War Criminals Romp in Afghanistan Election

Who can look at the parody of democracy in Afghanistan these days without total cynicism? The regime of President Karzai is known to be corrupt, and to have a very shaky hold on power outside of Kabul. Now the Pashtun-ethnic President is up for reelection. To get a sense of just how craven the regime in Afghanistan is, consider one of Karzai's two vice presidential running mates, Mohammad Qasim Fahim, an ethnic Tajik warlord. Times UK described him, and other supporters of the current regime, which is of course backed by the U.S. and NATO forces:

Better known as Marshal Fahim, he is accused of murdering prisoners of war during the 1990s, and of running private armed militias, and involvement in kidnapping and other crimes after 2001.

Mr Karzai has also enlisted the support of Mohammad Mohaqiq and Karim Khalili, two former Mujahidin leaders from the Hazara ethnic minority who are also accused of multiple rights abuses.

Last week, the President won the backing of Ismail Khan, a Tajik former Mujahidin commander from the western city of Herat who has an equally poor rights record.

But perhaps eclipsing these criminals is the Uzbek strongman Abdul Rashid Dostum. The UK Times story described him as "the most notorious of Afghanistan’s warlords, regional barons who fought a bloody civil war after the Soviet withdrawal in 1989." Now he's returned from mysterious exile in Turkey, and ready to lend Karzai a hand. Again, from the UK Times article:

Like most of them, he is accused of widespread human rights abuses, including the massacre of up to 2,000 Taleban who suffocated in cargo containers in late 2001.

Obviously, Dostum and the others are not the best exemplars of democracy or representative government, nor, would I add, a very desirable alternative to the Taliban, as bad as the latter is. Such political realities call into question the very mission of the Afghan war.

This has not escaped the notice of the Obama administration. According to the Washington Post, "Karzai's reliance on regional commanders like Dostum has concerned U.S. officials and others who fear Karzai is too willing to legitimize people with poor human rights records in order to secure votes." But Washington, committed to propping up the current Afghan regime has few options, given that it won't do the one thing it should do: disengage from Afghanistan now and pull out all U.S. and NATO forces.

One group that has called for accountability on Dostum's massacres is Physicians for Human Rights. They have called for a full investigation, including the role of U.S. Special Forces, if any, in the murder of thousands of Taliban prisoners, buried in mass graves at Dasht-e-Leili. What follows is their latest press release, focusing on the return of Dostum to Kabul, to lend Karzai a hand in the election.

August 17, 2009

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Warlord General Dostum’s Return to Kabul Sparks Controversy

Rights Group Calls for Strengthening Rule of Law in Afghanistan

Cambridge, MA — In response to the return of a notorious warlord to Afghanistan from Turkey, Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) renews the call it has made repeatedly over the past seven years for a full investigation of an alleged massacre of as many as 2,000 Taliban prisoners who surrendered in November 2001 to US and Afghan forces and who are believed to be buried in the desert of Dasht-e-Leili.

On August 16, General Abdul Rashid Dostum — who is widely reported to be partly responsible for the massacre and for a subsequent cover-up — returned to Kabul to campaign for the re-election of President Hamid Karzai in the August 20 elections. It is widely reported that President Karzai has offered General Dostum a government post in exchange for his support.

"Real and lasting peace in Afghanistan will be made possible by strengthening the rule of law and ending the culture of impunity," stated PHR CEO Frank Donaghue.

"Letting General Dostum return to any position of power before there is a thorough and transparent investigation into whether or to what extent he may have been involved in the alleged 2001 massacre, will be seen by the Afghan people as confirmation that warlords like Dostum have impunity for their crimes," continued Donaghue. "General Dostum has admitted that these prisoners surrendered jointly to US special forces and to Northern Alliance troops under his command. As Physicians for Human Rights has said for 7 years since the organization's experts discovered the alleged mass grave, the site must be secured, witnesses must be protected, and Afghanistan must join the international community in probing how these prisoners died and why General Dostum and the Bush administration reportedly impeded investigation into these alleged war crimes. PHR looks forward to appropriate action from President Obama after he receives a report from his national security team, whom he ordered to gather all the facts and report to him on whether the international laws of war were violated."

