Word: militiaization
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...worst offenders, alleges Samimi, is Abdul Rashid Dostum, an ethnic-Uzbek warlord who helped in the triumphant ousting of the Taliban in 2001, when, backed by U.S. special forces, he led hundreds of men on horseback to liberate the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif. Dostum's militia is accused of that war's worst human-rights atrocity, in which hundreds of his captives suffocated to death after having been locked inside shipping containers. He denies the charges. Samimi is not concerned about Dostum's wartime activities--few if any of Afghanistan's leaders can boast clean hands after three...
...mobile phone. But the 2 1/2-year-old is not her daughter. She is a rape victim, one of scores that Samimi, a researcher with the Afghanistan Human Rights Organization, has documented in the country's northern provinces over the past year. Witnesses to the child's abduction by a local militia commander have had their rape claim backed up by a nearby hospital, but the district police chief maintains that the child fell on a stick. The chief's objectivity in the matter, however, is hardly assured, given that he once worked with the militia commander...
Though they have largely relinquished their tanks and heavy artillery, several warlords have been able to maintain their core militias in the form of private security companies, political parties or loose business networks. Many derive their income from lucrative cross-border smuggling routes. Allegations of land grabs, rape, murder and kidnapping are common. Human Rights Watch and Afghan human-rights organizations like Samimi's have documented extortion rackets operated by former warlords and militia-run prisons where captives are held for ransom. Afghan journalists covering these crimes have been harassed by police or thrown in jail. In 2007, Samimi received...
...warlords to shrapnel lodged in an artery: Infection is a risk, he says, but pulling it out could be even worse. "There are so many other things we have to worry about, so why go and open this can of worms?" he asks. In some areas, tackling the militias can backfire. In the northeastern province of Badakhshan, local commander Nazir Mohammad runs the provincial capital, Faizabad, as one big protection racket. Foreign humanitarian organizations that don't hire his security services face attacks. When organizers at the German-run regional military-assistance base attempted to dismiss his men because...
This is not the first time warlords have held power in Afghanistan. After the 1989 withdrawal of Soviet troops, rival mujahedin groups that had united to drive out the foreigners turned on one another in a brutal civil war. The government collapsed, and militia commanders were able to seize territory and terrorize the population. The Taliban capitalized on widespread disgust with the warlords' savagery, coming to power in 1996. After Sept. 11, the U.S. relied on the northern warlords and their militias to help oust the Taliban. Many of those leaders were given prominent positions when the new Afghan government...