IV. Continued abuses against Pashtuns in Faryab
The abuses against Pashtuns in Sakhi camp reflect a much wider pattern of targeted attacks on Pashtun communities by Jamiat, Junbish, and Hizb-i Wahdat forces as Taliban rule unraveled across northern Afghanistan, documented by Human Rights Watch in an April 2002 report, "Paying for the Taliban's Crimes: Abuses Against Ethnic Pashtuns in Northern Afghanistan."18 Pashtuns who were recently displaced from the Shoor Darya valley of Faryab province described continued abuses by the locally dominant Junbish forces, including denial of access to agricultural lands, recurrent demands for money, and sexual violence against women and adolescent boys.
B, a Pashtun farmer who estimated his age as sixty, said he abandoned his home near the town of Dawlatabad during the third week of May, after a commander in the district occupied a large portion of his land and allowed his relatives and troops to appropriate other sections of it. "It has been a month since they started cultivating," B said. He identified the men farming his land as being under the authority of an ethnic Turkmen Junbish commander, who he said controlled the Juma Bazar, Shirin Tagab, and Dawlatabad areas of Faryab.19
An international aid official who visited the Shoor Darya valley in early June confirmed the general practice of land seizures. The official described having seen fields where Junbish commanders were preventing Pashtuns from harvesting the land that they owned, and said that Pashtuns who remained in the valley were leaving incrementally.20
Internally displaced persons from Shoor Darya also reported ongoing sexual abuse of women. J, a 60-year old woman from Dawlatabad district said that her own family had not experienced sexual violence at the hands of local militiamen, but that it had been common in her area and was the principal reason for her family's flight:
When the Uzbeks were coming during the night, they were seeking young women to harass them sexually. If they found young women in the houses, they forced them to do bad things. They always had sexual purposes toward them, and the young women could not defend themselves against them. This has happened very often in our neighborhood. They came several times to our house, but they failed to do bad things to the women because we were shouting to alarm the men, and we managed to escape from the house before they did that to us. But in the houses around ours, we know young Pashtun women who have been targeted by that kind of harassment and sexual violence.
Finally, we took the decision to leave because it became too dangerous for the younger women who were living in the house with us.21
S, a 25-year old Pashtun woman, also from Dawlatabad district, provided a similar account:
The last time ten Uzbeks came to our house, my father-in-law asked them what they were doing, and they answered, "Where are the women?" When the women of the family heard that, they all escaped. The Uzbeks were looking for me because they knew there was a young woman. I managed to hide myself in a dark closet; they were looking everywhere but they did not find me. After they had left and had looted all they could find, I discussed [the matter] with my father-in-law and we decided to leave.22
B, interviewed separately, became visibly agitated when asked about the conditions under which he would consider returning to Faryab. "I would prefer to die than to go back there," he said. "There, even my women are not my own." Although he would not elaborate on the issue of sexual violence against women-a culturally proscribed subject for many Afghan men-he described a pattern of sexual assault by local commanders involving Pashtun boys in his area.
Boys between the ages of eight and fifteen are raped. They [the commanders] take them with themselves for some nights, then they leave them or bring them back. These boys are now accustomed to it. They go back to the commanders. These boys become powerful in the tribe, and can do whatever they want because they are with commanders. The commander doesn't take money from them or their families.23
While the intensive looting of Pashtun communities associated with the collapse of the Taliban has subsided in Shoor Darya, regular demands for money by commanders appear to be compounding the impoverishment of local Pashtuns. The practice, as described to Human Rights Watch, involves the collection of money in each village by tribal leaders who are appointed by the commanders and backed by the threat of force. Various pretexts are used in collecting money, such as keeping the troops properly clothed.24
As in many other parts of the north where Human Rights Watch has previously documented abuses against Pashtun communities, Pashtuns from Dawlatabad sharply distinguished between the conduct of the Junbish commanders in Shoor Darya and that of the neighboring Uzbek villagers. B, for example, emphasized that Uzbeks living in his area had not been involved in the violence against Pashtuns and were also victimized by Junbish forces.25
18 Human Rights Watch, "Paying for the Taliban's Crimes: Abuses Against Ethnic Pashtuns in Northern Afghanistan," A Human Rights Watch Report, Vol. 14, No. 2 (C), April 2002, www.hrw.org/reports/2002/afghan2/
19 Human Rights Watch interview with B, 60, IDP from Dawlatabad, Shoor Darya, Faryab. Interviewed in Balkh province, June 6, 2002.
20 Human Rights Watch interview with an international humanitarian official, Mazar-i Sharif, June 3, 2002.
21 Human Rights Watch interview with J, 60, IDP from Dawlatabad, Shoor Darya, Faryab. Interviewed in Balkh province, June 6, 2002.
22 Human Rights Watch interview with S, 25, IDP from Dawlatabad, Shoor Darya, Faryab. Interviewed in Balkh province, June 6, 2002.
23 Human Rights Watch interview with B, 60, June 6, 2002.
24 Human Rights Watch interview with B, 60, June 6, 2002.
25 Human Rights Watch interview with B, 60, June 6, 2002.
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