"Not only is General Dostum alleged to have committed the original war crime; he is also reportedly responsible for serious tampering with evidence," stated PHR Deputy Director Susannah Sirkin. "A Physicians for Human Rights forensic expert in 2008, working under the auspices of the UN, discovered that large pits have been dug in the area of Dasht-e-Leili where bodies are suspected to be buried. Analysis of satellite images performed by the American Association for the Advancement of Science at PHR's request, shows the apparent presence of heavy earth-moving equipment at the site in August 2006. McClatchy Newspapers reported on December 11, 2008 that according to witnesses, General Dostum and his commanders "have taken all the bones and thrown them into the river." And, according to US Government documents that PHR uncovered in 2006, witnesses to this incident were "tortured, killed, or simply disappeared."

"Afghanistan must work with the international community to ensure appropriate protection of the site and any remaining physical evidence, as well as the safety of any witnesses," said Donaghue. "These would be necessary steps toward fulfilling President Obama's mandate to collect all available information about the alleged war crimes and the reported cover-up."

Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) shared the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize. PHR was founded in 1986 on the idea that health professionals, with their specialized skills, ethical commitments, and credible voices, are uniquely positioned to investigate the health consequences of human rights violations and work to stop them. PHR mobilizes health professionals to advance health, dignity and justice and promotes the right to health for all. PHR has documented the systematic use of psychological and physical torture by US personnel against detainees held at Guantánamo Bay, Abu Ghraib, Bagram airbase, and elsewhere.

PHR on NPR's Fresh Air: "A Mass Grave In Afghanistan Raises Questions"

In April 2002, Physicians for Human Rights forensic experts dug a test trench as part of a preliminary investigation for the UN at the Dasht-e-Leili mass grave site near Sheberghan, Afghanistan, and exposed 15 bodies. (Physicians for Human Rights, used by permission)

Nathaniel Raymond, Dr. Jennifer Leaning, and Dr. Nizam Peerwani of Physicians for Human Rights were interviewed on NPR's Fresh Air program earlier today. If one goes to this link, you can listen to the entire interview (33 min.). Mr. Raymond led the investigation into the alleged 2001 Dasht-e-Leili massacre in Afghanistan. In the interview, he links the issue of accountability from the crimes of U.S.-backed warlords to the years of torture practiced by the United States.

The NPR lead-in is as follows:

In 2001, shortly after the American invasion of Afghanistan, hundreds or possibly thousands of Taliban and Al Qaeda prisoners surrendered to Gen. Abdul Rashid Dostum, an Afghan warlord on the payroll of the C.I.A.

Over the course of three days, the captured prisoners were allegedly packed into shipping containers without food or water. Many suffocated, while others were reportedly shot by guards.

The mass grave has never been fully exhumed, and human rights groups allege that the Bush administration discouraged investigation of the matter, even after the urging of officials from the F.B.I., the State Department and the Red Cross.

The PHR interview comes on the heels of new questions about U.S. involvement in the massacre aired by Mark Benjamin in an article at Salon.com.

Earlier this month, Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times reporter James Risen advanced the story, revealing that the United States had resisted any war crimes investigation into the massacre, despite learning from Dell Spry, the lead FBI agent at Guantánamo Bay following the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, that many Afghan detainees were telling similar stories of a mass killing. Spry directed interviews of detainees by FBI agents at Guantánamo Bay, and compiled allegations made by the detainees.

