UN expert to investigate mass graves

The UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary and arbitrary executions, Asma Jahangir, will visit Afghanistan on Sunday to investigate serious human rights abuses including mass graves in the war-ravaged country.

"I will go there and see things on the ground," she told IRIN from the eastern Pakistani city of Lahore on Thursday. "I will meet all the relevant people to make a balanced and independent assessment."

But after 23 years of protracted conflict, the horrific details of human rights violations by conflicting military factions are unclear and likely to remain so. In early May, a UN team of forensic experts investigated three alleged mass-grave sites in Mazar-e Sharif, Sheberghan and Bamian in northern and central Afghanistan.

Then a Newsweek story in late August made public the grim details of the killing of hundreds of Taliban and Al-Qaeda prisoners of war near Sheberghan. In early September the UN sent a team of human rights advisers to northern Afghanistan after the local warlords controlling the region showed willingness to discuss the issue.

In a related development, international media reported on Wednesday that one mass grave in the district of Chamtal, about 24 miles west of Mazar-e Sharif contained some 350 bodies. All the dead were ethnic Hazaras - among them women and children - probably killed in 1998 when the city fell after heavy fighting to the Taliban, who were accused of mass murders in northern and central Afghanistan.

Many mass killings of combatants, prisoners and civilians are known to have taken place in northern Afghanistan in the conflict that started after the Soviet invasion in 1979. But gathering evidence and witnesses and putting those accused through a judicial process will be extremely difficult. Central and western Afghanistan are also believed to have mass graves sites though these have yet to be documented.

Jahangir, a Pakistani lawyer and rights activist, said she would submit a report to the UN Human Rights Commission after concluding her 10-day visit. She would meet government officials in the Afghan capital, Kabul, before travelling to other cities and towns.

Although experts believe that establishing a war-crimes tribunal would be difficult in Afghanistan, investigating human rights abuses will prove critical to the country's peace and stability. "I hope to contribute to the ongoing peace process," Jahangir said.