[Joint House and Senate Hearing, 111 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
111th Congress Printed for the use of the
1st Session Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe
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HUMAN RIGHTS IN AFGHANISTAN
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
MARCH 26, 2009
Briefing of the
Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe
______________________________________________________________________
Washington: 2015
Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe
234 Ford House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515
202-225-1901
[email protected]
http://www.csce.gov
Legislative Branch Commissioners
SENATE HOUSE
BENJAMIN L. CARDIN, Maryland, ALCEE L. HASTINGS, Florida,
Chairman Co-Chairman
CHRISTOPHER DODD, Connecticut EDWARD MARKEY, Massachusetts
SAM BROWNBACK, Kansas LOUISE McINTOSH SLAUGHTER,
SAXBY CHAMBLISS, Georgia New York
RICHARD BURR, North Carolina MIKE McINTYRE, North Carolina
ROGER WICKER, Mississippi G.K. BUTTERFIELD, North Carolina
JEANNE SHAHEEN, New Hampshire JOSEPH PITTS, Pennsylvania
SHELDON WHITEHOUSE, Rhode Island ROBERT ADERHOLT, Alabama
TOM UDALL, New Mexico DARRELL ISSA, California
EXECUTIVE BRANCH COMMISSIONERS
MICHAEL POSNER, Department of State
ALEXANDER VERSHBOW, Department of Defense
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* * * * *
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ABOUT THE COMMISSION ON SECURITY AND COOPERATION IN EUROPE
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HUMAN RIGHTS IN AFGHANISTAN
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March 26, 2009
COMMISSIONER
Page
Hon. Alcee Hastings, Co-Chairman, Commission on Security and
Cooperation in Europe..................................................
10
WITNESSES
Sima Samar, Founder Shuhada Organization Chair, Independent Afghanistan
Human Rights Commission................................................
2
Scott Worden, Rule of Law Adviser, U.S. Institute of Peace.............
6
PARTICIPANT
Janice Helwig, Policy Advisor, Commission on Security and Cooperation
in Europe..............................................................
1
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HUMAN RIGHTS IN AFGHANISTAN
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March 26, 2009
Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe
Washington, DC
The briefing was held at 2:30 p.m. EST in Capitol Visitor Center
Auditorium, Washington D.C. Janice Helwig, Policy Advisor, CSCE
presiding.
Ms. Helwig. I'd like to welcome everyone here today on behalf of
the Helsinki Commission and our Co-chairman Congressman Hastings. He's
running a bit late. He will be here shortly, and will take over then.
But we'll go ahead and get started. I'm going to read a statement on
behalf of Mr. Hastings, and then we'll hear from our panelists.
Afghanistan has been taking important steps towards building a
stable, lawful, and democratic state. However, it still faces a legacy
of egregious human rights violations committed in the context of more
than two decades of armed conflict. Rule of law and protection of human
rights remains fragile. Human rights defenders and civil society
leaders face harassment, intimidation, and violence. Women still face
many obstacles.
Under the Taliban, women were forbidden to work, leave the house
without a male escort, seek medical help from a male doctor, and were
forced to cover themselves from head to toe. While significant progress
has been made since then, women and girls continue to be threatened and
even attacked as they try to go to work or school. School girls, the
schools themselves, and teachers have been one set of targets. High-
profile women working outside the home have been another. Nevertheless,
many prominent female professionals and policy-makers continue their
work on behalf of women and for a new Afghanistan, including our
witness today.
Afghan law provides for freedom of speech and of the press.
Independent media are active and reflecting differing political views.
However, there have been cases of insurgents, government officials, and
Taliban intimidating journalists. Journalists have been jailed for
speaking out and have been killed by extremists.
Freedom of religion is another cause for concern. Afghanistan is on
the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom's watch list.
Afghanistan's constitution does not explicitly guarantee individuals
the right of freedom of religion. There are few protections for Afghans
to question interpretations of Islam without fear of retribution.
The government does allow a wide variety of domestic and
international human rights groups to operate generally without
restriction, investigating and publishing their findings on human
rights cases. The Department of State reports that hundreds of local
human rights NGOs operated independently and included groups focusing
on women's rights, media freedom, and rights of disabled persons.
However, the lack of security in certain parts of the country severely
reduces the ability of NGOs to work in these areas. Militant groups and
Taliban have directly targeted some NGOs.
We look forward to hearing what our witnesses have to say on these
and other human rights issues, as well as the recommendations on how we
might work together with the government of Afghanistan to address them.
Let me introduce our panelists today. I would also note that Mr.
Hastings's statement and the transcript from today's proceedings will
be posted on our website at www.csce.gov.
Dr. Sima Samar chairs the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights
Commission, which was established in 2002 to promote and protect human
rights in the country and to investigate and verify cases of human
rights violations. Dr. Samar served as Vice Premier of Afghanistan and
the first interim government in 2002, and later as Minister for women's
issues for the first-ever Afghanistan Ministry of Women's Affairs. Dr.
Samar has received numerous human rights awards for her work, and has
been on the Forbes list of top-100 most powerful women. She also serves
as the U.N. special envoy to Darfur Sudan.
I'm also going to introduce our second panelist, Mr. Scott Worden.
