WASHINGTON -- Throughout its campaign to immunize U.S. military peacekeepers
from the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court, the Bush administration
has defended its commitment to identify and prosecute perpetrators of mass murder
and other war criminals.
As evidence, administration officials cite their support for the ad hoc tribunals
for Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia, their placement of a career lawyer from
the Defense Department as lead prosecutor for the new Sierra Leone tribunal and
their diplomatic efforts to establish an effective tribunal in Cambodia.
And yet in Afghanistan, where the United States has had the greatest power
to ensure investigation of possible mass atrocities and see that the guilty are
brought to justice, until now they have done nothing.
For months evidence has accumulated that many of the Taliban fighters who surrendered
after the fall of Mazar-e Sharif and Kunduz last November were killed by Northern
Alliance forces under the control of Abdul Rashid Dostum. Eyewitnesses report
that the prisoners died of asphyxiation after being transported in sealed containers
to the Shebergan prison.
The number of dead is not known. The current issue of Newsweek, citing the
accounts of survivors and drivers of the container trucks, estimates hundreds
or even thousands of deaths.
The clues to finding the truth lie in mass graves near the prison. A comprehensive
forensic investigation could reveal the number of dead, who they are and how they
died - and lead to a determination of who was responsible. In January, two investigators
from Physicians for Human Rights discovered a mass grave site, and in February
our forensic scientists found fresh remains. In early March we shared the information
about our discoveries with the State and Defense Departments, as well as with
the United Nations and the Afghan government. We urgently sought American military
protection of the sites from the high risk of tampering, and we asked for an immediate
and thorough investigation of the graves.
Only the United States is in a position to ensure the security essential to
allowing an investigation to go forward. On moral grounds, an especially compelling
reason exists for U.S. action: The perpetrator of the alleged war crime is America's
military ally.
The administration's response has been inadequate. The Pentagon has refused
to provide security for an investigation, much less conduct one. It has even refused
to acknowledge that anything untoward may have taken place.
The United States has often warned those who commit war crimes that somewhere,
somehow, they will be discovered and pursued.
The lesson of postwar Bosnia, Rwanda and East Timor has been that stability
cannot occur without accountability for missing persons and human rights violations.
Here the evidence of war crimes is sitting in those graves, waiting to reveal
its truth. Action is essential before the evidence is destroyed.
The Bush administration this week promised to move forward. To be most effective,
it should initiate a Security Council resolution to form a United Nations commission
of inquiry that would conduct a credible and independent investigation of the
prisoners' fate. Otherwise the United States risks the very political manipulation
of war crimes investigations that it claims (erroneously, I believe) is a flaw
in the International Criminal Court.
Multinational forces should provide the security and the Bush administration
should provide the resources needed to enable such an investigation to succeed.
U.S. allies may be innocent, but they may be guilty of mass murder. It is time
to find out.
The writer is executive director of Physicians
for Human Rights.
Copyright © 2002 the International Herald Tribune
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