Focus on rights abuses in Baghlan Province

Mohammad Amin had to knock on many official doors during his struggle to regain his farmland after it was confiscated by a local commander in his village of Kaylahgay in the northeastern Baghlan Province. "After several months of endeavour, I had to stop trying to get my land back, when the final person I was referred to was the commander who took my land in the first place," the 40-year-old farmer told IRIN in Pol-e Khomri, the capital of Baghlan Province. Amin said he was one of tens of people whose land had been forcibly seized by commanders in Baghlan Province. "They [commanders] cultivate our lands by growing poppy and other crops for their own business," said the father of seven, who had also been hounded out of his village after his land was confiscated. "I was threatened with death if I did not leave the village after the commander realised I had officially complained about him." According to a local human rights activist in Pol-e Khomri, rights violations are common in the northeastern regions, particularly Baghlan Province. "Often the violators and supposed upholders of the law are same people," Abdul Ghafur Basem of the Afghan Organisation of Human Rights and Environmental Protection (AOHREP) told IRIN in Pol-e Khomri. Basem said land and property grabbing, forced marriages, ethnic discrimination, abuse of power, and kidnapping of boys and girls were the most common rights violations being committed by commanders, many of whom currently run local and government authorities in the region. Basem said local commanders were increasingly profiting from drug trafficking, and many of them exploited public utilities for their own businesses. "They are stronger economically than in previous years and can continue without any assistance for years," Basem said, noting that poppy cultivation would dramatically rise next year as so much confiscated land would be turned over to the crop. Regional security was compromised by internal disputes among the commanders over issues of drug trafficking, which often ended in violent conflict. "They ambush one another's convoys of drugs and then resell them to other sources," Basem asserted. Meanwhile, a local shopkeeper whose house and shop was forcibly taken by a local warlord told IRIN he had been forced to hand over all the documentation relating to his property to the people who were now occupying it. "I brought an order from Kabul saying the property must be returned to me, but it did not work," said the ethnic Russian, who has been in Afghanistan for two decades after converting to Islam and gaining Afghan nationality. Other, more serious rights abuses have also occurred in the town. A schoolgirl was killed by her father when he discovered she had been gang-raped by men loyal to a commander in the city, according to Mohammad Da'ud, a human rights activist and member of AOHREP. "The rapist is openly walking in the city, while the father has escaped justice, but no investigation has so far taken place," he said. The sexual abuse and abduction of young boys is also common in the region, local people told IRIN. But Mohammad Omar, the governor of Baghlan, said rights violations had decreased compared to previous years, although he conceded there was abuse of power in some cases. "Pol-e Khomri is much safer than before. As a corridor to nine other provinces, people are travelling through even at night without any problems," he told IRIN. "We do need a trained and neutral police force. Even if it is less than 100, it is enough to strengthen the rule of law over the rule of gun," he added. The United Nations in the northeast has also expressed concern over the issues of human rights and the regional imbalance of government posts in the province. "Twenty of 30 key posts are held by people from one district," Haji Abed Hashimi, a political affairs assistant in charge of Baghlan Province for the United Nations Assistant Mission in Afghanistan, told IRIN. "The main concern in the northeast of the country is around forced marriages, torture, land and property theft, misuse of power by officials, and bribery and corruption in local administrations," Nader Naderi, a commissioner with the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC) told IRIN in Kabul, noting that in Baghlan the AIHRC had registered many complaints about the domination of a majority of the government offices in Pol-e Khomri by one family. "Drug trafficking, child abduction and child sexual abuse are the other concerns in that region," he said. He added that the AIHRC had expressed concern over the fact that most of the commanders who had been responsible for extrajudicial killings in the past still held power in the province.