Mr. Worden is an advisor of the U.S. Institute of Peace's Rule of Law
program. He also served as an advisor to the U.N. Assistance Mission in
Afghanistan on human rights and election issues, as well as to the
Afghanistan Joint Election management body on the conduct of their 2005
parliamentary elections.
With that, I'd like to turn it over to you: Dr. Samar.
Ms. Samar. Good afternoon, everybody. As you all heard that--of
course the situation after Taliban is getting much better in
Afghanistan, but this achievement so far does not satisfy the people in
Afghanistan, does not protect the rights of the people or human rights
of Afghans, and particularly does not protect women's rights in this
country.
I would like to briefly talk about two points. First, I think
there's a partnership between Afghanistan, the U.S., and also the other
international community. What is that partnership for? A, in order to
protect the human rights of all Afghans and B, in order to have general
human security, not just a security as we call it--when we do not hear
the explosions that we hear today, then we have security. I insist on
human security in terms of field security, in terms of access to health
care, access to education, access to clean water, access to shelter,
and to all of those related issues--access to job opportunities, access
to justice.
I think all of the promises which were made at the beginning, after
the intervention of the U.S. in Afghanistan, including security in
development and providing job opportunities to the people of
Afghanistan have not been fulfilled. The majority of the people still
do not have access to shelter, access to water, access to education,
access to health, and also particularly to development. Like, in
Afghanistan, a small percentage of the people still have only partial
electricity. You cannot imagine not having electricity. How can the
people live in this century without electricity? They can feel the
development in the country.
The important part was that it was promised to the people that we
would promote--or the U.S. and Afghan government will promote--
democracy and equality in the country and of course reduce the
discrimination in the country. Unfortunately, this is practically not
happening. Yes, it's much better than Taliban time. There's no law to
stopping us from going to school, but do all of the children--
specifically, do all of the girls have access to education.
If they do not have access to education, what is the reason? One of
the reasons is lack of security, and the second reason is the lack of
facilities, and lack of female teachers, lack of books, and lack of
school buildings. Schools are located far from the family from the
houses or villages they live in. They walk for two hours in order to
get to the school, and then when they reach there, there's no teacher,
and there's no book to use. All of these things are issues that we
could not really fulfill in order to satisfy the people.
The other important part is social justice. Are we really promoting
social justice in the country, and fair distribution of development
projects? Not really. There are some areas in the country which are
completely secure, and there's no terrorist activity, no opium
production, but the people don't receive any benefit from that
situation. We were proposing that at least that area should get more
development fund or money to reward the people for not participating in
terrorist activities or opium production. But this is not happening.
The other thing that we are pushing for is more development money
for security so that we can develop a model of good development, a good
city, a modern city in order to create job opportunity for the people,
and to encourage the neighboring provinces that if you keep security in
your province, then you can benefit from development also. More
importantly, when we have war in the neighboring provinces, and the
people are displaced, we will be in a position, or we will be--we will
have the capacity to accommodate those IDPs in those secure areas,
which is not happening unfortunately. I mean, you could see people in
the tent all over the different cities.
These are all, unfortunately, the reality on the ground. I think
one of the important parts is that we always cannot bring security and
stability in a country solely with military activities. In the recent
history of Afghanistan, in 1998--'89, the Russian had 140,000 soldiers
on the ground, and they were very close to Afghanistan. They were
flying just a half an hour from Tajikistan or Uzbekistan, bombing
Afghanistan, and going back. Everything was much cheaper than today.
They couldn't control the people in Afghanistan. The reason was
that they did not have the public support. If we do not try to win the
hearts and the minds of the people, this situation will not be
sustainable. That's why, unfortunately, there was lack of clarity on
the strategy to Afghanistan because we were not clear. Even as an
Afghan, I didn't know what policy was, although I have access to a lot
of people and to understand more compared to other normal Afghans. But
even I was not clear on what the overall long-term strategy was for
Afghanistan.
I was insisting from the very beginning that we need to have
development and creation of job opportunity for the young Afghans who
don't know anything in order to not allow them to join the terrorist
groups in the country or Taliban in the country. There was no clear
strategy, and it was not transparent. Even the money coming to
Afghanistan was not transparent. We didn't know how much money came,
and which amount spent in each part. I don't know it. I don't know if
you know, Scott.
This does cause a lot of suspicion among the Afghans because the
majority of the people think that, they don't care about Afghanistan
and about our cause. They're just here to do what they are interested
in to do. This is very unfortunate. I think it's because there was not
long-term strategy, and they were not clear on their strategy; it was
more daily reaction--tactics in the country. That's why we didn't
really win a lot of battles because we shout today on something. It was
not appropriate, or we were too early to say on these issues.
I'll give you an example. In 1994 after the election, there was an
announcement made by the U.S. ambassador over there, and then by our
president, that we will have a Reconciliation Commission whoever laid
down their gun and then they could come and join the government. There
was no condition on that.
We created that commission. That commission has a lot of offices
around the country, and they claimed that 8,000 people laid down their
gun and they joined the government. But why the violence not reduced in
Afghanistan? Why are they still losing areas to the Taliban? Because we
don't know if those people just came and gave their old gun and they
went back and got newer gun from the different groups, or where they
are. When they come and join the government, what was our facility for
them? What was our condition for them? Did we really give them job
opportunities? Did we put them in some place to be trained in some kind
of skill and then give them job opportunities? No, we didn't. It is
still not clear.
