topic by
John Calvin
5/13/2002 (19:09) |
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Conditions for jailed Taliban 'like Auschwitz'
By Justin Huggler
14 May 2002
Thousands of former Taliban fighters are being held prisoner by a US ally in Afghanistan in conditions that resemble Auschwitz, a European Union envoy said yesterday.
In the prison at Shebarghan, in northern Afghanistan, Klaus-Peter Klaiber, the EU's envoy, came face to face with the reality of the war in Afghanistan.
'The people have nothing on their bones any more,' Mr Klaiber told the Agence France Presse news agency. 'They are being treated like cattle, crammed into tents. The kitchen, you cannot imagine. There were ghost-like figures just stirring soup.'
More than 2,000 former Taliban fighters are held at the camp in Shebarghan, the main base of General Abdul Rashid Dostum, one of the most powerful warlords in Afghanistan and an important US ally in the war against the Taliban.
Controversy about prisoners in General Dostum's care is nothing new. In November last year, at least 150 non-Afghan Taliban volunteers being held by General Dostum's forces were killed when America reacted to a prison revolt by ordering air strikes on the Qalai Janghi fortress in Mazar-i-Sharif where the prisoners were penned.
Like the fighters who died in Qalai Janghi, many of the 2,000 men being held at Shebarghan were captured at the end of the siege of Kunduz, among the last two Taliban strongholds in Afghanistan. The Independent was refused entry to the prison in Shebarghan in November last year, but Mr Klaiber was more successful. What he found was horrifying. Concern has been expressed about the condition of captured Taliban being held at an American base on Cuba, but Guantanamo is nothing to Shebarghan.
The men being held there are being fed on thin soup, and some 400 are so malnourished they are being given emergency rations from the Red Cross. Some are held in rooms only 1.5 metres square.
The prisoners at Shebarghan are ethnic Pashtuns, who dominated the Taliban. Now Afghanistan's other ethnic groups, including General Dostum's Uzbeks, are wreaking their revenge, often on innocent civilians, women and children. The US and its allies have done nothing to stop it, and continue to claim the war has made life better for ordinary Afghans.
Mr Klaiber called for urgent action yesterday, apparently suggesting Hamid Karzai, Afghanistan's interim prime minister, who is a Pashtun, could intervene. But Mr Karzai's authority does not extend to Shebarghan, where General Dostum rules the roost. Mr Karzai and the interim government rule only in Kabul, and there only by the grace of Western peace-keepers. Some of the prisoners at Shebarghan are Pakistanis. They may be the lucky ones: talks are under way on repatriating them. More than 200 Pakistani prisoners flew home over the weekend. A spokesman for General Dostum said: 'This is not the time to ask for funds for the prison. We need funds for schools and hospitals.' He suggested the general might be amenable to freeing most of the prisoners.
Many Afghans are starving to death outside the prison walls. This is a country where people eat grass to stay alive, where people are so poor they sell their children. Promises of aid from the West have not materialised, now that Afghanistan is out of the news.
* American special forces have killed five suspected al-Qa'ida or Taliban militants and detained 32 others in response to being shot at during a raid in Dehrawd near Kandahar, southern Afghanistan, military officials said yesterday.
The Independent
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