Afghanistan Analysts Network – English

Posts tagged: war crimes

war crimes

Investigating Post-2003 War crimes: Afghan Government wants “one more year” from the ICC

Ehsan Qaane •

The ICC Office of the Prosecutor (OTP) announced on 14 November 2016 that it would “imminently” make its final decision whether to ask the ICC Pre-Trial Chamber for authorisation to open an investigation into war crimes and crimes against humanity committed since Afghanistan signed the ICC statute in 2003. The Afghan government, however, has asked […]

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Photographs of those who disappeared in AGSA custody, placed by family members in the Puligun (Polygon) area of Pul-e Charkhi, where mass graves have been found. Families hold a ceremony every year on 10 December to remember their lost relatives (Photo: Victims’ Families Association, with permission, 2016)

Assadullah Sarwari Freed from Prison: What chances of war crimes trials in Afghanistan?

Ehsan Qaane • Sari Kouvo •

Assadullah Sarwari, one of a handful of convicted Afghan war criminals, has been released from prison in Kabul. As head of the intelligence service immediately after the 1978 communist coup d’état, he was responsible for the torture and arbitrary execution of thousands of detainees. Yet, the lack of transparency and the irregular and illegal aspects […]

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Afghan War Criminal Zardad Freed: No protection for witnesses

Kate Clark •

One of the few Afghans convicted of war crimes has been released from a British jail and deported to Afghanistan. Faryadi Sarwar Zardad, a Hezb-e Islami commander, was convicted in 2005 of hostage-taking and torture. He preyed on people fleeing the civil war in Kabul in the mid-1990s, infamously keeping a ‘human dog’, a man […]

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Afghanistan's flag hangs among the other members' flags at the International Criminal Court in The Hague. Photo: Ehsan Qaane (2016)

The ICC’s Planned Visit to Afghanistan: Crimes, capacities and the willingness to prosecute

Ehsan Qaane •

A delegation from the International Criminal Court (ICC) is planning to visit Afghanistan in 2016, but the government has hesitated about receiving it. It has established an inter-ministerial committee to ensure the Rome Statute, the treaty establishing the ICC, is finally translated into local languages and published in the official gazette so that the public […]

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A surgeon displays two bullets extracted from different patients at the MSF hospital in Kunduz before it was targeted in a US air strike on 3 October 2015. (Photo: Andrew Quilty/Oculi, from MSF website)

Clinics under fire? Health workers caught up in the Afghan conflict

Kate Clark •

Those providing health care in contested areas in Afghanistan say they are feeling under increasing pressure from all sides in the war. There have been two egregious attacks on medical facilities in the last six months: the summary execution of two patients and a carer taken from a clinic in Wardak by Afghan special forces in […]

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The main corridor of the MSF hospital in Kunduz after the 3 October airstrikes. Victor J Blue/MSF

Ripping Up the Rule Book? US investigation into the MSF hospital attack

Kate Clark •

The commander of US and NATO forces in Afghanistan, General John Campbell, has said the deadly air strike on the Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) hospital in Kunduz in the early hours of 3 October 2015 was “a direct result of avoidable human error compounded by process and equipment failures.” The US military investigation, moreover, found […]

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MSF Investigation: US hospital strike looking more like a war crime

Kate Clark •

A preliminary investigation by Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) into the United States airstrike on its hospital in Kunduz on 3 October, which killed at least 30 people, has raised some serious questions. Fresh evidence suggests statements made by US officials in the first few days after the attack were false. It also makes clear how […]

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A 36-Year Wait for Justice? Dutch arrest suspected Afghan war criminal

Kate Clark •

The Dutch police have arrested an Afghan Dutchman on suspicion of war crimes. Sadeq Alamyar has been accused of involvement in one of the worst atrocities of the Afghan war: the killing of hundreds of men and boys in the village of Kerala in Kunar province by an elite unit, on the night of 19-20 […]

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Impunity and Silence: The meagre reaction to the latest HRW report

Thomas Ruttig •

Human rights abuses in Afghanistan no longer make big waves outside the really concerned circles. Yesterday (on 3 March 2015), Human Rights Watch released a hard-hitting piece of meticulous research looking at the ease with which gross human rights violations and war crimes are still committed by the powerful in Afghanistan: “Today We Shall All […]

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From ‘Slavers’ to ‘Warlords’: Descriptions of Afghanistan’s Uzbeks in western writing

Christian Bleuer •

From the early 1800s to the present day, western writers have explored Afghanistan either in person or from a distance, their publications providing a view of Afghanistan’s governments and people to the wider audience in Europe, the United States and the west. However, this view is distorted in many ways. One noticeable case in this […]

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Five Taliban released for Sgt. Bergdahl? This is how wars end.

AAN •

Christian Science Monitor, 1 June 2014 The Monitor picks up AAN background material from 2013, on the “scant” proof available against four of the five now released Taleban prisoners on war crimes.

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A Second ‘Death List’: More on those forcibly disappeared in the civil war

P. Gossman •

After last year’s release of a ‘death list’ containing almost 5000 names of men who ‘disappeared’ in the late 1970s, another list is to be publicly available soon, this time listing 671 men who were forcibly disappeared during the civil war in Kabul in the mid-1990s. The document was put together, at the time, by […]

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