Of course, as I mentioned, they were talking about women's rights
and human rights, but it's not anymore on the agenda. Nobody talks
about it. They keep saying that human rights and women's rights are
Western values. This is a traditional society, this is tribal society.
We don't need to push a lot. We just respect their tradition in
religion. This is a very naive idea. I think women's rights and human
rights are a human value. It's not a Western value. Do we count the
people in Afghanistan as human being or not?
This is an excuse just to not to accept that we are failed in our
strategy; we just try to say that this is a traditional society. They
don't want modernity. We don't really push for women's rights because
we respect their religion and their culture. Using the excuse of
respecting culture and religion in Afghanistan, they actually did not
pay any attention on women's rights and education in Afghanistan for
the past 30 years.
They are repeating the same mistakes. I mean, during mujahedeen,
nobody paid attention to women's causes, there was even reluctance to
provide healthcare to women, let alone the education. Education
generally was ignored for boys and girls. That's why we have madrasahs
and Taliban, but specifically for the girls, nobody was interested. By
dropping women's rights and human rights from the agenda, we go back
and repeat the same mistakes that I think health and education, all of
these basic social services--justice, especially--access to justice is
something that we really can build the confidence between the
government and the international community in the public we did in the
'80s and '90s and we're just repeating it in Afghanistan. How much
attention was paid to good governance?
There is question that the people say that how can we promote good
governance in Afghanistan? We can promote good governance in
Afghanistan by vetting a very well-known perpetrator that everybody
knows. We don't need to go through a database to find out who did what.
It's well-known. We can vet those people from the position of power; we
practically give them power. It can be very transparent. It can be very
inclusive. It can also promote accountability. We put people in
position of power, as a governor, as a chief of police, as a head of
national security, but we don't keep them accountable.
When we, as a Human Rights Commission, collect some information and
collect some complaints or get the people's complaint, and we really do
investigate and we find out that that chief of police really committed
torture. We make noises and then hardly that person is removed from
that position and put in another position. This is not going to help
good governance because that person should be punished for wrongdoing
for their act, negative acts. It's torture, its bribery, its
corruption; it's helping the drug lord to pass their opium--the track
of opium from that city. They should be accountable. They should be
punished for that, not simply removed from Jalalabad and put in Mazari
Sharif.
Of course that issue that really caused the problem is the civilian
casualties. I have to say unfortunately there's not enough coordination
between the different PTRs in NATO and U.S. troops in the country.
First of all, it's not one chain of command. Nobody knows. We don't
know at least. When we go and investigate a civilian casualty, we don't
know to whom we should talk. Who did this aerial bombardment, and
where? This is not very helpful.
There should be more coordination between the NATO troops of
different countries. We have 41 or 40 countries--troops in Afghanistan.
It should be more coordination with Afghan security forces, either
Afghan police, Afghan army. I think the Afghans should be more
involved. Let them go and do the surge, and then keep them accountable,
not just let them go and get some kilo of opium and then come back and
sell it for itself. These kinds of issues are very important.
What will be my recommendation? One security is important. We have
to try to do everything to bring security. But with respect to IHL,
international human rights and humanitarian law, it doesn't mean that
we should go and bombard everywhere we want. The problem is that some
of the warlords or some of the groups, the armed groups are friends of
U.S. military forces or the NATO forces, and they bring false
information or intelligence to them and they go and bomb, and then that
person is not kept accountable. It's usually Afghans. That person
should be brought to justice and they should name and shame that person
in order to avoid false intelligence in the future.
Then of course the national army and the national police, rather
than jumping to auxiliary police or these day community defense groups
or police.
Three days--three years ago when it was more war in the southern
part of Afghanistan, they started to talk about building tribal
militia. When we opposed this, we were very loud against it. We went to
the media and said Najib had tribal militia. Najib is the pro-Russian--
latest or the final president. He created tribal militia and tried to
send the Pashtuns to the Uzbek area and Uzbek to Pashtun area and
Hazara to another area in order to divide and rule within the country.
The very famous militia is Dosum and he was angry with Najib, then the
Najib government was collapsed.
The Taliban had militia. The different mujahedeen group had a
militia. We tried and spent a lot of money and time, energy to disarm
the people. Now we give them, again, weapons, and we changed the name.
Three years ago they said auxiliary police. Now they're turning to
community defense something. But it's again the same tribal militia.
They started already and they're trying to start in the provinces which
are not safe, which isn't war and conflict. It encourages the risk of
the other groups in the country that's okay if you just rearm the
Pashtuns.
The people in the north try to buy guns, try to rearm them. The
people in the center--central Afghanistan--try to do it because they
don't trust. We did not really try to build the trust and confidence
between the different group and between the government and the public
importantly.
Pushing more on transparency and accountability and justice, we
believe, in the human rights commission, that we cannot have
sustainable peace unless we have justice. Unless we stop the culture of
impunity in the country, the people will not trust the government.
That's clear.
My other recommendation will be that please do not use the excuse
of respecting culture, tradition, and tribes in Afghanistan. If you
really look for exit strategy from Afghanistan, this should not be used
in order to drop the human rights and women's rights from the agenda,
and to walk out and say that, well, we have to lower our expectation in
Afghanistan because we had high expectation, and in my view, you never
had a high expectation in Afghanistan. Did you really try to build an
institution in the country? Did you really try to build the nation in
the country? No. It was daily tactical gain and policy without clarity,
without transparency, without accountability even.