But what the Times did not report was that many of those same detainees also alleged to Spry's interviewers that U.S. personnel were present during the massacre, a potentially explosive allegation that, if true, might further explain American resistance to a war crimes probe of the deaths. In an exclusive interview, Spry told Salon that he informed Risen about the additional allegation that U.S. forces were present. Risen confirmed to Salon that Spry told him of the allegations, but said he did not publish them, in part, because he didn't believe them.

Whatever the facts of the case, it's clear that, as PHR's Raymond points out, we don't the full story of what happened. President Obama has taken some preliminary steps by calling for his "national security team" to review the facts of the case. A full investigation is imperative. Evidence at the grave site has already been tampered with, and witnesses tortured and killed.

As Raymond said in a PHR press release late last week:

"... a full, formal and transparent investigation into the allegations against Dostum and the evidence that the Bush Administration impeded at least three federal probes into the case must be launched by the US and Afghanistan. Witnesses must be protected and the Dasht-e-Leili site must be secured.”

Donate now to help get this story out there and help bring about a full investigation.

Military Commissions -- "Broken Beyond Repair" (and other related stories)

July 9, 2009
Lt. Col. Darrel Vandeveld of the US Reserves, a former prosecutor in the Military Commissions at the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties Subcommittee of the House Committee on the Judiciary hearing on “Legal Issues Surrounding the Military Commissions System

I am here today to offer a single, straightforward message: the military commission system is broken beyond repair. Even good faith efforts at revision, such as legislation recently passed by the Senate Armed Services Committee, leave in place provisions that are illegal and unconstitutional, undermine defendants’ basic fair trial rights, create unacceptable risks of wrongful prosecution, place our men and women in uniform at risk of unfair prosecution by other nations abroad, harm the reputation of the United States, invite time consuming litigation before federal courts, and, most importantly, undermine the fundamental values of justice and liberty upon which this great country was founded....

The military commissions cannot be fixed, because their very creation — and the only reason to prefer military commissions over federal criminal courts for the Guantánamo detainees — can now be clearly seen as an artifice, a contrivance, to try to obtain prosecutions based on evidence that would not be admissible in any civilian or military prosecution anywhere in our nation.

The quote is from Andy Worthington's excellent recent posting, "Former Insider Shatters Credibility of Military Commissions". Worthington covered earlier testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee here.

Fortunately, Retired Rear Admiral John D. Hutson, who served as a Judge Advocate in the US Navy from 1973 to 2000, and was the Navy’s Judge Advocate General from 1997 to 2000, was on hand to cut through the administration’s fog, to put forward a stout defense of the abilities of the federal courts, and to deliver a withering dismissal of proposals to revive the Military Commissions (PDF).

Hutson said that although he was an “early and ardent supporter of military commissions,” the process created by the Bush administration “did not live up to the traditions” of the Uniform Code of Military Justice (the military’s own judicial system), and had become a “significant distraction for the military,” because “[p]reserving and ensuring justice in the United States is the primary mission of the Department of Justice, not the Department of Defense.”

But as a commenter on Worthington's Huffington Post article (reproduced by Andy here) noted, the SASC hearing came after language for the new military commissions law was already written.

CitizenLegislatorDC wrote:

Superb reporting, Andy.

You are absolutely right that floor debate on NEW Obama-blessed military commissions language — ALREADY PASSED by Carl Levin’s Armed Services Committee — is “imminent” in the Senate.

From Wednesday, July 8th:

“Mr. REID. I ask unanimous consent that on Monday, July 13, after the pledge, prayer, and any leader remarks, the Senate proceed to the consideration of Calendar No. 89, S. 1390, the Department of Defense Authorization bill.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.”

And from Thursday, July 9th:

“Mr. REID. …[Next] Monday, we will be in at 11 a.m. Senators Levin and McCain will begin managing the Defense Authorization bill… There are a lot of very big, important amendments on that bill.”

Perhaps Huffington Post Washington reporters (Hi, Dan Froomkin) could ask some questions:

1. WHO WROTE the complex new military commissions language? Levin’s Armed Services committee staffers, or the White House?

