As Afghan authorities were still recovering from the worst day of violence since the U.S.-led military campaign ousted the Taliban from power in late 2001, Amnesty International Thursday issued a blistering report on the failure of the government's international backers to support efforts at reestablishing the rule of law.

"As the international community focuses on the reconstruction of Iraq, it must not rescind promises made to the Afghans," according to the report released in London.

"Afghanistan is still on the critical list, and its recovery is being hampered by the failure of the international community to provide long-term political and financial support to the justice sector."

Locals look at the damage to a bus after a bomb blast near Nadi Ali, in Afghanistan's southern Helmand province August 13, 2003. Afghanistan was reeling on August 14 from one of its bloodiest days since the fall of the Taliban as a local aid agency said two of its staff had been killed and three wounded in an ambush near the capital. The latest deaths on Wednesday, when a vehicle belonging to the Afghan Red Crescent Society (ARCS) was ambushed by guerrillas on motorcycles, took to at least 63 the number of people killed in the space of 24 hours starting late Tuesday. (Reuters)

The group said reestablishing respect for the rule of law was "an essential prerequisite for peace and security," but that funding for the reconstruction of a minimal criminal justice system had not been nearly adequate.

Moreover, according to the report, the international community's failure to provide effective security outside the capital, Kabul, has left the judiciary in most of the country dependent on local authorities, many of whom are warlords and tribal leaders. Women and girls are particularly subject to abuses, Amnesty said.

"[I]n many areas, individuals remain above the law because of their place in the community or because they are able to use threats and intimidation to influence court proceedings," the report stated.

The report comes amid a spate of bad news from Afghanistan. Two weeks ago, New York-based Human Rights Watch issued a report warning that Afghan warlords and political strongmen supported by the United States and other nations were creating a "climate of fear" in Afghanistan that is threatening efforts to adopt a new constitution and could derail national elections scheduled for mid-2004.

It also found that violence, intimidation and attacks on women and girls were having a drastic impact on their ability to participate in public and political life, and noted that the overall human rights situation in the country was "deteriorating."

The Brussels-based International Crisis Group (ICG) issued a report just last week warning that Pashtuns, Afghanistan's largest ethnic group, were becoming increasingly disaffected from the government of Interim President Hamid Kharzai and their own exclusion from influence. The result, according to the ICG as well as other recent published reports, was a rise in recruitment by the Taliban throughout the southern and central Pashtun belt.

Earlier this week, the United Nations announced that it was withdrawing its aid workers from much of the south due to insecurity, an insecurity that was dramatically underlined in a 24-hour period Tuesday and Wednesday in which at least 61 people were killed and dozens more wounded throughout the country, apparently as a result of Taliban attacks and bombings, and factional fighting.

The attacks came just two days after the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, in its first out-of-area deployment, assumed control of the International Security and Assistance Force (ISAF), the multinational peacekeeping operation in Kabul,

The picture painted by the Amnesty report, although mainly focused on the justice system, does little to relieve the bad news out of Afghanistan.

Throughout the country, according to the report, accused individuals, including children, are being denied the right to a fair trial, and the problem of arbitrary detentions are widespread, it said.

The Afghan police have not been provided with the equipment and training necessary to investigate crimes, and "routinely" resort to torture.

Many judges lack the necessary qualifications to apply the law and appear unaware of even basic elements of due process, while "economic influences have also led to a widespread problem of corruption."

Women and girls are particularly ill-served by the system as it exists today, the report said. "The system is failing to protect victims of rape, domestic violence and forced underage marriage," it said. They are also being prosecuted for engaging in consensual sexual activity--"in some areas the police randomly pick up girls and women and subject them to forced virginity tests," it said.

In one case documented in the report, an 18-year-old girl accused of refusing to marry her cousin in defiance of her family's wishes was told by the judge that she "should be stoned," while another, aged 14, received three years' imprisonment for "running away" from the abusive husband she was forced to marry.

Much of the problem is based on a lack of resources to upgrade the quality and training of judges and other key posts in the justice system, according to the report, which noted that the international community has failed to accord the problem the priority it deserves.

Copyright © 2003 OneWorld.net.

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