I think the U.S. should promise less and deliver more rather than
promising a lot and deliver very little, because if you promise a lot,
you just raise the false expectation for the people. Then when you do
not deliver, then the people lose hope. The U.S. should be very clear
that we helping the Afghan people and acknowledge that the military
action does make some damages, that they acknowledge on civilian
casualties, not that it takes a lot of time in order to push them to
acknowledge that it was a mistake; it was civilian casualty; it was
false intelligence.
This is not there. They have to acknowledge. The Afghan people do
have the patience. Once when you acknowledge that you made a mistake,
they really forgive you. This is not happening, unfortunately. I hope
you would agree with me.
We would say don't negotiate on principles of human rights with
anybody. It's three, four years that our president keeps saying my
brother Hekmatar, brother Molloamar comes to Afghanistan but they don't
come. Now we hear from this country that they are going to negotiate
with moderate Taliban. I hope there's a moderate Taliban. I don't know
any moderate Taliban because every night when we announce, where our
president announce, the next morning we have more violence in the
country, more suicide attack, more killing, and I don't know who's the
moderate Taliban. I hope U.S. and our government will find moderate
Taliban, but please do not negotiate on principles of human rights and
women's rights in the country.
Finally I would say that I insist that clear, long-term strategy,
please do listen to our friends, and believe that we as an Afghan, we
have a mind, and our mind can work. Thank you very much.
Ms. Helwig. Thank you very much. I will turn the floor over to Dr.
Worden.
Mr. Worden. Thank you. Thank you to the commission for holding this
hearing and for inviting me to participate in it. Before I begin my
remarks, I work for the U.S. Institute of Peace, but I want to say that
these views are my personal views and do not represent those of the
U.S. Institute of Peace, which does not take policy positions.
I think that the overall scope of the human rights situation has
already been laid out very well. Certainly there have been significant
strides when you compare against what happened to the Taliban period
and previously, but as we've heard already there's plenty of urgent
needs that still need to be addressed.
I worked, as the introduction said, for the United Nations for a
year and a half in Afghanistan, and continue to work on those issues
with the U.S. Institute of Peace, both times focusing mostly on rule of
law development. I want to concentrate my remarks on that area. Dr.
Samar has already outlined some of the highlights. But I think that in
many ways one of the greatest human rights obstacles in Afghanistan is
the failure to establish the rule of law. All issues really relate to
that. Certainly sustainable protection of human rights over time relies
on the implication of rule of law, which I think is significantly
lacking.
I think that the overarching problem in the rule of law area is
impunity. This is pervasive and destructive at all levels, and I want
to talk about that. I think that there are three areas, when you look
at impunity on how to try to start reversing the trend in the short
term, and actions can be taken to combat impunity by ensuring free and
fair elections by taking action to achieve progress on transitional
justice, and by focusing more attention on judicial reform.
First, on the subject of impunity--entirely agree, and it was one
of my main points that the continued and pervasive impunity in
Afghanistan significantly undermines the legitimacy of the Afghan
government, therefore people's confidence in it. That also directly
relates to the security situation. The more people don't respect or
don't believe that Afghanistan's government can deliver on promises of
basic needs and services and human rights, the more they will hedge
against it and try to look for alternatives.
The statutes for impunity I think really hits at all levels. Dr.
Samara mentioned some of the top-level cases. Everybody knows these are
gross human rights violators, and yet they are not held accountable,
but it also applies at the more local level as well. It also applies
across all different sectors.
I think that impunity is pronounced in many of the key areas that
are identified as necessary for improving stability in Afghanistan.
Corruption--there's been very little action or prosecution on that.
Drug trafficking, land seizures is a huge issue that affects the
population but gets very little attention in the West, as well as
ongoing human rights abuse and violent crime.
In almost all cases, on all of these issues, there has been very
little accountability, if any, through the legal system of Afghanistan.
I would also note that there are a few instances where some
particularly egregious leaders are marginalized or demoted or shifted
from province to province, but this too is a problem because not only
may it not be enough, but it's outside of the legal system. It's a
backroom deal that reinforces that it's personality politics that
matter, not the process, and that also undermines the rule of law.
You mentioned General Dostum. There is one example that I think
illustrates the case of impunity quite well. For those who don't know,
he was a commander during the communist era and during the Taliban--he
fought the Taliban, and he has been accused of war crimes in almost
every campaign that he has participated in, including war crimes
committed in ousting the Taliban in 2001. I think there was an
opportunity to marginalize figures like him when Afghanistan created
its new government, which were passed up and instead he received fairly
prominent positions in government.
The consequence of this was supposed to be stability and greater
security. Instead, what you had was continued crime. There was a fairly
prominent incident that occurred in his house in Kabul where somebody
was kidnapped and beaten. He was not arrested and in fact it was
somewhat of a showdown for the Afghan government where I think
credibility was on the line and they still failed to arrest him. So
here you have, I think, a good example of, you know, actions not being
taken in the promise of compromise for stability, but in fact what you
get is continued impunity, not just for significant individuals that
have prominent positions but also at small levels. I think you
mentioned, you know, drug dealers are arrested and then let loose.
People convicted of rape eventually have that conviction overturned.
