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Afghanistan The Human Cost The Consequences of Insurgent Attacks in Afghanistan This 116-page report describes how Afghan insurgent groups, primarily Taliban and Hezb-e Islami forces, sharply escalated bombing and other attacks in 2006 and early 2007. The report is based on dozens of interviews with civilian victims of attacks and their families and a lengthy review of available documents and records. The report documents how, in violation of the laws of war, insurgent forces have repeatedly, directly targeted civilians for attack, and how even attacks directed at Afghan and international military forces have often been launched without due regard for civilian life. HRW Index No.: C1906 April 16, 2007 Download PDF, 974 KB, 125 pgs Purchase online Download E-Book Lessons in Terror Attacks on Education in Afghanistan This 142-page report documents 204 incidents of attacks on teachers, students and schools since January 2005. This number, which underestimates the severity of the crisis due to the difficulty of gathering data in Afghanistan, reflects a sharp increase in attacks as the security situation in many parts of the country has deteriorated. There appear to have been more attacks on the education system in the first half of 2006 than in all of 2005. Southern and southeastern Afghanistan face the most serious threat, but schools in other areas have also been attacked. HRW Index No.: C1806 July 11, 2006 Download PDF, 1320 KB, 144 pgs Purchase online Download E-Book By the Numbers Findings of the Detainee Abuse and Accountability Project This 27-page report presents findings of the Detainee Abuse and Accountability Project, a joint project of New York University’s Center for Human Rights and Global Justice, Human Rights Watch and Human Rights First. The project is the first comprehensive accounting of credible allegations of torture and abuse in U.S. custody in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantánamo. HRW Index No.: G1802 April 26, 2006 Download PDF, 248 KB, 29 pgs Purchase online Download E-Book Blood-Stained Hands Past Atrocities in Kabul and Afghanistan’s Legacy of Impunity This 133-page report is based on extensive research by Human Rights Watch over the last two years, including more than 150 interviews with witnesses, survivors, government officials, and combatants. It documents war crimes and human rights abuses during a particularly bloody year in Afghanistan’s civil war—the Afghan calendar year of 1371, from April 1992 to March 1993, following the collapse of the Soviet-backed Najibullah government in Kabul. HRW Index No.: 1-56432-334-X July 7, 2005 Download PDF, 571 KB, 135 pgs Purchase online The Road to Abu Ghraib This 38-page report examines how the Bush administration adopted a deliberate policy of permitting illegal interrogation techniques – and then spent two years covering up or ignoring reports of torture and other abuse by U.S. troops. The torture and mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison was the predictable result of the Bush administration's decision to circumvent international law. The Bush administration has denied having a policy to torture or abuse detainees. Human Rights Watch calls on President Bush to provide evidence for those denials by publicly releasing all relevant government documents. Human Rights Watch also urges the administration to detail the steps being taken to ensure that these abusive practices do not continue, and to prosecute vigorously all those responsible for ordering or condoning this abuse. June 9, 2004 Download PDF, 207 KB, 37 pgs Purchase online "Enduring Freedom" Abuses by U.S. Forces in Afghanistan This 59-page report is based on research conducted by Human Rights Watch in Afghanistan and Pakistan in 2003 and early 2004. Human Rights Watch documented cases of U.S. forces using military tactics, including unprovoked deadly force, during operations to apprehend civilians in uncontested residential areas—situations where law enforcement standards and tactics should have been used. Afghan forces deployed with U.S. forces have also mistreated persons during search and arrest operations and looted homes. The report also details mistreatment in U.S. detention facilities. HRW Index No.: C1603 March 8, 2004 Download PDF, 446 KB, 60 pgs Purchase online Afghanistan: Child Soldier Use 2003 A Briefing for the 4th UN Security Council Open Debate on Children and Armed Conflict The Afghan Transitional Administration continued recruiting and training a new Afghan National Army. As of August 2003, 4000 members had been recruited, although numbers were slated to increase to 70,000 by 2010. January 16, 2004 Killing