“As the bloody imbroglio of Iraq has preoccupied the world’s headlines” — reports Sunday’s Scotsman — Afghanistan is tearing at the seams, “to the extent that some officials in Washington and London are beginning to warn of a descent into bloodshed that would rival the brutality of Baghdad.”

An explosive cocktail of feuding tribal warlords, insurgents, the remnants of the Taliban, and under-performing Afghan institutions has left the fledgling democracy on the verge of disintegration, according to analysts and senior officers.

UK military planners and analysts warn that 5,500 extra UK troops may be needed.

Meanwhile, the U.S. is blaming President Hamid Karzai’s failure of leadership for controlling poppy production at the same time its troops are courting drug lords:

Blame the puppet: Following Karzai’s condemnation of Afghan prisoner abuse and demand for more control of U.S. forces yesterday, today’s New York Times says it was shown an internal cable sent by the U.S. Embassy in Afghanistan to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice last month. The cable expresses concern “at the slow pace of poppy eradication,” and says President Hamid Karzai “has been unwilling to assert strong leadership.”

Tit-for-tat? A diversionary story following the NYT’s series of stories on horrific abuse and murder of Afghani prisoners by U.S. troops?

The Scotsman‘s two stories today — The forgotten conflict and Secret UK troops plan for Afghan crisis — focus on the deteriorating situation throughout Afghanistan. However, while UK military planners urge an uptick in UK troops from the current number of 500 (!) to 5,500 — the entire coalition force numbers 8,000 — “American military experts last night claimed an increase in the British presence in Afghanistan would inevitably threaten the numbers committed to Iraq.”

If you need further proof that Iraq has been a drain on other worldwide efforts:

[L]ooking ahead to an uncertain future, Tony Blair and George Bush are contemplating a “complete strategic failure” in Afghanistan.

Such a worst-case scenario, if it proves accurate, presents a brutal dilemma: either the Coalition reneges on the grand promises delivered more than three years ago and abandons the Afghans to their fate; or they take the challenge head-on, in the certain knowledge that this would demand a huge increase in military activity and all the dangers that would entail.

Beyond many factors — such as the failure to deliver monies committed to Afghan redevelopment (at the current rate of delivery, “it will take more than 90 years to spend the $27.5bn the government says is needed to rebuild the country”) — there is the gorilla-in-the-room: U.S. policy and implementation.

Dr. Cherif Bassiouni — whose ouster I diaried in “U.N. Rights Monitor Ousted Under U.S. Pressure (Horrific Abuse)” on April 25, 2005 — “spent a year in Afghanistan interviewing Afghans, international agency staff and the Afghan Human Rights Commission,” writes Amy Goodman.

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Dr. Bassiouni on the poppy problem, which The Scotsman writes today puts Afghanistan “on the verge of becoming a narcotics state”:

The administration leaks cables to the NYT, but its own policies have brought back poppy production, which now produces 90% of the world’s supply. Dr. Bassiouni — a professor of law at DePaul University, the author of 27 books on a wide range of legal issues, and president of the International Human Rights Law Institute — told Democracy Now!‘s Amy Goodman on April 28:

[W]arlords have converted into drug lords. They control the drug economy or give it protection. It brings them over $2 billion a year in income. They have 80,000 men under arms. And they’re literally a power within the country.

For the U.S. to have allied itself to these people for political military strategic purposes was a judgment that many in time will certainly dispute, particularly because of the dangers of this alliance, and the fact that it’s not likely to produce much of the desired benefits that the U.S. wants.

During the last 25 years, many of these warlords have emerged as having committed major atrocities, crimes against humanity, war crimes.

Because they have been useful to U.S. forces when they invaded Afghanistan in 2003, they – many of the leaders were basically rewarded with plum positions, and above all, they were rewarded with impunity for their past crimes.

In time, their help may not have proven to be that useful to the U.S. In fact, the elusive Bin Laden has still not been captured, and his al Qaeda leadership, presumably still in Afghanistan, has not been captured.

Dr. Bassiouni — who was not only ousted, but whose position of United Nations human rights investigator in Afghanistan was eliminated by the United States — points to the outcome of the U.S. policy towards warlords/druglords:

The result of that is a terrible human rights situation in Afghanistan, particularly for weaker elements of society: women, children, the handicapped.

