V. Forcible recruitment
In many areas of the north, families are routinely forced to make cash payments to local commanders if they wish to avoid the conscription of their sons into militia forces. Although all three of the cases reported below are from Balkh province, international humanitarian staff in Faryab have recently reported forcible recruitment of men between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five in Junbish-controlled Andkhoi, Maimana, and Qaisar districts.26
In one recent case, police belonging to Jamiat severely beat M, a 52-year old resident of T village near Mazar, after his son fled conscription by the police.
Three months ago, they took my 18-year old son as a soldier for the security post in T. After one night there, my son escaped from the post and came to the city to live with our relatives.
M said he then began receiving visits almost daily from the police, asking about his son's whereabouts and demanding that he bring him back to his duty station. The visit culminated in M's detention at the police post at the end of May.
They [the police] took me from my house eight days ago, at 6:00 p.m., and locked me in a room. It was on the rooftop of the post, there was a room there. They came at 9:00 p.m.-four persons, with F [the commander of the post]. They beat me with wooden sticks for around fifteen minutes. They beat me on the back, and on my shoulders and buttocks. They tied my feet together with a turban and beat me on the soles of my feet; two men held my legs up [while the two others administered the beatings].27 I was beaten in F's presence.
M was released soon after his beating, but said the harassment ended when he and six other local residents with similar complaints secured the intervention of the area commander for the police.
[The area commander] told F to stop disturbing me. After that, I brought my son back to this area, and my son is going to school in T I have had no further problems from him [F].28
D, a recently returned refugee, described the extortion of residents of his village in Balkh province to avoid the forcible conscription of their young men. He told Human Rights Watch that the area he lived in was under the authority of Bari, a Jamiat commander based in Balkh, whose representative in the village was a gunman named J. On Saturday evening, June 1, J came to the mosque at the time of the evening prayers and informed the congregants that Bari had ordered each family to pay 100,000 Afghanis [$1.40] or send their men to fight under him. According to D, the demand would be renewed every fifteen days. "This [request] was the most recent one," he said. Those young men who were conscripted spent 10 to 15 days each at the army compound in Balkh city, D said, and were fed but not paid.29
D described a similar pattern of extortion in Nawabad, a village in Charbolak district of Balkh province. Villagers from Nawabad had informed him on June 3 that they had collected 2,000,000 Afghanis [$28] to provide to Jamadar, the local representative of Wali, a Pashtun commander aligned with Junbish. "Jamadar put pressure on the people of Nawabad to pay the money or provide him four men for fighting," D said.30
26 Human Rights Watch communications with international humanitarian officials, northern Afghanistan, May 7-15, 2002.
27 Beating of the feet, commonly referred to as falanga, falaka, or basinado, is a widely reported form of torture that can have severe consequences, including muscle necrosis, vascular obstruction, and chronic disability and pain. See Action Against Torture Survivors et al., Manual on the Effective Investigation and Documentation of Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment ("The Istanbul Protocol"), August 1999, for a detailed medical description of the effects of falanga torture.
28 Human Rights Watch interview with M, Mazar-i Sharif, June 8, 2002.
29 Human Rights Watch interview with D, Mazar-i Sharif, June 4, 2002.
30 Human Rights Watch interview with D, Mazar-i Sharif, June 4, 2002.
|
