The Guardian
02/28/2007
By Conor Foley

The approval of an amnesty law covering 25 years of war crimes in Afghanistan will contradict the constitution and put the lives of British soldiers at risk.

As Britain prepares to send more troops to Afghanistan, a rally last weekend in Kabul threatens to derail the international compact surrounding the country's reconstruction.

Around 30,000 people attended a rally in the Ghazi soccer stadium, which was once used as a Taliban torture execution centre, to press President Hamid Karzai to approve an amnesty law covering 25 years of war crimes.

A bill has already been passed by both houses of Afghanistan's parliament granting an amnesty to those of its members who are accused of committing war crimes and crimes against humanity. However, Karzai has still not signed it into law as it clearly contradicts Afghanistan's own constitution and international obligations. The Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission has already condemned the proposed law for "promoting impunity".

The issues at stake are considerable and show how misguided western policy towards Afghanistan has become. The British government should take a clear position on this before any more British soldiers are asked to risk their lives in the country.

Afghanistan has become increasingly conflated with Iraq in the public mind, which makes it difficult to discuss what has gone wrong with current policy-making. One crucial distinction is that while Iraq suffered an all-out invasion, the initial US intervention in Afghanistan was restricted to air strikes and the deployment of a handful of special forces to support the Northern Alliance in their ongoing fight against the Taliban.

There were virtually no international troops in Afghanistan when the Taliban forces were routed out and the Northern Alliance forces effectively seized control of the country.

An international conference of various anti-Taliban Afghan leaders was convened in Bonn at the end of 2001. This appointed Karzai, a Pashtun, as interim President and laid down a framework for agreeing a constitution and holding elections. Afghanistan was to be bound by its international human rights obligations and it was agreed to establish a mechanism to hold perpetrators of grave violations to account.

Unfortunately, most of the international support promised never materialised. A small UN-mandated international security force was deployed but remained confined to Kabul for the first few years. Lawlessness increased and various warlords carved out local fiefdoms.

A recent report by Human Rights Watch named a number of very senior members of the current government as war criminals, including: the former minister of defence Mohammed Qasim Fahim, the former President Burhanuddin Rabbani, the minister of energy Ismail Khan, army chief of staff Abdul Rashid Dostum, and the current vice-president Karim Khalili, along with Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a warlord based in south eastern Afghanistan. All of these figures will be covered by the proposed new amnesty law, even though Hekmatyar is currently fighting alongside the Taliban.

A climate of impunity has been created in which aid workers have become regarded as "legitimate targets". Several of my friends and colleagues were murdered while I was in Afghanistan. In at least some of the attacks - the murders of five Medecins Sans Frontieres workers in June 2004, the kidnapping of three UN workers that October and the murder of Steve MacQueen in March of the following year - suspicions remain about who actually carried them out. On one occasion I was in a compound that came under mortar fire, which was almost certainly fired by a former police chief, protesting his dismissal.

This climate has also played a direct role in the revival of the Taliban, who first swept to power a decade ago on a "tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime" platform. Although my Afghan friends universally detested the Taliban, it was not uncommon to hear people contrast the stability that they established with the lawlessness that has swept the country since their demise.

The current impasse points to a systematic failure by western policy-makers to plan strategically for Afghanistan's future. The initial failure to deploy an effective international peacekeeping force and the holding of elections in a climate where warlords were bound to hijack the new parliament were entirely predictable mistakes. Allowing the amnesty bill to become law would be another triumph of short-term and cowardly expedience over principle and strategic vision. The bill is unconstitutional and should be struck down on that basis.

If the bill is enacted the British government should immediately press the UN security council to refer Afghanistan to the international criminal court. Afghanistan has ratified the court's statute and the enactment of the amnesty bill would be a clear sign that the domestic courts are unable or unwilling to prosecute perpetrators of crimes within its jurisdiction.

This move could cause some problems for the current US administration, given its hostility to the international court, but there is no other mechanism for holding perpetrators to account. If Tony Blair is reluctant to do this, he must clearly explain why British soldiers are being asked to risk their lives to defend the political careers of Afghan war criminals.