The justice system is totally inefficient, corrupt. The prison conditions there are medieval.

I have seen not hundreds, but thousands of prisoners live in incredibly inhuman conditions. [Remember: He just spent a full year in Afghanistan investigating human rights.]

Prisons are sometimes made of a metal container, a small metal container in which 12 people are put in there. No toilets, no running water, no heat in the cold when it gets down to 10 or 0 degrees. People in medieval shackles, hand and feet with a metal bar between them.

All of these situations and instances are matters that I brought up to the government, and I must say that the government of President Karzai has always been very responsive and desirous of making changes, but they don’t have the resources, and that’s not really one of their top priorities.

So, that’s one aspect, and that’s why a human rights monitor representing the United Nations, with experience and with a certain personal prestige and the prestige of the United Nations, is important to be there. Whether it’s me or somebody else is immaterial.

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Dr. Bassiouni, in his U.N. report, on human rights progress, which The Scotsman writes today ” has been undermined by arbitrary arrests and the deaths of several detainees, as well as continuing outrage over Guantanamo Bay.”

In the interim report, the independent expert highlighted the special role of the Coalition forces as a role model for managing security issues and militarized authority in Afghanistan. When these forces directly engage in practices that violate or ignore international human rights and international humanitarian law, they undermine the national project of establishing a legal basis for the use of force. The impact of abusive practices and the failure to rectify potential problems create a dangerous and negative political environment that threatens the success of the peace process and overall national reconstruction.

– From Section VIII (“Coalition Forces”) of the United Nations “Report [PDF format] of the independent expert, M. Cherif Bassiouni, on the situation of human rights in Afghanistan”

Dr. Bassiouni told Democracy Now!‘s Amy Goodman on April 28:

Now, the next issue is the fact that the United States and the coalition forces consider themselves above and beyond the reach of the law.

They feel they — that human rights don’t apply to them, the international conventions don’t apply to them, nobody can ask them what they’re doing, and nobody can hold them accountable. And that type of position is simply untenable.

And then as one goes further into it, these forces have acted in a manner which maybe in their mind is justified, but in a country where now you have a constitution and presumably a rule of law, you simply cannot allow foreign troops to go anywhere they want, break into any houses at any time of the day, arrest anybody, take them to any prison detention facilities without going through any legal process and without being accountable.

So, that’s the essential problem.

Now, the Defense Department and the U.S. government take the position that nobody can ask the U.S. government what it’s doing in Afghanistan. And I take the very simple position, which I think is principle and principled and valid, that that’s not really true.

If the United States are there, and we’re not questioning why they’re there, and we’re not questioning what they’re doing, that’s a political judgment. But how you behave with ordinary citizens, that’s something that is questionable.

Who helped silence Dr. Bassiouni?

AMY GOODMAN: Professor Bassiouni, was there anyone in particular at the United Nations who was gunning for you, who was trying to force you out?

CHERIF BASSIOUNI: Well, no. I think that with the exception of the United States, which sort of really dug in for the non-renewal of the mandate, then I don’t really think that it was anything personal.


AMY GOODMAN: And who at the U.N. — in the U.S. was doing that?


CHERIF BASSIOUNI: Well, the U.S. ambassador to the U.N. in Geneva is a man by the name of Kevin Moley. [The UN Human Rights Commission ended his mandate at a recent meeting in Geneva.]

He’s one of the owners of the Texas Rangers, and I think he’s the one who brought in George W. Bush as a part owner of the Texas Rangers before President Bush ran for Governor of Texas.

So, he is a close, personal family relationship. He’s very much of a Texan entrepreneur, and I think his threshold of sympathy for human rights issues is probably very low, and to him this was just a question of total support for the administration, and anybody who in any way asked questions or criticized was — fell in the category of you’re either with me or against me.

And I think that’s the way he saw it and that’s the way he directed his staff to make it a point with all of the other delegations at the commission that the U.S. is adamantly opposed to the renewal of the mandate.

I appreciate the British government’s obvious concern about the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan, and hope that its highlighting the situation will have an effect in Washington, D.C.

But I’m not hopeful. Our dictatorship answers to no one, listens to no one, knows no one but itself.

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