Lack of justice is driving Afghanistan's conflict and support for Taliban-led insurgents, seen as "harsh but just"
LONDON (AlertNet) – The lack of justice in Afghanistan is driving its conflict and support for the Taliban-led insurgents, seen as “harsh but just”, says a hard-hitting report released on Thursday.
The report’s publication coincided with the release of a major review of the U.S. war strategy in Afghanistan by the Obama administration. Violence is at its worst in Afghanistan since U.S.-backed Afghan forces ousted the Taliban in 2001.
Among other things, the report, No Shortcut to Stability: Justice, Politics and Insurgency in Afghanistan, criticises the Afghan government for taking policy decisions that undermine the rule of law and accountability.
These include passing an amnesty law for war criminals, issuing presidential pardons of well-connected drug smugglers, rapists and Taliban commanders, as well as moves to undermine anti-corruption and electoral monitoring bodies.
“The insurgency’s rise over the last nine years, fuelled in large part by injustice and abuse of power, requires the Afghan government and its international partners to address these issues as essential to long-term stability,” says the study’s co-author Stephen Carter, who advises British parliamentarians on Afghan issues.
The authors accuse the Afghan government and its international backers of consistently sidelining justice - Afghanistan’s “elephant in the room”.
The judiciary has been neglected until recently and the police have been built up as a paramilitary force rather than a tool to support rule of law, says the report published by London-based think-tank Chatham House. After nine years, both sectors are weak and corrupt to the point of often being actual sources of crime, it adds.
The authors quote one Afghan in the eastern province of Wardak who describes how people like him are being driven towards the Taliban.
“A district police chief was assigned by Kabul – and the police under him were robbers. They plundered and looted and raided people’s houses,” he says.
“People became angry and, to take revenge, they stood against him and his group. The Taliban used this opportunity… Our district is all Taliban now. The people support them.”
NOSTALGIA
Illegal land grabs, the political marginalisation of tribal and factional rivals and arbitrary detentions are also helping push Afghans into the arms of the Taliban, the report says.
“The Taliban have played on the deep desire of Afghans for security and rule of law, and nostalgia in some quarters for the ‘harsh but just’ period of Taliban rule – a nostalgia which exists despite the Taliban’s many abuses,” said Kate Clark, the report’s co-author and a former BBC correspondent in Kabul.
The authors say short-term military gains have been given priority over justice ever since 2001 when Washington decided to finance and arm factional militias with often poor human rights records in order to defeat the Taliban, allowing them to seize territory, control of the security forces, and the capital.
Since then the promised transition towards greater rule of law has largely failed to materialise, the authors add.
They say civilians who welcomed deployments of NATO-led troops in the hope they would limit the power of the militias have watched as the foreigners have routinely allied themselves with strongmen and consolidated their power through lucrative contracts for security and logistics.
“Justice and rule of law cannot be dismissed as just matters of morality and human rights. They are critical issues of strategic self-interest,” Carter said.
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