You is a Very Easy Thing For Us Human Rights Abuses in Southeast Afghanistan Afghan warlords and political strongmen supported by the United States and other nations are engendering a climate of fear in Afghanistan that is threatening efforts to adopt a new constitution and could derail national elections scheduled for mid-2004. The report warns that violence, political intimidation, and attacks on women and girls are discouraging political participation and endangering gains made on women's rights in Afghanistan over the last year.The 101-page report documents army and police troops kidnapping Afghans and holding them for ransom in unofficial prisons; breaking into households and robbing families; raping women, girls and boys; and extorting shopkeepers and bus, truck and taxi drivers. The report also describes political organizers, journalists and media editors being threatened with death, arrested and harassed by army, police and intelligence agents. HRW Index No.: C1505 July 29, 2003 Download PDF Purchase online Fatally Flawed: Cluster Bombs and Their Use by the United States in Afghanistan During its air war in Afghanistan, the United States dropped nearly a quarter-million cluster bomblets that killed or injured scores of civilians, especially children, both during and after strikes, Human Rights Watch said in a new report.The 65-page report, Fatally Flawed: Cluster Bombs and Their Use by the United States in Afghanistan, says that although the United States made some efforts to reduce the civilian harm caused by its cluster bombs in Afghanistan, the fundamental problems of the weapon remained. Human Rights Watch found that the United States did not take all feasible precautions to avoid civilian casualties, as required by international humanitarian law, when it used cluster bombs in or near populated areas. U.S. cluster bombs also left an estimated 12,400 explosive duds—de facto antipersonnel landmines—that continue to take civilian lives to this day. HRW Index No.: G1407 December 18, 2002 Download PDF Purchase online "We Want to Live As Humans": Repression of Women and Girls in Western Afghanistan Afghan women and girls have suffered mounting abuses, harassment and restrictions of their fundamental human rights during 2002, Human Rights Watch said in a new report. The 52-page report, "We Want to Live As Humans": Repression of Women and Girls in Western Afghanistan, focuses on the increasingly harsh restrictions on women and girls imposed by Ismail Khan, a local governor in the west of Afghanistan who has received military and financial assistance from the United States. Human Rights Watch said that the situation in Herat was symptomatic of developments across the country, and that women and girls were facing new restrictions in several other regions as well.Human Rights Watch found that women's and girls' rights in Herat had improved since the fall of the Taliban, noting that many women and girls have been allowed to return to school and university, and to some jobs. But the report found that these advances were tempered by growing government repression of social and political life. Ismail Khan has censored women's groups, intimidated outspoken women leaders, and sidelined women from his administration in Herat. Restrictions on the right to work mean that many women will never be able to use their education. HRW Index No.: C1411 December 17, 2002 Also available in 
Download PDF Purchase online All Our Hopes Are Crushed Violence and Repression in Western Afghanistan The U.S.-led coalition forces are actively backing a warlord in western Afghanistan with a disastrous human rights record, Human Rights Watch said in a new report released today. The 51-page report, "All Our Hopes Are Crushed: Violence and Repression in Western Afghanistan" documents widespread abuses by the military, police and intelligence services under the command of Ismail Khan, the local governor. The abuses include arbitrary and politically-motivated arrests, intimidation, extortion and torture, as well as serious violations of the rights to free expression and association. HRW Index No.: C1407 November 5, 2002 Download PDF Purchase online Paying for the Taliban's Crimes: Abuses Against Ethnic Pashtuns in Northern Afghanistan Since the collapse of the Taliban regime in northern Afghanistan in November 2001, ethnic Pashtuns throughout northern Afghanistan have faced widespread abuses including killings, sexual violence, beatings, extortion, and looting. Pashtuns are being targeted because their ethnic group was closely associated with the Taliban regime, whose leadership consisted mostly of Pashtuns from southern Afghanistan. Directly implicated in many of the abuses are