and British troops. "Reports coming out of the fort from the beginning to end were very confusing and the sequence of events very unclear," says AI's Catsanis. "The only people who can shed light on what happened are the very people who were supposed to be in control."
Looking ahead to the battle for Kandahar, Catsanis says that it is precisely because of worries about other surrender and capture situations that the group is demanding an immediate inquiry. "Clearly, something went wrong with the surrender process in Qala-i Jhangi," Catsanis said. "The US, UK and United Front need to assess this and ensure it doesn't happen again. It is essential that all surrender and capture is conducted according to the laws of war -- the Geneva Conventions." She also noted that it was "strange" that there was such a lack of positive response to an inquiry, which "somehow looks like there is something to hide."
Recommend this page
See
WAR special pages
© Copyright Al-Ahram Weekly. All rights reserved
Send a letter to the Editor