2. WHY was the public hearing on the new language held AFTER the committee had already adopted the language?

3. WHO will control the conference committee / negotiations merging the Senate (if its MC language remains) and House (H.R. 2647) defense bills? The President via Emanuel? Will those negotiations be secret, or publicly available?

4. WHY DID NO SENATOR OBJECT to consideration of this 2009 version of the 2006 Military Commissions Act?? Especially Pat Leahy, Chris Dodd, or Russ Feingold — who expressed disgust about the 2006 bill they ALL refused to filibuster, just before the Democrats regained Congress.

All of this comes in context recent scary statements also made at the SASC hearing (emphasis added):

The Obama administration said Tuesday it could continue to imprison non-U.S. citizens indefinitely even if they have been acquitted of terrorism charges by a U.S. military commission.

Jeh Johnson, the Defense Department's chief lawyer, told the Senate Armed Services Committee that releasing a detainee who has been tried and found not guilty was a policy decision that officials would make based on their estimate of whether the prisoner posed a future threat.

Recent statements by Obama administration officials or their surrogates, and by Obama himself, indicate that a turn for more real transparency and accountability may be in the offing. The most promising of such turnarounds comes from Obama himself, on the investigation of the Dasht-e-Leili massacre. A Newsweek article, and a piece by Scott Horton at the Daily Beast, maintain that Attorney General Holder is leaning towards prosecutions over torture. Already there are analysts pouring over what Holder might choose to investigate.

Besides the Obama statement, which represents a turnaround for official U.S. government policy on a single investigation, we are getting very mixed signals from the Obama administration. The next period will be one of accelerated struggle over the fight for accountability and justice, and against torture and a war-inclined military. Unreported here by me is also a struggle over economic justice, as the country sinks ever deeper into economic depression. At some point, these two struggles must link up, and then major change in this country will be in the offing.

War Crimes and the White House

The video below -- "War Crimes and the White House: The Bush Administration's Cover-Up of the Dasht-e Leili Massacre" -- was produced by Physicians for Human Rights, who have been campaigning for an investigation into alleged war crimes by a U.S.-linked warlord in Afghanistan. The U.S. government has impeded three (or more) investigations into the massacre of up to 2,000 surrendered Taliban soldiers, buried in mass graves at Dasht-e-Leili.

Transcript to video

Outrage: U.S. Covers Up Major Afghan War Crime

James Risen has an article at the New York Times about the long-time cover-up by U.S. officials during the Bush Administration to block any investigation into Dasht-e-Leili massacre. In November 2001, US military and intelligence personnel were operating jointly in northern Afghanistan when U.S. backed warlord Gen. Dostum had up to 2,000 surrendered Taliban fighters locked into metal containers and suffocated to death.

From Risen's article (emphasis added)

American officials had been reluctant to pursue an investigation — sought by officials from the F.B.I., the State Department, the Red Cross and human rights groups — because the warlord, Gen. Abdul Rashid Dostum, was on the payroll of the C.I.A., and his militia worked closely with United States Special Forces in 2001, several officials said. They said the United States also worried about undermining the American-supported government of President Hamid Karzai, in which General Dostum had served as a defense official....

The question of culpability for the prisoner deaths — which may have been the most significant war crime in Afghanistan after the 2001 American-led invasion — has taken on new urgency since the general, an important ally of Mr. Karzai, was reinstated to his government post last month.

Apparently, the Obama administration has quietly tried to dissuade the Karzai government from allowing Dostum back into office, but without success.

Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) has issued a call for a criminal probe, citing new evidence that the Bush Administration impeded at least three federal investigations into alleged war crimes in Afghanistan in 2002. It is also calling for Attorney General Eric Holder "to investigate why the Bush Administration impeded an FBI criminal probe of the alleged Dasht-e-Leili massacre."

