West's ally guilty of horrific war crimes

13 Nov, 2001 01:04 PM3 mins to read

By ROBERT FISK

ISLAMABAD - The Northern Alliance's sudden victories in Afghanistan may be good news for the West but the bad news is not far behind: The Uzbek, Tajik and Hazara gunmen who make up this rag-tag army have a bloody reputation for torturing and executing prisoners which - if confirmed in coming days - will plunge the United States and Britain into a moral abyss.

Chilling stories of more than 100 pro-Taleban Pakistani fighters being gunned down after their surrender in Mazar-i-Sharif - and of alliance gunmen "roaming the streets" of the abandoned city - will come as a surprise to no one aware of the atrocities committed by America's new allies during the 1992-96 fighting in Kabul.

For the US and Britain, the behaviour of the Northern Alliance presents a grave problem.

We cannot disclaim responsibility for human-rights abuses by the alliance's gunmen, our "foot-soldiers" in Afghanistan; yet neither the Americans nor the British appear to have tried to control the army that they are now helping. Indeed, it seems they have not been able to prevent the alliance from entering Kabul.

A glance at the alliance's track record of rape, pillage and street executions in Kabul between 1992 and 1996 suggests that the so-called "allies" - the US, Britain and just about anyone else who wants to join in - have good reason to exert their influence over the newly victorious militiamen from the North of Afghanistan.

In Mazar-i-Sharif and Herat there are comparatively few Pashtun communities - which would traditionally favour the Taleban - but a bit further south the alliance will find itself among its ethnic enemies.

In 1997, Mazar's Hazara defenders killed more than 600 Taleban militiamen who had taken over the city and then massacred dozens of Pakistani students who had accompanied the Taleban into the region.

In later bloodbaths, thousands of Taleban prisoners were shot into mass graves, along with dozens more Pakistanis. A Northern Alliance turncoat, General Pahlawan Malik, subsequently executed 2000 Taleban prisoners of war who had been tortured and starved first.

Many were drowned in wells. Others met a more carefully planned death.

"At night when it was quiet and dark," one of Malik's generals was to recall, "we took about 150 Taleban prisoners, blindfolded them, tied their hands behind their backs and drove them in truck containers out to the desert.

"We lined them up 10 at a time, in front of holes in the ground, and opened fire. It took about six nights."

On other occasions, Taleban prisoners were locked inside containers during mid-summer; 1250 were deliberately asphyxiated in this way, their corpses dragged from the containers, blackened by the intense heat.

Could it happen again? There is no reason to believe that the alliance leaders have been taking any lessons in human rights. They have been receiving ammunition from Russia and logistics from the US.

Photographs in Pakistani papers showed alliance gunmen leading a small party of Western troops through the terrain of northern Afghanistan.

But it is highly unlikely that our soldiers have been distributing copies of the Geneva Convention to their new friends.

- INDEPENDENT

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