Painting that picture, I think illustrates that, you know, this is
a problem that Afghans are looking at every day, and when you judge the
government and they see, you know, where they're going to throw their
support, this comes into play. The question is what can be done about
that?
The first area to focus on is the upcoming elections. Their conduct
and the results of it will have an enormous systemic impact on whether
improvements are made on human rights or not. In the presidential
election I think that the significant threat to free and fair processes
is in abusive government resources by any of the candidates including
President Karzai, but any of the candidates who have government
positions that are running, there is a threat that there will be
government resources used materially to support a campaign, that
government authority may be used to favor one candidate over another,
and also control of the media may be exercised according to--government
resources could be used to exercise control over the media.
The solution to that, I believe, is a great focus on monitoring,
both by Afghans in the Free and Fair Elections Associations but also by
international observers, and they need to be well-resourced in order to
perform that function.
A second solution that can help to even the playing field and
promote a fair electoral process at the presidential level is public
financing of media for the campaigns. There is a program in the 2005
elections that gave equal time, funded by the election funds, by public
funds, to each candidate, and I think that did a significant amount to
balancing the playing field and eliminating the influence of illegal
money in the campaign, and this is something that can be done to help
improve the process.
There are also provincial council elections that will be held in
August of this year. There, I think that the greatest danger is the
influence of local militia leaders who are identified as illegal armed
groups and otherwise will likely take the opportunity to threaten and
intimidate their way into office. There is provision of the Afghan
electoral law that says that members of illegal armed groups cannot run
for election. The same provision existed in 2005 and was very
sporadically enforced, and I think greater attention needs to be paid
to enforcing that this time around. And in any event, monitoring of the
elections--independent monitoring will play a role because there should
be an effective elections complaint mechanism that can deal with unfair
intimidation at a provincial level.
The second large thing that I think can be done to take a crack at
reducing the level of impunity in the country is giving some focused
attention to transitional justice. Transitional justice--by that I'm
refereeing to the full range of mechanisms to deal with past
atrocities, largely committed by people that are still causing problems
for the government today. It's both truth processes and accountability
and memorialization. There is an action plan on transitional justice
that the Afghan government adopted in 2006 and very little has--it was
also endorsed by the international community and included in the
Afghanistan compact, but very little has been done to implement it.
I think that there is a general sense--you know, if the argument
for transitional--for human rights is that, well, first we have to deal
with security and then we'll tackle human rights, I agree with Dr.
Samar's comments on that, but if that argument is made toward human
rights, it's doubly made for transitional justice: Oh, well, everybody
supports one world order or another and therefore nobody really wants
to tackle this.
I think that the view from Afghanistan, from my experience there,
is quite the opposite. The Human Rights Commission did its own
excellent survey in 2004, which indicated overwhelming support for
accountability for past crimes and indicated that people really thought
that this was a fundamental priority of Afghanistan: that security
would be reduced if you don't address this, and that legitimacy of
government would be improved. Now, in a conflict situation, especially
with the deteriorating security situation and a weak justice system,
I'm not expecting prosecutions or trials, and frankly neither is any
Afghan, but I think that there are some small things that could be done
to have a big effect which are not being done now.
One of them, which is I think the least politically sensitive, is
focusing on the memorialization aspect of the action plan, recognizing
victims and giving them the resources to participate in the political
process and express their views. There has been a number of mass graves
that have been uncovered recently that has caused a lot of attention
and public focus. This could be a focus of establishing memorials that
recognize all victims of the conflict that are not ethnically biased,
and I think we go a long way to having people see that the government
understands their concerns. More significantly, I think that having an
appropriate vetting process, not just with illegal armed groups in the
elections but on appointments by the president and by the governors at
all levels is critical.
There are plans in place through the advisory panel and
presidential appointments as well as the independent director of local
governance, to evaluate candidates not just on their credentialed
criteria but also on their human rights records. This is something that
has been slow to start and doesn't have many resources, but I think if
the law that already exists is enforced it will go a long way toward
showing people that merit matters more than patronage.
Finally, I think it's important to focus on documentation,
understanding that this is a difficult issue and that progress can only
be made over the long run. It is at least important to gain evidence of
what happened in the past and to preserve and protect that. This is
something that recently failed spectacularly I think. Again, in the
case of General Dostum, there were massacres that were committed up in
the north with mass graves. This was known about by the Afghan
government as well as the U.S. government and the international
community and nothing was done to secure these graves. Recently it's
been discovered that they were uncovered and the evidence was
destroyed.
This is an issue that has been a priority, particularly of the U.S.
government in a lot of post-conflict situations--in Iraq, in the
Balkans, where I worked before in Cambodia, yet it's received very
little attention in Afghanistan and I think it's fundamental to
establishing a historical record and to future accountability to
document and preserve evidence. I think the Human Rights Commission is
one of the few organizations that is struggling to do that.
Finally, I think that it's important, looking a little bit longer
term, to focus on justice sector reform. A lot reports now are noting
that when you look across the different sectors in Afghanistan, the
justice sector has been one of the greatest failures and has received
some of the least resources, especially in light of its importance.