Physicians for Human Rights, which shared the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize, first documented the existence of the alleged mass grave in January 2002 and since then:

-- Advocated for witnesses to be protected, the mass grave site to be secured, and for a full and impartial investigation;

-- Conducted preliminary forensic investigations — including exposing 15 remains and conducting three autopsies — under UN auspices at Dasht-e-Leili;

-- Successfully sued for compliance with a PHR Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for the release of US government documents that reveal US intelligence knowledge of the magnitude of the alleged crime and awareness of the execution and torture of witnesses to the incidents;

-- Helped identify the US chain of command likely responsible for impeding federal investigations into the alleged massacre;

-- Discovered and reported on alleged tampering of the site; and

-- Requested satellite image analysis by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) that appears to demonstrate that tampering occurred soon after PHR filed its FOIA request in June 2006.

In a late breaking news report by AP, the Obama administration has lamely said it does not have jurisdiction to investigate the crime. This is total bullshit. As PHR put it in a press release late Friday (emphasis added):

“For US Government officials to claim that there is no legal basis to investigate this well-documented mass atrocity is absurd,” stated Physicians for Human Rights Deputy Director Susannah Sirkin. “US military and intelligence personnel were operating jointly and accepted the surrender of the prisoners jointly with General Dostum’s forces in northern Afghanistan. The Obama Administration has a legal obligation to determine what US officials knew, where US personnel were, what involvement they had, and the actions of US allies during and after the massacre. These questions, nearly eight years later, remain unanswered.”

“Furthermore,” added Nathaniel Raymond, PHR’s lead researcher on the Dasht-e-Leili case, “The New York Times has shown that the Bush Administration engaged in a coordinated effort to prevent this alleged war crime from ever being investigated. Under the Geneva Conventions, the cover-up of a war crime can itself constitute a war crime.”

PHR has a timeline of the investigation, and has posted an appeal to sign a petition to Attorney General Eric Holder to "let the FBI finally proceed with a fair and impartial investigation."

As Nathaniel Raymond, PHR’s lead researcher on Dasht-e-Leili, put it:

“The Bush Administration’s disregard for the rule of law and the Geneva Conventions led to torture of prisoners in Guantánamo and many other secret places.... Contrary to the legal opinions of the previous Department of Justice, the principles of the Geneva Conventions are non-negotiable, as is their enforcement. President Obama must open a full and transparent criminal probe and prosecute any US officials found to have broken the law.”

Last December, writing on the revelations surrounding the destruction of mass grave sites in Afghanistan associated with the Dasht-e-Leili massacre (from a McClatchy papers report), I wrote:

... I can't believe that NATO or U.S. forces will work strenuously to investigate war atrocities, especially as atrocities continue in the U.S.-backed military occupation of the country, and put zero faith in either NATO or the U.S.'s ability to conduct such an impartial investigation....

An international investigatory commission, independent of any government, and staffed by human rights representatives and other trusted citizens, including what representatives from the victims' families, in all the countries involved, perhaps sponsored by the UN or the ICC, should be formed to prosecute these kinds of cases, as the governments involved are too compromised. In the meantime, the work of PHR's forensic department, and the organization as a whole, deserves your support.

PHR: US Silent About Destruction of Mass Graves in Afghanistan

From a 12/11/08 story by Tom Lasseter at McClatchy Newspapers on the destruction of evidence of war crimes by a major U.S. ally in Afghanistan:

DASHT-E LEILI, Afghanistan — Seven years ago, a convoy of container trucks rumbled across northern Afghanistan loaded with a human cargo of suspected Taliban and al Qaida members who'd surrendered to Gen. Abdul Rashid Dostum, an Afghan warlord and a key U.S. ally in ousting the Taliban regime.

When the trucks arrived at a prison in the town of Sheberghan, near Dostum's headquarters, they were filled with corpses. Most of the prisoners had suffocated, and others had been killed by bullets that Dostum's militiamen had fired into the metal containers.

