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Number 2, July 31, 2009 A publication of Afghanistan watch Introduction You are reading the second biweekly edition of Haqiqat/The Truth. Like the first edition, it includes excerpts from news, article and reports in the Afghan media related to four main issues: transitional justice, reconciliation and negotiation with the anti‐government forces, corruption and elections transparency. During the last two weeks, negotiations with the anti‐government forces attracted a lot of attention followed by transitional justice, or broadly speaking the question of how to deal with past crimes. The following key developments are included in this edition: Transitional Justice: As in the previous edition, most of the discussion related to past crimes and transitional justice focused on the killing of Taliban prisoners in Dasht‐e Laili in late 2001. In a press conference, Dr. Sima Samar, Chairperson of the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission and Kei Eide the UN Special Representative to Afghanistan expressed concerns that alleged war criminals are on the final list of presidential and provincial councils elections. Another interesting development took place at an elections gathering in Helmand in which a participant started throwing his shoes at Shahnawaz Tanai, a presidential candidate and former minister of defense in the 1980s and accused him of committed crimes in the past. Reconciliation and Negotiation with the Anti‐Government Forces: This section covers news and articles related to plans of presidential candidates and international calls to negotiate with the Taliban and other anti‐government forces. It appears there is a shared agreement amongst the candidates on the need for negotiation and political settlement. Karzai has promised to call a national jirga to initiate the process. Elections Transparency: Concerns related to lack of transparency in the electoral process and exploitation of public resources in campaigning for Hamid Karzai have consistently appeared in the Afghan electronic and print media over the past two weeks. Political commentators and journalists have talked about potential chances for fraud and irregularities. Corruption: Most candidates have highlighted corruption in the Afghan state agencies as a major national issue. Most of them present it as a major failure of President Karzai over the past eight years. Dr. Ashraf Ghani consistently describes the government as the fifth most corrupt in the world. News and articles related to a new government strategy to fight corruption are also included. Some authors have pointed fingers at foreigners accusing them of being more corrupt than the Afghan government. The Truth is a bi‐weekly publication of the Afghanistan Watch supported by the International Centre for Transitional Justice (ICTJ). It is intended to provide a snapshot of how the Afghan media and candidates for Presidential and Provincial Councils Elections debate and approach these key issues facing the country: transitional justice, corruption, elections transparency and negotiationsPURL: with the https://www.legal-tools.org/doc/2cdb36/ armed insurgents. If you wish to subscribe please send an email to [email protected] or visit our website: www.watchafghanistan.org Inside This Issue Transitional Justice Lack of a Clear Strategy towards the Taliban… 10 Some Afghanistan Elections Candidates Have … 3 Whoever Cooperates With Taliban His House… 11 Ceasefire an Opportunity for Taliban American Forces were Involved in Killing Taliban 3 11 Pressures Mounting on Karzai 3 Negotiation with Taliban, Repetition of Failed … 11 A Legal View on Obama’s Order on Investigation… 3 The Taliban War Rules Book by Mullah Omar 11 International Community Concerned that… 4 Elections Transparency A Late Return by United Nations on … 4 Government Resources Used in Campaigning… 12 Transitional Justice 4 Karzai Receives Financial Support from Iran 12 Human Rights, a Forgotten Cause 4 Thousands of Eligible Voters Not Registered 12 Election Nominees Accused Of… 5 Analysis of Problems Facing Elections 12 What If Criminals Are Introduced To You? 5 Karzai, Buying Votes with Money 12 The Human Rights Commission Must Provide … 5 The Integrity of Election Is In Doubt 13 Human Rights and Citizenship Values Forgotten… 5 Eight Presidential Candidates Are … 13 Does the Human Rights Book have One Page? 6 Some Candidates Protest against … 13 Selective Approach towards Human Rights 6 Government Officials Campaigning for… 13 Election and a New Chapter of … 6 Twenty Polling Stations under… 13 There will be Frauds in the Elections A Troubled Future without Human Rights 6 14 Shoes Thrown at Thanai for Criticizing Karzai 7 Corruption Failure to Prosecute War Criminals 7 Ashraf Ghani Requested Public Support in the… 15 The Role of Warlords in Electoral Campaigns … 7 Administrative Corruption Causes Political … 15 Negotiation with armed Opposition Protest against Misappropriation of Aids 15 United Nations Called on Taliban to Participate… 8 Foreigners are Indulged in Misappropriation… 15 Taliban Supports Karzai 8 Herat Mayor Sentenced to Five Years in Prison 16 Negotiation Should Be Part of the Strategy of … 8 10 million dollars still missing in Ministry of … 16 Negotiation with the Taliban Requires Pakistan’s … 8 Extensive Program Launched to Fight … 16 I Will Bring Taliban behind Negotiation Table 9 Agreement Inked for Implementation of … 16 What Are The Objectives Behind… 9 Foreigners More Corrupt than Afghan … 16 A Stronger Emphasis on Negotiation with the… 9 Why Karzai Declined to Participate in the Debate 17 Pervez Musharaf: Senior Taliban Figures Ready to… 10 Government Officials Should Not Leave the … 17 A National Loya Jirga for Talks with the Taliban … 10 Why Karzai Did Not Participate in the Debate? 