There is an infrastructure problem certainly and it will take time to
develop courthouses and administrative mechanisms to bring courts to
all the districts in the country. It will also take time to train
judges and prosecutors and lawyers to practice in them. But even in the
short term, I think what you're seeing is, you know, a total lack of
coordination in terms of the assistance that is given to the justice
sector. Afghanistan has developed good plans for building out the
justice sector but they're unfunded. It's really some kind of basic
nuts and bolts that money invested in Afghan institutions to build them
up and have them allocate their resources would go a long way.
I was speaking to somebody in Kandahar recently who was working for
the U.N. on their monitoring of the court system there and I was
asking, well, obviously that's a difficult environment for sure, and
what are the obstacles to the justice system there? There are threats
and intimidation, but they aren't the biggest problem. There have been
killings, and those challenges exist, but he said the number one thing
is that over half of the judicial slots are just not filled. They don't
have the salaries; they don't have the recruitment to put people in
place. I think there's a lot of boutique investments in the justice
sector: Oh, well, we want to fund a special prosecutor's office to look
at corruption, which is a good idea, but it hasn't borne out results
and it doesn't look at systematic change. Instead there needs to be an
overall investment in the justice sector, because ultimately without
that, it is analogous to the security situation: you don't have
competent Afghan army and Afghan police, you're never going to solve
the security situation on a sustainable level. Likewise with the
justice sector: cannot promote human rights in a systematic way if you
ignore that vital institution for seven years since the Afghanistan
reconstruction began.
Let me conclude my remarks there and I'm happy to take questions.
Mr. Hastings. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you, and I do sincerely
apologize to our briefers for the tardiness. This is one of those days
that even though I managed to get here I'm only here for a limited
time. But I can't thank you enough, Dr. Samar and Dr. Worden, for being
here. We would have had greater attendance, not only of members but of
other participants, but this institution is kind of interesting: when
the last vote happens, everybody goes to Dulles and to the National
Airport, and they're trying to get away from here. But the importance
of this matter allows, among other things, that we do have a record of
it, and I will see to it that's it's appropriately disseminated to
members as well as others, and also placed on the website of the
commission.
The staff director of the CSCE is Fred Turner, a young man seated
in the front, and Fred and I were just at the Brussels Forum in
Brussels this past weekend and we heard--Dr. Samar, you probably know
him, and if you do not, Dr. Worden, I'm sure you know of him--but we
heard Ahmed Rashid make a presentation, and it was more related to
circumstances in Europe as it pertains to what might happen there with
regard to terrorism, speaking generally. But he also spoke frankly
about Afghanistan and Pakistan, and I was genuinely impressed, both
with his knowledge and his passion about those issues.
The United States and hopefully NATO are about the business of
increasing their presence in terms of actual boots on the ground. The
Europeans that I talked with seemed interested in providing assistance
in the way of training of the military, training of the police and
border security. I, for one, am concerned that there was very little
discussion there about corruption. There was no discussion about sexual
abuse of children, trafficking of human beings. And there was a
statement that I found interesting that, Dr. Samar, I'm sure you will
as well, and that is someone commented that dependent upon your
perspective, the fact that the international community and the
Afghanistan government have provided 5 million children an opportunity
to go to school versus 5 million who are not in school. I would be
interested in that aspect, if you would all speak to it, and also how
the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission is functioning.
Perhaps, Dr. Worden, if you would address that.
But, Dr. Samar, just what is your assessment of where they are in
terms of particularly young women and girls? The television thing that
we see is them being attacked and scarred. I saw one of the television
reports that were devastating, and the young lady, she's still
courageous enough to walk this gauntlet, as it were.
I know you may have already spoken to either or both of these
questions, but if you would, Dr. Samar, address your assessment of
where children are in Afghanistan and what the prospects for them are
in the future.
Ms. Samar. Thank you very much, Congressman, for coming and joining
us. Yes, you are right: at least, on paper, we have saying that have 5
million or 6 million children in the school. Of course, if these
children go to school or have access to school it's a positive element
for Afghanistan and I believe that education plays the primary role or
the most important role to change the society and to change the
mentality in the country. But the quality of education, which we really
did not pay much attention on it, is not very good. Even the school
curriculum is somehow--has a really low quality of knowledge.
We, as a Human Rights Commission, are really struggling with the
Ministry of Education to put more human rights messages--nonviolent
messages, peace messages--within the curriculum of the school, but it's
reluctance by the Ministry of Education on that issue. This is one of
the problems. The second problem is that we do not have enough
qualified teachers. The children go and even walks for two hours, but
when they go and reach the so-called school--either it's a tent or
under the tree or on the roof of some houses--but they don't find a
qualified teacher to attend and really to teach them. Again, in this
matter we didn't have a good strategy to reach that and make--
facilitate the training, although it's a lot of teacher training in the
country, but still the curriculum is not good and it's not a good
quality.
In some of areas, we don't have the facilities for schools,
unfortunately. There are no buildings. There are no chairs. There are
no books. Most importantly, I think, is that in recent years, in 2007
and 2006, about 600 schools were closed down, either burned, destroyed
or closed down because of the war. Around 200,000 to 400,000 students
stopped going to school because there's no facilities. You heard about
the teacher was beheaded in front of the children and there was rocket
attack in the school where the students were killed and the teacher was
killed and the guard of the school was killed. There are still around 5
million children who don't have access.
Among the students who attend the schools, around 35-30 to 35
percent are girls. The dropout for girls up to secondary school or high
school is quite high because of all these things which I said. There is
no female teacher in the school. When they reach the age of 12 or 13
the family is reluctant to send these girls to school in most of the
rural areas.
