US-supported Afghan militias are committing widespread human rights abuses, but neither Washington or Kabul are holding them accountable or changing policy in light of the crimes, according to a new Human Rights Watch report.
The report “documents serious abuses, such as killings, rape, arbitrary detention, abductions, forcible land grabs, and illegal raids by irregular armed groups in northern Kunduz province and the Afghan Local Police (ALP).” The governments of the United States and of Afghanistan have not only failed to hold these forces to account, but they have fostered future abuses and generated more support for the Taliban and the insurgency, the report finds.
The ALP was created in July 2010, intended by US strategy to supplement the Afghan national army at the community and village level in the lead up to the drawdown of US occupation forces. This one force is approximately 7,000 strong across Afghanistan, although plans are underway to arm and train up to 30,000.
In March 2011, General Petraeus told the US Senate that the ALP is “arguably the most critical element in our effort to help Afghanistan develop the capacity to secure itself.” Yet the ALP, along with various other longstanding US-supported militias, are committing severe crimes and helping to drive the insurgency.
The ALP has been accused of “beating teenage boys and hammering nails into the feet of one boy,” although no arrests were made. “In April,” the report documents, “four armed ALP members in Baghlan abducted a 13-year-old boy on his way home from the bazaar and took him to the house of an ALP sub-commander, where he was gang raped.” The perpetrators are well known, but no arrests have been made.
The ALP has raided several houses, stolen personal belongings, beat residents, and illegally detained six men. Like in the other cases though, no arrests or investigations have been initiated because of the militias’ patronage links to senior Afghan officials.
The Obama administration’s policy to surge and then announce a gradual withdrawal out of at least some areas of Afghanistan was said to be based on providing security and winning hearts and minds. But their own security forces are abusive thugs that deteriorate the security situation. And Afghan hearts and minds are leaning far, far away from US forces.
This is empire, brutal imperialism in its finest hour. This is Empire USA, what it was created to do and the only thing possible that it can do.
Abolish it or live with it, but be not so dense as to think you can change it.
Nine US dead in three days in Afghanistan. From Thursday the 8th through Saturday the 10th of September nine more US soldiers died in various IED small arms fire attacks throughout southern and eastern Afghanistan. Four more US soldiers died in Kandahar during that period continuing a string of US losses in Kandahar province that began in the last week of August 2011 when13 US soldiers died in that week alone.
Three US soldiers died of small arms fire in Paktia on Friday. The three, like most US Afghan victims, were very young men ranging in age between 21 and 26.
This is topical of what happen in a long term occupation.
We the US are good at allot of things, occupation is just not one of them. It seems that most of the places we occupy gets trashed. Even close to home in places that are somewhat simple and isolated like Haiti. The US occupied Haiti for 30 years and what happened, poorest state in the hemisphere. Why not stick with the things we do well? We just make people's lives more miserable when we occupy.
Our AID programs when not directed mainly to the military have done rather well at building good will. A penny wise.
Some point to Japan and Germany as examples of the positive effects of US occupation. I do not think that anyone who has their head screwed on correctly would compare them to Afghanistan and Iraq.
Yes, yes, yes.
Check, check, check.
Where is the news here? And is somebody going to row a pair of balls and do something about it?
Most of the Afgan that I know say that the Talaban came about as a result of reaction to this type of behavior (rape human rights abuse etc back in the 80s) It seems that it is this behavior itself that makes the Taliban strong. .
the same in Libya:
NATO- rebels provided ethnic "cleansing" of the complete town of Tawerga with 10,000 inhabitans !
And the world ignores this ! Look how intelligently the newspaper telegraph does manipulate this ethnic cleansing in the title of the article !
See: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindia...
Extract: officer in charge of the rebel garrison in Tawarga: "We said if they didn't go, they would be conquered and imprisoned. Every single one of them has left, and we will never allow them to come back."