Will the real Taliban stand up?

It looks like the Bush administration’s claims to have eliminated the Taliban threat in Afghanistan were a bit premature. An attack on the mayor’s office in Kandahar and a foiled car bomb in Herat represent “an increase in militant activity in the south and east” (BBC) of the country and show that the Taliban are still alive and kicking.

But that isn’t the bad news. The bad news is that even if the movement of “religio-fascists” whose members call themselves Taliban was completely obliterated, the alternative presented to the Afghan people by the United States is not much better. A “local religious scholar” in Badakhshan province just had a woman stoned to death for adultery, something which brought gasps of horror in the West when the Taliban did it. And those who might say that this is confined to a few backward local districts should think about Fazl-e Hadi Shinwari. Shinwari, US-backed Chief Justice of the Afghan Supreme Court, has made very clear that the punishment for adultery is death by stoning. Fundamentalist fanatics and warlords still populate much of the central and provincial governments, often on the advice of the US ambassador, Zalmay Khalilzad. He praised President Hamid Karzai’s choice to work with fundamentalists as “wise…this co-optation in exchange for cooperation on critical issues is a reasonable option”.

Then of course there are the US troops. While their footprint in Afghanistan is a lot smaller than that in Iraq (18,000 vs 150,000 troops), for those in contact with US forces, the interaction is just as painful. The difference between the US and the Taliban is that the US can eliminate its international critics. One such critic is Cherif Bassiouni. the UN’s “independent expert on human rights in Afghanistan,” who submitted to the the recent meeting of the UN Commission for Human Rights a report on human rights abuses in the country. Bassiouni’s report described

continuing violations including: repressive acts by factional commanders; arbitrary arrest and other violations by State security forces, including intelligence entities; unregulated activities of private security contractors; severe threats to human rights posed by the expanding illegal drug industry; sub-standard conditions in prisons; egregious violations of women s rights by the State…; and arbitrary arrest, illegal detentions and abuses committed by the United States-led Coalition forces.of prisoners by the US military. [emphasis added]

In the category of US military abuses of prisoners, Bassiouni included:

forced entry into homes, arrest and detention of nationals and foreigners without legal authority or judicial review,…, forced nudity, hooding and sensory deprivation, sleep and food deprivation, forced squatting and standing for long periods of time in stress positions, sexual abuse, beatings, torture, and use of force resulting in death.

Some of US actions “fall under the internationally accepted definition of torture.” The US troops, according to Bassiouni, “undermine the national project of establishing a legal basis for the use of force.” Anybody who knows about the history of Afghanistan over the past 25 years will appreciate the difficulty of that project. Bassiouni’s conclusion: “the Coalition forces’ practice of placing themselves above and beyond the reach of the law must come to an end.”

The US response? Our delegate to the Human Rights Commission pressured the UN to fire Bassiouni. Well, actually, he advised the UN to eliminate the independent expert’s post, because “the human-rights situation in Afghanistan is no longer troubling enough to require it,” as reported by wire services. So an execution by stoning does not count as “troubling.” The UN, given an ultimatum by its paymaster, had no choice but to get rid of Bassiouni’s post. The US delegate, without responding to the charges levied by the report, went on to attack Bassiouni, accusing him of “grandstanding ‘to bolster his résumé’.” I can think of a lot less “courageous” ways for a UN official to fill his CV than criticizing the US.

-jim