Mr. Hastings. And the reason for that reluctance would be?
Ms. Samar. Lack of female teachers is one of them, and the school
is located far from the house so the children walk to the school, and
they are an age that can be kidnapped or can be targeted by some
people. It's, again, lack of security--a security issue.
The dropouts of the girls are much higher than the boys. I mean,
they reach to the level of high school from nine to 12. I think we need
to focus a lot and really spend a lot of money and our resources on
education because, again, I insist that we really need education in the
country if we really want to pull out Afghanistan from the terrorists
and opium kind of a production country. I think not only in the school
level, but I think we have to spend on the universities because once--
like this year we had 70,000 students who attended to the exam so that
they could be admitted to a universities, but the universities has only
the capacity to absorb 12,000, so the rest of the boys or the rest of
the girls are not able to join the university or to go and get higher
education. We should have a lot of other possibilities for them--skill
training, send them to another technical school or to teacher training
more importantly, or some other--all the things, the scale that we need
for reconstruction of the country. This is not yet functional in the
country, which we have to look at the issue seriously.
We have 60 percent of our population is in the age of between 15 to
27.
Mr. Hastings. Right.
Ms. Samar. This portion of the population has to be used properly.
Otherwise the easiest way would be to go and join the other groups who
fight. That's the easiest--they don't require any skill.
Mr. Hastings. Well, the functioning of the International Human
Rights Commission.
Mr. Worden. It certainly has one of the most difficult jobs in
Afghanistan, and I think it has done remarkable things in a really
difficult climate. It's a great achievement to have a Human Rights
Commission empowered by the constitution and constitute with the
national presence. This is an accomplishment that puts Afghanistan
ahead of most of its neighbors and had been a key source of
information, support, advocacy and awareness for Afghans that really
doesn't exist in many other countries in the region. I think that the
biggest challenge that they face. Broadly speaking, political will,
there's not a very receptive climate as an audience for government
action. But I think that you know, really what needs to happen on the
part of the international community is to really focus on building up
institutions that have the capacity to act on the Human Rights
Commission's recommendations, to respond to its criticisms.
Right now as I was mentioning in my earlier remarks, there are
mechanisms on the books to address issues like impunity through vetting
appointments to executive positions. This hasn't been endowed with much
political support or much financial support by the international
community, which is really needed to press on these issues and
correspondingly the Afghan government hasn't assigned it a lot of
priority. Very little can happen if there is not a mechanism to respond
to. Too often the shortcut of relying on a personal negotiation, a
backroom deal, you know, a trade of influence --maybe it achieves the
short-term objective of that particular interaction but you don't
create, you know a mechanism to do this on its own. The Human Rights
Commission is one of the few institutions that's kind of doing its job
on the monitoring role, but in terms of implementation there needs to
be more structure and more capacity to receive its advice, and you can
then work through whether it's the legal system or a vetting system or
whatever the issue may be--ministries to enforce women's rights of
education.
Mr. Hastings. One of the things that bother me a great deal in our
efforts, the international community, certainly the United States, is
that we concentrate a lot of effort on the military and the police. If
I could digress a moment and talk about Iraq. We're busy training
troops and training police, but we're not training judicial
authorities. If I turn to Afghanistan, my belief would be, just looking
at the State Department report regarding it saying it would be
understaffed, under-resourced--the judicial system, to the extent that
it exists--but there is yet another question, Dr. Samar, that really
needs to be made clear, and that is how, under international human
rights provisions, courts that accommodate Sharia law, how does that
comport with the general thinking of international--I say general,
painting with a broad brush--of international community with reference
to human rights?
Ms. Samar. I think one of the problems is that the Sharia law or
the implementation of Sharia and obligation of Afghanistan to the
treaties and convention which was ratified by the country is
unfortunately a contradictory in the constitution. When we were
drafting the constitution it was not enough attention paid on this
issue to be clearer on the constitution. What should be in the
constitution we did not really pressurize enough? When I say ``we,'' I
mean we did it from our side, from the Human Rights Commission, but it
was not done enough by the international community.
The first part, actually the drafting commission--Constitution
Commission--was headed by a conservative person. That's why it's
contradicting, including the date of the election that we are now
facing a problem. The Constitution Commission was not really open to
discussion. What we in the Human Rights Commission did, we drafted
another constitution, which was not our job actually, but we did, and
we translated into Pashto and Persian and English and handed it over to
everybody. The reason we did, we said, maybe we give another
alternative to the people who comes to the Constitutional Loya Jirga to
give them another idea that there is a possibility for a much better
constitution.
I took it to the president, I took it to Ebrahimi, and you know
that we give it all the embassies, starting from even the system of the
government that we were not in favor of a presidential system. The date
of the election, we were proposing the August, which is now the date
that everybody is saying that it's the right time. I mean, much better
constitution as the constitution that we have. Now what is happening,
unfortunately the parliament, which is the legislative pillar of the
state, is very, very politicized and it's the majority, I have to say,
is the commanders and the conservative elements, and some of them even
are not able to read and write because they're not conditioned on that.
They really try to block the laws, the progressive laws. I can give
you one example. The criminal age for boys and girls, it took two years
to fight because they accepted the age for boys, 18, and they were not
willing to accept 18 for the girls. They were putting 17 for the girls.
