Afghanistan: war crimes amnesty prepares further atrocities

In February, both houses of the Afghan parliament in February approved an amnesty law granting immunity from prosecution for all those accused of war crimes committed during the past 30 years. Described as a measure to aid national “reconciliation,” the United Nations’ top representative in Afghanistan, Tom Koenigs, said the “initiative was welcome,” so long as “the right of individuals to seek justice with respect to individual crimes was not affected.”

In truth, the bill is a further assault on the democratic rights and aspirations of the Afghan people and a precursor to even greater atrocities against the population.

The implications of the measure can be seen in the composition of political forces on which the US puppet government relies.

When US-led forces invaded Afghanistan in 2001 and backed the militia of the Northern Alliance (United Islamic Front), it brought back into political prominence many figures from the country’s brutal civil war of the 1990s—some with even a bloodier past than the Taliban leaders they replaced.

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http://wsws.org/articles/2007/may2007/amne-m30.shtml