US-backed Afghan militias accused of human rights abuses

Human Rights Watch report catalogues groups acting with impunity, undermining key plank in Nato troop reduction plans US-backed Afghan militias are committing murder, rape, torture and extortion, risking increasing support for the insurgent groups they were designed to fight against, a prominent human rights group said on Monday. Militias including the Afghan Local Police (ALP) – seen as a key plank in Nato’s troop reduction plans – suffer from poor oversight, and no accountability, and are prone to act with impunity, Human Rights Watch said. The ALP programme was introduced by the former commander of foreign forces in Afghanistan, General David Petraeus, despite opposition from a sceptical President Hamid Karzai, who had it “forced down his throat like a foie gras goose”, a military official told the Guardian. One of Petraeus’s predecessors, General Dan McNeill, had rebuffed British attempts to arm militias after warning in 2008 that “there has been some good work here to get those things back in the box”. The year-old ALP scheme is the latest attempt by the Nato-led mission in Afghanistan to create local militias in areas where the country’s security forces are lacking. According to Petraeus, it was “arguably the most critical element in our effort to help Afghanistan develop the capability to secure itself”. It is supported by US special forces and overseen by the Afghan ministry of the interior and is being expanded after initial success in some areas where the local militias beat back insurgents. But Human Rights Watch’s 102-page report Just Don’t Call it a Militia, released on Monday, details how the US-funded “high risk” and “quick fix” solution has been plagued by poor design, a lack of oversight and insufficient vetting of the 7,000 recruits, some of whom are either criminal or insurgents. The US has approved funding for a further 23,000 ALP recruits. Human Rights Watch says the ALP has improved security in some areas but it has uncovered multiple examples of shocking human rights abuses that threatens to undermine its worth. In one of the worst examples of brutality, ALP militiamen detained two teenage boys on suspicion of planting roadside bombs in the district of Shindand in Herat province. An elder told Human Rights Watch: “Other elders and I went to the ALP base to collect (one of the boys). He had been beaten and nails had been hammered into his feet.” The most serious cases of abuse involve the killing and gang rape of child suspects, beatings, land grabs and the forcible collection of ushr , an informal tax. None of the cases had resulted in any action against the perpetrators, often because of the ALP’s links to powerful figures, the report says. “Patronage links to senior officials in the local security forces and the central government allow supposedly pro-government militias to terrorise local communities and operate with impunity,” said Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch. The report details the expansion of Afghan government-backed militias, which are known as arbakai , in the northern province of Kunduz that was done to “prevent a Taliban takeover”. But the district governor of Khanabad, Nizamuddin Nashir, told Human Rights Watch the groups were operating lawlessly. “They collect (taxes), take the daughters of the people, they do things against the wives of the people, they take their horses, sheep, anything,” he said. Human Rights Watch called for the disbandment of such irregular armed groups and for the US and Afghan governments to tighten vetting procedures and provide better oversight of the ALP. It also wants to ensure that allegations of abuse are investigated in accordance with the Leahy Law that forbids US military assistance to any foreign security force involved in human rights abuses for which it is not held accountable. “While there is a need for more security at the village level, the Afghan and US governments should be very careful not to repeat the mistakes of militias past,” Adams said. “If quick corrections are not made, the ALP could end up being just another militia that causes more problems than it cures.” The Nato-led International Security Assistance Force is yet to respond to the report but has previously described the ALP as successful at combating insurgents. Afghanistan US military Nato United States US foreign policy guardian.co.uk

Posted by on September 12, 2011. Filed under News, Politics, World News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.