the three main ethnically-based parties and their militias in northern Afghanistan-the predominantly ethnic Uzbek Junbish-i Milly-yi Islami, the predominately ethnic Tajik Jamiat-e Islami, and the ethnic Hazara Hizb-i Wahdat-as well as non-aligned armed Uzbeks, Tajiks, and Hazaras who are taking advantage of the vulnerability of unprotected and selectively disarmed Pashtun communities. The international community needs to act to stop the violence against Pashtuns in northern Afghanistan, a task that for the foreseeable future cannot be handled solely by the Afghan authorities. Both the signatories of the Bonn Agreement and the United Nations Security Council have entrusted the U.N. with a great deal of responsibility in helping Afghanistan achieve a civilian representative government. The U.N. Security Council needs to expand the mandate of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) for Afghanistan to include areas outside Kabul, most urgently northern Afghanistan. Efforts at accountability for past and current abuses should be accelerated, and the capacity of United Nations agencies in Afghanistan and the interim government to monitor human rights abuses must be bolstered. The United Nations should work to identify vulnerable minority populations, including those who are displaced from their homes, and make particular efforts to ensure the delivery of humanitarian assistance to these communities. April 9, 2002 Download PDF Purchase online Closed Door Policy: Afghan Refugees in Pakistan and Iran The Human Rights Watch report, "Closed Door Policy: Afghan Refugees in Pakistan and Iran," cautions against a hasty repatriation of Afghan refugees while conditions in Afghanistan remain unstable. Human Rights Watch interviewed many refugees, including members of various ethnic groups, and women and girls, who fear continuing human rights abuses inside Afghanistan. The decades long Afghan refugee emergency did not end with the fall of the Taliban. There remain three and a half million refugees in Pakistan and Iran, the vast majority of whom arrived before the current armed conflict. Although one hundred forty thousand Afghans went home from Pakistan and Iran in the past six weeks, fifty thousand new refugees fled Afghanistan to Pakistan during the same time period. Refugees interviewed by Human Rights Watch in Pakistan described the human toll caused by that government's treatment of the refugee population: With borders closed, most refugees had to resort to dangerous and unofficial routes into Pakistan. Refugees were beaten at unofficial checkpoints when they could not afford to pay extortionate bribes. At official crossing points, families were beaten back, or languished in squalor without food, water or latrines-hoping to be let in. Once inside Pakistan, refugees were harassed and imprisoned because they lacked identity documents. They also endured beatings by Pakistani police when queuing for food in camps. 45 pp. 7.00 HRW Index No.: (G1402) February 27, 2002 Download PDF Purchase online Humanity Denied Systematic Violations of Women's Rights in Afghanistan Women in Afghanistan have suffered a catastrophic assault on their human rights during more than twenty years of war and under the repressive rule of the Taliban. Now, as women face further peril with the intensification of conflict following the September 11 attacks on the United States, the international community must make a firm commitment to uphold women's human rights in any post-conflict settlement. The impunity that has characterized Afghanistan's civil war must not also come to characterize Afghanistan's post-conflict reconstruction and development. Throughout Afghanistan's civil war, the major armed factions - primarily the Taliban and the United National Islamic Front for the Salvation of Afghanistan (commonly known as the "United Front" or by its previous name, the Northern Alliance), a coalition of mainly Tajik, Uzbek, and ethnic Hazara parties - have repeatedly committed serious abuses of international human rights and humanitarian law. Women have borne the brunt of this violence and discrimination. In the civil war, women have suffered massive, systematic, and unrelenting human rights abuses that have permeated every aspect of their lives. Both Taliban forces and forces now grouped in the United Front have sexually assaulted, abducted, and forcibly married women during the armed conflict, targeting them on the basis of both gender and ethnicity. Thousands of women have been physically assaulted and have had severe restrictions placed on their liberty and fundamental freedoms. 