International Criminal Court spurs new calls for justice

A day after the birth of the International Criminal Court (ICC), Afghans told IRIN they wanted investigations into gross human rights abuses as part of the nation-building process. "We need an independent body in Afghanistan to start compiling a list of the worst human rights abusers followed by an effective judicial process," a member of the Loya Jirga (grand council) commission who wished to remain anonymous fearing reprisals, told IRIN on Friday. The ICC came into being on Thursday after 10 nations ratified the Rome statute of 1998, the treaty establishing the court in principle. They took the number of ratifying countries well beyond the 60 needed to put the treaty into effect. Speaking in New York, Hans Correll, UN under secretary general, said: "A page in the history of humankind is being turned. May all this serve our society well in the years to come." The court will have its own prosecutor and 18 judges and will have jurisdiction over genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes committed after 1 July this year. "We know the ICC is not retrospective, so most of the [Afghan] war criminals cannot go to The Hague [where the ICC will be located] but it shows there is now a new international culture of human rights and we want that built-in to Afghanistan," a senior aid worker told IRIN in Kabul, the Afghan capital. Richard Dicker, director of the international justice programme at the UK-based NGO Human Rights Watch (HRW), said he believed up to 100 countries would ratify by early next year. "The International Criminal Court is potentially the most important human rights institution created in 50 years. It will be the court where the Saddam Husseins, Pol Pots and Augusto Pinochets of the future are held to account," he told IRIN from London. His comments came as the United Nations in Afghanistan confirmed the existence of mass graves near Bamiyan in the centre of the country. "The remains of at least four persons have been distinguished, and there are strong indications of some quantity of others yet to be uncovered. There are indications of other similar sites, yet to be investigated, elsewhere in the region," Manoel de Almeida e Silva, Spokesman for the Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Afghanistan told a press conference in Kabul on Thursday. On Tuesday Human Rights Watch (HRW) released another report highlighting ongoing human rights abuses in Afghanistan. The report said targeted violence and looting by ethnic militias had uprooted Pashtun communities across northern Afghanistan. The report added that the displacement and insecurity could undermine the Loya Jirga process, which begins at district level on Saturday and will lead in June to the selection of a new government for a two-year transitional period. The 56-page report, Paying for the Taliban's Crimes: Abuses Against Ethnic Pashtuns in Northern Afghanistan, documents cases of summary executions, beatings, sexual violence, abductions, and looting that have been committed since November 2001, when non-Pashtun Northern Alliance (NA)forces regained power in the north. Pashtun communities are associated with the largely-Pashtun former Taliban regime that was ousted by the US-led coalition late last year and is itself accused of numerous gross human rights violations. The report is based on four weeks of interviews with villagers, community leaders, and international observers in northern Afghanistan. An earlier HRW report documented two massacres allegedly committed by Taliban forces in the central highlands of Afghanistan, in January 2001 and May 2000. In both cases the victims were primarily Hazaras, a Shia Muslim ethnic group that had been the target of previous massacres and other serious human rights violations by Taliban forces. The report said that at least 200 men had been executed and thrown into shallow graves. The long list of human rights abuses - committed by all sides in the twenty-year Afghan conflict - highlights the difficulties of bringing perpetrators to justice, even if sufficient resources were at hand to investigate and prosecute cases. A non-existent judicial system in Afghanistan means that any probe into war crimes would need concerted international support. The problem is compounded by the fact that Hamid Karzai's interim government needs the consent of powerful warlords - many of whom are accused of war crimes - if he is to extend his authority beyond Kabul. "There is a need to prevent warlords and others who are accused of crimes from being involved in the government but we cannot really stop that," vice-chair of the interim authority Sima Samar told IRIN. Some observers say that pursuing war criminals in an Afghanistan still plagued by poor security and ethnic tension should only take place after the government has consolidated its shaky grip on power. "How can we bring all parts of Afghanistan together if we start accusing people of violating human rights?," Samar added. But another Afghan aid worker, too afraid to give his name, who said he had witnessed numerous human rights abuses, told IRIN that no genuine rebuilding could occur in the country until those accused of war crimes had been bought to justice. "There is a real need for this process to start now, the government is concerned about stability, that is understandable, but there will never be real stability here until these people are weeded out and made to pay for their crimes," he said.