Afghanistan’s Dirty War: Why the Most Feared Man in Bermal District Is a U.S. Ally
Posted: October 4, 2011 Filed under: Afghanistan | Tags: ASG, Azizullah, human rights, mercenaries, militias, paktika 1 Comment
Commander Azizullah, Sept 23, 2010 | U.S. Army photo by Sgt Justin P Morelli
So-called Afghan security guards have become essential to what NATO calls security in parts of the country. The local populace, however, is terrified
On Nov. 30, 2009, in the shadow of mountains that crumple up 9,000-ft. ridges, an Afghan mercenary bankrolled by the U.S. military and hell-bent on the destruction of Taliban rebels allegedly stopped three men heading home to celebrate ‘Id al-Adha with their families. According to an elder from Bermal, the Afghan district where the incident took place, Commander Azizullah and his men bound their hands. Then, the elder told TIME, Azizullah drew his pistol and shot them. There was no evidence that these men were insurgents, the elder says. “But he killed them anyway.” Read the rest of this entry »
Militias funded by US accused of rights abuses
Posted: September 13, 2011 Filed under: Afghanistan | Tags: ASG, Azizullah, human rights, militias, paktika, war crimes Leave a commentMilitias in Afghanistan funded by the United States are terrorising the communities they were supposed to protect, murdering, raping and torturing civilians, including children, extorting illegal taxes and smuggling contraband, according to a damning new report from Human Rights Watch.
In a 102-page report entitled ‘Just Don’t Call It a Militia’ the group documents how the Afghan government and the U.S. military have provided guns and money to paramilitary groups without adequate oversight or accountability. Because of their links to senior Afghan officials, many of these groups operate with impunity.
Their behaviour fuels support for the Taliban, and creates insecurity rather than decreasing it. But, under U.S. General David Petraeus, who recently left Afghanistan to head up the Central Intelligence Agency, Nato aggressively pursued a strategy of raising militias as a security quick-fix ahead of its departure in 2014. Read the rest of this entry »
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 »
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 »
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