The Honorable Colin Powell
Secretary of State
U.S. Department of State
2201 C Street, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20520
Dear Secretary Powell,
As the frontline in northern Afghanistan shifts to the outskirts of Mazar-i Sharif, Human Rights Watch is concerned about the risk of ethnically-targeted violence and other abuses against civilians in the area. We believe the United States should use its influence with the United Front (Northern Alliance) to ensure that their forces do not engage in reprisal killings, indiscriminate shelling, and other serious violations of international humanitarian law.
Both the city of Mazar-i Sharif and the surrounding countryside are ethnically mixed, with substantial Uzbek, Tajik, Turkmen, Hazara, and Pashtun communities. Ethnic relations in the region have been polarized by the rule of ethnically-based parties, particularly that of the Taliban. After retaking Mazar-i Sharif in August 1998, Taliban forces killed about 2000 mostly ethnic Hazara civilians. The Taliban-installed governor publicly called the Hazaras, who are Shi'a Muslims, "infidels" and threatened them with death if they did not convert to Sunni Islam or leave Afghanistan. Hundreds of Hazara civilians fled the city. Since 1998, the Taliban have also allowed farmers and pastoralists from communities that are locally aligned with them, particularly Pashtuns, to encroach on land cultivated by minority ethnic groups south of Mazar-i Sharif.
These abuses may provide motivation for reprisal actions by United Front forces against local Pashtun civilians, Taliban prisoners, and others perceived to be associated with Taliban rule. In this regard, the United Front's past record, especially in this part of Afghanistan, is reason for great concern. In May 1997, United Front forces under the command of Gen. Abdul Malik Pahlawan killed an estimated 3,000 Taliban prisoners in Mazar-i Sharif, taking some to the desert to be shot and throwing others down wells and blowing them up with grenades. Pahlawan himself is no longer a member of the United Front. However, other commanders who remain with the Front amassed a deplorable record of attacks on civilians between the fall of the Najibullah regime in 1992 and the Taliban's capture of Kabul in 1996. To date, not a single Afghan commander-of the Taliban or United Front-has been held accountable for violations of international humanitarian law. This has fed the cycle of impunity and encouraged further such abuses.
Although the United States has said that it is not coordinating its military strategy with the United Front, its targeting of Taliban military installations - and in some cases, front-line positions - has given a strategic advantage to the United Front. The United States should use the influence that it now has with the United Front to impress on its leaders the need to observe basic human rights and to make clear that they will be held accountable for any abuses that might occur. Not only would reprisals in Mazar-i Sharif discredit the anti-Taliban alliance and those who have enabled its victory, it will herald a renewal of the indiscriminate violence that paved the way for the Taliban taking power.
We therefore call on you to urge the United Front forces advancing on Mazar-i Sharif to respect the rights of civilians and other non-combatants, to refrain from reprisals, and to refrain from indiscriminate shelling.
Sincerely,
Tom Malinowski
Washington Advocacy Director
Joost Hiltermann
Executive Director, Arms Division