25pp, 3.00 HRW Index No.: (C1305) October 29, 2001 Download PDF Purchase online Afghanistan: Landmines Monitor 2001 In the year 2000, an average of about 88 mine and unexploded ordnance (UXO) casualties per month were recorded, a sharp decline from recorded casualties in 1999. In 2000, mine action organizations marked and mapped about 126 million square meters of mine and UXO contaminated land, and cleared about 104 million square meters of mine and UXO contaminated land. September 12, 2001 Crisis of Impunity: The Role of Pakistan, Russia, and Iran in Fueling the Civil War in Afghanistan The United Nations Security Council should impose a comprehensive embargo on all military assistance against all warring factions in Afghanistan, Human Rights Watch urged today. In this report, Human Rights Watch accused Pakistan, Iran, and Russia of providing military support to Afghan factions with a long record of committing gross abuses of human rights. Other states in the region have also contributed to the ongoing war. The 55-page report details the nature of military support provided to the warring parties; the major transit routes used to move arms and other equipment; the suppliers; the role of state and nonstate actors; and the response of the international community. Human Rights Watch conducted research on military assistance to the Taliban and the United Front over a two-year period, traveling to both Kabul and areas of Afghanistan under United Front control, as well as Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Pakistan, and interviewing government officials, members of the diplomatic community, military officers, civil servants, journalists, academics, and others. HRW Index No.: C1303 July 1, 2001 Download PDF Purchase online Afghanistan: Child Soldier Global Report 2001 From the Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers Children have been used as soldiers by all warring parties in Afghanistan’s two decade-old civil war. Forced and compulsory recruitment by the Taleban and Northern Alliance continues to be reported, despite international commitments to the contrary. Young recruits are drawn from within Afghanistan, the Afghan refugee diaspora and religious schools in Pakistan. June 12, 2001 Afganistan: Massacres of Hazaras in Afghanistan This report documents two massacres committed by Taliban forces in the central highlands of Afghanistan, in January 2001and May 2000. In both cases the victims were primarily Hazaras, a Shia Muslim ethnic group that has been the target of previous massacres and other serious human rights violations by Taliban forces. HRW Index No.: C1301 February 1, 2001 Purchase online Afghanistan: Landmine Monitor Report 2000 Key developments since March 1999: Landmine casualties continued to decline. An estimated five to ten people were injured or killed by mines every day in 1999, compared to an estimated ten to twelve people in 1998 and an estimated twenty to twenty-four people in 1993. In 1999, 110 square kilometers of land were cleared of mines and UXO, which constitutes 24% of the total of 465 square kilometers cleared since 1990. In 1999, 21,871 antipersonnel mines, 1,114 antitank mines, and 254,967 UXO were destroyed. Donors contributed US million to mine action in 1999. A total of 979,640 people received mine awareness education in 1999, and about 6 million since 1990. The opposition Northern Alliance continued to use antipersonnel mines. August 1, 2000 Afghanistan: The Massacre in Mazar-I Sharif On August 8, 1998, Taliban militia forces captured the city of Mazar-i Sharif in northwest Afghanistan, the only major city controlled by the United Front, the coalition of forces opposed to the Taliban. The fall of Mazar was part of a successful offensive that gave the Taliban control of almost every major city and important significant territory in northern and central Afghanistan. Within the first few hours of seizing control of the city, Taliban troops killed scores of civilians in indiscriminate attacks, shooting noncombatants and suspected combatants alike in residential areas, city street sand markets. Witnesses described it as a "killing frenzy" as the advancing forces shot at "anything that moved." Retreating opposition forces may also have engaged in indiscriminate shooting as they fled the city. Human Rights Watch believes that at least hundreds of civilians were among those killed as the panicked population of Mazar-i Sharif tried to evade the gunfire or escape the city. HRW Index No.: C1007 November 1, 1998 Purchase online |
  Lessons in Terror  
Related Material Films screened in the HRW International Film Festival 2002: Afghanistan Year 1380 2000: Jung: In the Land of the Mujaheddin | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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