17 We Want Peace and Nothing More 10 Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai Called the Current … 17 Regional Peace Jirga to be Held Again 10 Establishing a Special Court after Eight Years? 17 After the Elections We Will Talk with the Taliban 10 Karzai the Symbol of Corruption and Ghani its … 18 PURL: https://www.legal-tools.org/doc/2cdb36/ No 2, July 31, 2009 Transitional Justice to collect evidences about the Dostum case and it is probable that he orders a thorough investigation of the issue. However, the US pursues its own objective by opening only one case of war crimes in the country on the eve of elections in Afghanistan. Probably, their intention is to weaken a particular candidate or send a green signal to the Taliban This investigation has created more fears than hope among the people of Afghanistan and has raised the question about the intentions of US officials in the country. It appears that US is not interested in implementation of transitional justice and prosecution of all past war criminals in the country. ـــــــــــــــــــــــ ـــــــــــــــــــــــ A Legal View on Obama’s Order on Investigation of Some Afghanistan Elections Candidates Have the Killings of Taliban in the North Backgrounds in War 8am Daily, No 634, Sunday, July 19, 2009 BBC Persian website, Saturday, May 26, 2009 When Barrak Obama ordered the investigation into the killing of The Election Commission of Afghanistan has announced that Taliban fighters in the north in 2001, the attentions focused on the current laws allow individuals with past involvement in the Dostum who is a former member of the National Front and has war to stand for the elections. recently entered into an alliance with Mr. Karzai. Dostum was The Head of Election Commission said: in order to impose more commander of anti‐Taliban forces in the north in 2001. restrictions we requested the National Assembly and the Does the order by Obama carry any legal responsibility for the Ministry of Justice determine new conditions for presidential Afghans that were involved in the war in the north at that time? elections candidates. But the Ministry of Justice replied and said that currently laws do not permit new conditions. However, Let us answer this question according to both internal and according to him, the issue is still being debated in legislative international laws. According to the national laws, the National committees of the Senate and the House of Representatives. He Amnesty Charter passed by the National Assembly and signed said: In our communication with the National Assembly we have into effect by the President rules out any kind of responsibility asked for introduction of eight new conditions. This included related to internal conflicts during past several years. that a presidential candidate must hold, at least, a bachelors Hence we can conclude that Afghan citizens according to this degree and that he/she must not have committed crimes and law are free of any responsibility for their involvement of what acts of treason against the nation. occurred in north. However, the issue is different if seen according to the ـــــــــــــــــــــــ ـــــــــــــــــــــــ American Forces were Involved in Killing Taliban international law. Many experts of international law believe that perpetrators of internationally recognized crimes are Nukhost Daily, No 106, Wednesday July 15, 2009 subject to international prosecution. These crimes include Following the order of the President of the United States for airplane hijacking, piracy, violation of the laws of war, genocide, investigation into the killing of thousands of Taliban fighters in and etc. According to experts of international law, perpetrators the north of country in 2001, the government authorities in of these crimes are indictable in all countries and that they can Afghanistan say the killing took place during joint operations by not hide their personal responsibilities in commission of these Afghan and US forces. Siamak Hirawi, a Deputy of the crimes as political officials at the national level. President’s Spokesman said: “any investigation into this Abdul Rashid Dostum and Mohamamd Mohaqiq both long‐time particular case must start in the US and involve the US forces.” allies have entered into an alliance with Karzai. They are both campaigning for Karzai narrowing the range of decisions the ـــــــــــــــــــــــ ـــــــــــــــــــــــ President can make about Dostum.
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