Dostum's men dumped around 2000 corpses into mass graves. Someone came by with bulldozers earlier this year and moved many of these corpses to some other site unknown, leaving "gaping pits in the sands of the Dasht-e-Leili desert" where once mass graves had been. Lasseter continues:

NATO — which has command authority over a team of troops less than three miles from the grave site — the United Nations and the United States have been silent about the destruction of evidence of Dostum's alleged war crimes.

Why the silence? Lasseter says there is speculation that Dostum, an ally of the U.S., who worked with Special Forces and the CIA during the time of the prisoner killings, is getting a "free pass" from Washington. U.S. government sources plead ignorance, while some at the UN admit they've turned to look the other way. A UN spokesperson explained:

"It's a judgment call we constantly strive to get right, and this is not the only instance where the choices we have to make can be extraordinarily tough ones."

Physicians for Human Rights' International Forensic examined the site for the UN in 2002. No one has directly implicated U.S. forces in the original deaths, but Special Forces units were certainly operating in the area. From the 2002 Newsweek article, "The Death Convoy of Afghanistan":

Over the three days that the first convoys of dead were arriving at Sheberghan, Special Forces troops were in the area. There was also a separate, four-man U.S. intelligence team, in combat gear, at the prison doing first selections of Qaeda suspects for further questioning. According to Pelton, a swashbuckling freelancer who specializes in writing about dangerous places, Special Forces soldiers were mainly concerned about security at the prison. At the same time the containers of dead were arriving, many truckloads of living prisoners were also streaming in: On the evening of Dec. 1, for instance, a container arrived bearing the 86 survivors from Qala Jangi. One of them was John Walker Lindh. It was the 595 team's medic, Bill, who first treated Lindh. Pelton believed at the time, and still does, that the dead from container trucks numbered "40-some odd" and were mostly people who died of wounds suffered in the siege of Konduz. "When I was with 595, we went over this time and again," says Pelton. "What happened is that these people basically died because they were wounded." A senior Defense Department official, speaking to NEWSWEEK on background, said the Pentagon asked the commander of the Fifth Special Forces Group to look into the reports of container deaths. That commander, Col. John Mulholland, reported back that the A-team knew that numbers, perhaps even large numbers, of Taliban prisoners had died on the journey to Sheberghan. But the Special Forces believed that these deaths had occurred from wounds or disease.

PHR is asking NATO to use their forces to help Afghan forces in protecting the mass grave site, so that no more evidence is destroyed, and to assist U.S., UN, and Afghan investigators. They have a web page dedicated to the the Dasht-e-Leili War Crimes Investigation.

While I can't believe that NATO or U.S. forces will work strenuously to investigate war atrocities, especially as atrocities continue in the U.S.-backed military occupation of the country, and put zero faith in either NATO or the U.S.'s ability to conduct such an impartial investigation. One wonders if the silence of the actors who knew about these crimes, and of their cover-up, are not guilty as a result of war crimes themselves, i.e., covering up a war crime is a war crime.

While critical of PHR on this point, I can totally solidarize with their CEO Frank Donaghue's statement on the situation last Monday:

As PHR knows from our work in Bosnia, Rwanda, Central America and elsewhere, communities that have lost loved ones in mass killings — especially the mothers, siblings, and children of victims — have a right to the truth and to justice, including identification and return of remains. The demands of mothers and families demonstrating in the streets of Kabul over the last few days show that the Afghan people are demanding that those who have committed mass atrocities be held accountable. Peace and stability require truth and justice; it never pays to ignore mass graves and the atrocities associated with them.

An international investigatory commission, independent of any government, and staffed by human rights representatives and other trusted citizens, including what representatives from the victims' families, in all the countries involved, perhaps sponsored by the UN or the ICC, should be formed to prosecute these kinds of cases, as the governments involved are too compromised. In the meantime, the work of PHR's forensic department, and the organization as a whole, deserves your support.