Nato urged to investigate Afghan ‘war criminal’ employed by US
Posted: March 23, 2011 Filed under: Afghanistan | Tags: ASG, Azizullah, civilian casualties, human rights, Special Forces, war crimes Leave a commentThe head of Afghanistan’s Independent Human Rights Commission has urged Hamid Karzai’s government and Nato to investigate allegations, first reported in The Independent, that an Afghan strongman employed by United States Army Special Forces embarked on a spate of war crimes, including rape, the summary execution of children, and torture. “We call on Special Forces – indeed, any forces – and the Afghan government to conduct an investigation of these allegations and find out if [the allegations are] correct or not,” said Nader Nadery, who heads the Human Rights Commission.
He said the commission would make its own efforts to verify the claims against Commander Azizullah, the leader of a US-sponsored militia in the south-eastern Paktika province, but that “it is a core responsibility of the government of Afghanistan to launch an investigation… this is the only way to build confidence in [the country’s security] forces”. Read the rest of this entry »
Fears for foreign aid after Afghan handover of control
Posted: March 22, 2011 Filed under: Afghanistan | Tags: 2014, Afghanistan, aid, Bamian, development, Lashkar Gah, NATO, transition Leave a commentAfghans have voiced fears that aid will dry up when foreign troops are replaced by the country’s own forces later this year.
They were speaking after President Hamid Karzai announced on Tuesday that Afghan forces would take responsibility this summer for security for seven areas, including Lashkar Gah, the provincial capital of Helmand where British troops are currently deployed.
“The Afghan nation doesn’t want the defence of this country to be in the hands of others anymore,” he told hundreds of dignitaries, police and soldiers. “This is our responsibility to raise our flag with honour and pride.”
The plan will also see Afghan forces take charge of security in areas including Kabul and Panjshir provinces, Herat city in the West, Mazar-e-Sharif in the north and Methar Lam to the east of Kabul as part of the overall strategy to start bringing Nato troops home. Read the rest of this entry »
Afghanistan: ‘If he is aware of our complaints, he will find us and kill us’, say witnesses
Posted: March 18, 2011 Filed under: Afghanistan | Tags: ASG, Azizullah, civilian casualties, human rights, Special Forces, war crimes Leave a commentProper procedure would have been to detain and question the family he suspected of hosting Taliban insurgents but Azizullah did things differently, opening fire on their house with his men. Then they locked the survivors inside. And then they set the place ablaze.
This story is one of many separate alleged instances reported by interviewees during an investigation by The Independent lasting several months. Three separate reports, including two by the UN from early 2010, confirmed many of The Independent’s findings, and documented their own, separate allegations of atrocities. Read the rest of this entry »
Revealed: Afghan chief accused of campaign of terror is on US payroll
Posted: March 18, 2011 Filed under: Afghanistan | Tags: ASG, Azizullah, civilian casualties, human rights, Special Forces, war crimes Leave a commentWitnesses back leaked UN reports detailing claims of rape and murder against feared Tajik warlord
An Afghan warlord backed by US special forces faces persistent allegations that he launched a two-year spate of violence involving burglary, rape and murder of civilians, desecration of mosques and mutilation of corpses. Yet, despite repeated warnings about the atrocities Commander Azizullah is alleged to have committed, he has remained on the payroll of the US military as an “Afghan security guard”, a select band of mercenaries described by some as “the most effective fighting formation in Afghanistan”.
Interviews with religious leaders, tribal elders, villagers, contractors and Western and Afghan officials all pointed to a reign of terror in which they believe 31-year-old Azizullah, a ethnic Tajik, targeted Pashtun civilians while fighting the Taliban. Although individual allegations, all from ethnic Pashtuns, might be inaccurate, malicious or motivated by envy of Azizullah’s close and lucrative links to US special forces, taken together they come from sources belonging to a range of tribes and from several areas. The testimony also tallied with several independent reports documenting the allegations against Azizullah and seen by The Independent, including two confidential reports compiled by UN officials and circulated to Nato personnel last year. Read the rest of this entry »
Al-Qa’ida glossy advises women to cover up and marry a martyr
Posted: March 14, 2011 Filed under: Afghanistan | Tags: al-Qaeda Leave a commentNot content with launching an English-language magazine that debuted with a feature called “How to make a bomb in the kitchen of your Mom”, al Qa’ida’s media wing has followed up with a magazine for women, mixing beauty tips with lessons in jihad.
The 31-page glossy, Al-Shamikha, which translates loosely as “The Majestic Woman”, features a niqab-clad woman posing with a sub-machine gun on its cover. Read the rest of this entry »
Will the Taliban Re-Take the Most Dangerous Place in Afghanistan?
Posted: March 10, 2011 Filed under: Afghanistan | Tags: Alokozai, Sangin, Taliban Leave a commentCourageous elders have managed to broker a deal to allow some fighters to come in from the cold. But will the Taliban negate those gains as the spring approaches?
The men came for Badar Agha before dawn, opening fire on the grizzled, turbaned elder as he set out for the local mosque in January. A senior figure in the Alokozai tribe, Badar Agha’s offense was to yearn for peace in his native Sangin, a bucolic slice of farmland and river that U.S. defense secretary Robert Gates described as perhaps the most dangerous place on earth. Cutting a peace deal here is perilous business and common sense dictated that Taliban gunmen would try to kill him. Amid the snap, snap, snap of passing bullets, Badar Agha fired back with the Kalashnikov he was carrying. Though wounded, he managed to squeeze off enough rounds to put his attackers to flight.
Days later, “Badar Agha is fine and back in Sangin,” a fellow elder from his village said — and still trying to broker peace. Two local rebel commanders known to be sympathetic to a détente were less lucky. Riza Gul and Pahlawan disappeared soon after the attack on Badar Agha and are presumed dead by members of their community. “Everyone says they’ve been killed [by the Taliban],” the elder says. Individually their deaths might seem like small change in Afghanistan’s grim arithmetic. But they are significant casualties in a desperate fight-back from the Taliban as years of intrigue and skulduggery come to a head. Read the rest of this entry »
julius cavendish 