We fought and I went to see the head of the parliament, the speaker of
the parliament. I went to see the head of the senate and I saw the
president and I said, what's going on? I mean, it is clear in the
constitution that men and women are equal before the law. Then we
ratified Sidar, and then this is the law.
The speaker of the parliament and the head of the senate promised
me that they would put a small group of people--they don't take it to
the General Assembly or to the parliament to discuss it because, again,
it goes--and they are shouting it's again Islam, which it's not. He
said both of them put a small group of people together and then they
come up with a more conservative definition of child. A person can't be
called a child unless the sign of puberty is not there. I mean, what do
you call puberty? Okay, they get--the girls will get their menses when
they are 12.
Mr. Hastings. Right.
Ms. Samar. They are mature.
Mr. Hastings. They are mature according to them.
Ms. Samar. The boys wait until 18. The whole definition of child
was gone. So I went to the president and I said, you don't have to sign
this. You have to send them back. It's back in the parliament. We again
tried to bring the civil society and everybody. We see the EU
representative, we see the U.N. to please put some pressure on these--
can you imagine one law between the president's office and the
parliament keeps two years? For this--you don't understand the
mentality, and nobody is there to tell them that, come on, until 18 is
a child? It doesn't matter if they're a girl or a boy.
Mr. Hastings. Yes, ma'am.
Ms. Samar. Then, it was the Shia personal law, which these days was
in the parliament, and some of the Shia mullah was insisting that a
nine-year-old girl can be married. Of course, we encouraged the other
parliamentarian who doesn't believe in this way, and one of these young
parliamentarians told to the mullah, said, I'm willing to marry your
daughter which is nine years old. Would you give me, or are you making
the law for the others? Then there was fighting and shouting at each
other.
We couldn't really achieve--I took to the president our
recommendation. He said, don't touch the mullahs. I cannot fight
against them. I said, you support me, I'll fight against them. It just
contradicts the constitution, it contradicts the--we ratified Sidar;
why did we ratify Sidar? We just put in on a shelf somewhere? We don't
implement? Then it contradicts the civil law, the family law that we
have. This is very unfortunate.
The third problem actually is that, like, we have a Ulema Council,
which does not have any legitimate role in the country, let's say. It's
a council, but they don't have any role in the judiciary system. They
come up with a conviction of someone, like this young journalist. They
were everywhere and they were shouting that this boy should be
executed.
Mr. Hastings. Executed.
Ms. Samar. We give them just chance to interfere on those issues. I
told the president, I said, you have to tell them that they have to
shut up because it's not their job, and we have a judiciary. They
should not have the authority to always release a fatwah because they
are not the resources of fatwah. We have a specific fatwah section in
the supreme court. So we don't go to everybody to release a fatwah.
Mr. Hastings. Well, I can tell you this, you describe what
obviously a very complex set of problems. Again, I apologize. I must
leave. I don't know whether you all have additional time to continue
and Ms. Helwig could go forward.
My overall concern as I listen to you especially, Dr. Samar, is--I
placed a lot of my focus on--I call myself a human rights activist. I
had to lift conditions to rise above serious issues in communities that
I've lived in, both as a child and as an adult and professional. But
children are a central focus for all of us, and as I listen to you it's
clear to me that there are not psychologists and psychiatrists that can
help, and it would be no less a concern in war zones around the world
or in refugee camps. It's awful that as human beings we would do
ourselves this way.
I forget the name of the Indian gentleman that's a finance minister
in India that spoke this weekend, and one of the things he said in
encouraging that we concentrate on poor countries around the world, and
a fact that you pointed out, the age being so many young people in many
of the countries, whether it's the Maghreb, Asia or wherever, you'll
find that same situation.
The upshot is we leave these children in these vulnerable positions
and we expect them to become Dr. Wordens and Dr. Samars and Congressman
Hastings, and the likelihood of that happening versus their being shorn
of hope to begin with, winding up in situations whether they're
recruited into bad behavior, I don't have to go to Afghanistan to prove
that. We could leave here walking and in 20 minutes I could take you
into Anacostia here in Washington and show you a replication of a
similar situation where there is an infrastructure, where there are
roads, where there is electricity, where there are--schools, et cetera,
and then you still have this exacting balance because people have been
ignored, I might add by government as well as people in the government.
The Indian finance minister says he thinks that humanity as a
collective lost its will to survive. And somewhere along the lines,
courageous folk like yourself that do this work need to be listened to
in auditoria in this country as well as around the world that are full
so that people can better understand the complexities of what they're
dealing with. I would that, in just the short time I'm here, that
President Obama was sitting in the audience with President Karzai and
with Sarkozy and with others and just listen.
We think and tend to believe that because they're in the political
class that's high that they understand these things, but very
occasionally they do not, and they have such barriers around them and
bureaucracies that support those barriers until they never really get
the real deal.
I thank you very much. I do apologize for having to leave, but
perhaps we can elevate this status to a hearing level, and I will talk
with Chairman Cardin and ask him about it and ask you back when we can
have a wider dissemination of the important information that you have
provided.
Ms. Samar. Thank you very much.
Mr. Hastings. Thank you all.
Mr. Worden. Thank you.
Ms. Samar. Thank you all.
Mr. Hastings. Thank you. Let's conclude.
[all]
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