Network of Concerned Historians NCH Annual Report 2009 http://www.concernedhistorians.org INTRODUCTION The fifteenth Annual Report of the Network of Concerned Historians (NCH) contains news about the domain where history and human rights intersect, especially about the censorship of history and the persecution of historians around the globe, as reported by various human rights organizations and other sources. The fact that NCH presents this news does not imply that it shares the views and beliefs of the historians and others mentioned in it. This Annual Report and all previous Annual Reports were compiled by Antoon De Baets and revised by Ingrid Sennema. Please send any comments to <
[email protected]>. Please quote as: Network of Concerned Historians, Annual Report 2009 (http://www.concernedhistorians.org). Network of Concerned Historians, Annual Report 2009 (September 2009) 2 ____________________________________________________________ AFGHANISTAN Last Annual Report entry: 2008. In 2008, President Hamid Karzai’s government did little to implement the five-year Action Plan for Peace, Reconciliation and Justice (a part of the Afghanistan Compact officially initiated in December 2006). The legal status of an amnesty for war criminals, passed by parliament in 2007, was still unclear, but the debate was dominated by parliamentarians such as Abdul Rabb al Rasul Sayyaf, Burhanuddin Rabbani, and Taj Mohammad, all of whom have been implicated in war crimes. No effective accountability mechanism had been established and only a handful of those responsible for serious violations of human rights and international humanitarian law during three decades of conflict (1978–2008) had been brought to justice, mostly in other states under the principle of universal jurisdiction.