Human Rights Watch has recently published a worrisome report on the issue of human rights in Western Province of Herat in Afghanistan. The 51-page report points at widespread abuses committed by the military, police, and intelligence services in Herat that is administered by Ismail Khan a veteran freedom fighter during the Russian occupation of Afghanistan and now a self-styled governor of Herat. The report is titled: "All Our Hopes are Crushed, Violence and Repression in Western Afghanistan."

"The abuses include arbitrary and politically-motivated arrests, intimidation, extortion and torture as well as serious violations of the rights to free expression and association," says the report.

The report further makes an effort to explain the roles of the United Nations and the United States military in the post-taleban Afghanistan. It also points at the contradiction of expressed purpose by the United States of helping the central government, but delivering of military aid to the warlords in the periphery. It further notes the important task of the UN and its special representative, Mr. Brahimi, in playing a much needed role in devising methods to curb these abuses and the unavailability of a clear cut program by either.

It has been widely reported that after the toppling down of the Taleban regime, the advancing northern alliance forces treating all Pushtun residents in the norther side of Hindukush including the permanent residents of villages and townships, as Taleban, and committed widespread looting, killing and other abuses against them. Many of these abuses have even been photographed and filmed and these might be available as evidence. This is not to say that the non-Pushtoon population had not suffered abuses in the hands of the Taleban. But the fact is that from a post-Taleban administration more civil conduct was expected. The international community that supported the selection of Karzai to lead the interim government in Afghanistan declared its readiness to help bring warlordism in Afghanistan to an end because it was mainly the warlords, their gunmen and guns that readily abused their power and committed widespread abuses of human rights. The co-author of the report and a researcher in the Asia Division of Human Rights Watch, John Sifton writes:

“The international community says it wants to reduce the power of the warlords and bring law and order back to Afghanistan, but in Herat, it has done exactly the opposite. The friend of the international community in western Afghanistan is an enemy of human rights.”

Ismail Khan has personally ordered some of the politically motivated arrests and beatings, which have taken place throughout 2002. The Human Rights Watch report documents beatings with thorny branches, sticks, cables, and rifle butts. The most serious cases of torture involved hanging detainees upside down, whipping and using electric shocks. Members of the Pashtun minority have been specially targeted for abuse.

Human Rights Watch noted that both the U.S. and Iranian militaries have a presence in the area, regularly meet with Ismail Khan and members of his government, and have previously given military and financial assistance to Ismail Khan and other commanders allied with him. The president of Iran, Hojatoleslam Mohammad Khatami, and Donald Rusmfeld the US Secretary of Defense, both have also visited Khan.

“The United States and Iran have a great deal of influence over Ismail Khan,” said Sifton. “They put him where he is today. They now have a responsibility to make him clean up his act.” The report further recommends and expansion of the International and Security Assistance force of the United Nations beyond Kabul to balance the presently monopolized hold on military power by warlords in the provinces.

Although the report does not talk specifically about other warlords elsewhere in the country it should be remembered that the situation in other provinces aren't any better. As this column has repeatedly pointed out, presently autonomous governors, wrongly calling themselves semiautonomous rule the country following their own rules and self made laws. The weapons in their possession and the weapons that have admittedly given them by the UN military after they confiscate caches from the country are unfortunately used for the purposes of strengthening warlordism and enhancing human rights violations by them. Furthermore, the situation has kept the central administration of Karzai weak and ineffective. The expressed objective of both the UN and the US in Afghanistan is to help bring law and order and security to Afghanistan. Inadvertently, however, neither has focused effectively on the issue.

The situation is grave in that recent news reports talk about efforts by former Mujahideen groupings led by figures such as Professor Rabbani and Rasul Sayaf to establish coalitions where their forces would be united in order to grasp further political power and continue in the negative tradition of warlordism or direct the country towards extremism.

Recent reports indicate that their still is a great need to safeguard women's rights. A woman Afghan Judge, Ms. Basil, was reported to have been dismissed because he had posed in a picture of Afghan women with the United States President and his wife. In that picture, Ms. Basil did not have her scarf on her head.

Establishment of a truly national army for Afghanistan has been named by some observers as one of the solutions for maintaining of the rule of law in the country and preventing abuses by tyrannical warlords and local leaders who have unfortunately continued to hold power in spite of a central government elected by the people. But the Human Rights Watch report says it would take a very long time to create the national army.

Afghanistan needs quick and effective solutions which might be found in withdrawal of military support to warlords by the United States and political support to the central government to devise plans in the removing of warlordism from Afghanistan, once and for all. 11/02/02 .