Report of mass Afghan graves won't be probed, envoy says

U.N. official cites danger and weakness of government

Washington Post
August 28, 2002
By Pamela Constable

The U.N. special representative in Afghanistan said today that the weakness of the Afghan government and the risk to investigators or witnesses make it almost impossible to investigate reports that there are mass graves in northern Afghanistan.

The envoy, Lakhdar Brahimi, was speaking about a report in Newsweek magazine that mass graves discovered in May near the northern city of Shebergan could contain as many as 1,000 bodies of Taliban prisoners who suffocated in sealed trucks last November while being transported by Afghan militiamen from Kunduz province to a militia prison at Shebergan, 200 miles to the west.

Afghan authorities have said they are willing to cooperate in any probe by international human rights groups or other foreign agencies, but they have not initiated an investigation. President Hamid Karzai sent a delegation to the area several days ago, but the result of the trip has not been made public.

A team of U.N. investigators confirmed the existence of mass graves in the town of Dasht-i-Leili in May and exhumed three bodies, which they said showed signs of suffocation. After the Newsweek article appeared last week, Brahimi's office here called for a "full-fledged investigation" of the site, although it said the safety of any witnesses must first be ensured.

The envoy's comments today, however, made clear that, in his view, the political volatility of the issue inside Afghanistan is too extreme at this point to conduct any probe.

"I don't think the government has the capacity" to carry out an investigation, Brahimi told reporters. "We have a responsibility to find out what happened, but our responsibility to the living has to take precedence. We can't take the risk of putting anyone's life in danger."

The deaths allegedly occurred during the transport of prisoners by a militia under the command of Gen. Abdurrashid Dostum, who still controls the region and whose influence has not been challenged by the Karzai government.

Dostum has made no public comments on the allegations. But the Afghan defense minister, Mohammed Fahim, a rival of Karzai's and a powerful ally of Dostum's in the Northern Alliance militia coalition, said last week he consulted with regional authorities and doubted the reports were true.

Brahimi's remarks appeared to confirm a belief among Afghans that Karzai, who commands no troops of his own and has been forced to share power with Fahim, Dostum and other former militia leaders since December, is not in a position to challenge Dostum despite domestic and international concern over the massacre reports.

"Politics is the art of the possible," Brahimi said shortly before leaving for an extended trip to the United States. "Afghanistan has many problems. . . . There is no judicial system you can expect to face up to a situation like this and no proper police to protect people. Decisions must be made."

Brahimi said in some cases accountability must take "second place to peace and stability. You can choose to please yourself and make statements of principle, or you can see . . . in a given moment and place what is possible."

He compared Afghanistan to the situations in Chile and South Africa over the past decade, where abuses by repressive governments were not prosecuted by subsequent democratic administrations in the interest of preserving stability. In both countries, commissions were established to determine the truth about past abuses, but not to take action against the culprits.

The Newsweek report described Dostum's militiamen cramming Taliban fighters who had surrendered into sealed trucks for the trip to Shebergan. The report said many prisoners suffocated slowly in the intense heat and that drivers were beaten by Dostum's troops for trying to allow the captives to breathe. It said between 900 and 1,000 prisoners may have arrived dead and been buried in mass graves in Dasht-i-Leili.

The report also said numerous U.S. Special Forces troops were in the area at the time, but it did not establish whether they were aware of the prisoners' deaths. The Pentagon said Monday that U.S. forces reported they were unaware of what happened to the prisoners.

The U.S. forces were allied with Dostum's troops, and more broadly with the entire Northern Alliance coalition, in ousting the Taliban movement from power last November.

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