CIA-backed Afghan forces conducted ‘war crimes’, claims new report

In one attack armed men burst into a home in the middle of night, put four brothers into separate rooms, their hands bound, then shot them in the head and heart

Afghan security personnel arrive at the site of a suicide attack in Jalalabad, east of Kabul, on 25 October 2019 (AP)

Paramilitary forces backed by the CIA have carried out summary executions, abductions and systematic abuse of civilians “amounting to war crimes” in Afghanistan, a new report has claimed.

In the attacks, which often took place during notorious night raids, people have been dragged from their bed and shot dead, and prisoners taken, never to be seen again. The armed groups called “Strike Teams” are also accused of targeting medical staff who have provided assistance to Taliban fighters and punishing residents who had been forced to help the insurgents.

The report by Human Rights Watch (HRW) which draws upon coverage by Afghan and international media, NGOs and think tanks as well as its own research, calls for the disbandment of the militias, a thorough investigation into their activities and the payment of compensation to their victims.

The study, called “They’ve shot many like this: Abusive night raids by CIA-backed Afghan strike forces”, was the latest recent compilation of allegations of abuses committed by Afghan government forces.

In December last year The New York Times published a report focusing on the activities of the Strike Teams, and in April this year the UN published findings which showed that deaths due to actions of the army and police outstripped those by insurgents in the first quarter of the year.

The HRW report, in which dozens of local residents and witnesses to raids throughout Afghanistan were interviewed, states “these forces who have been responsible for extrajudicial executions and enforced disappearances, indiscriminate airstrikes, attacks on medical facilities, and other violations of international humanitarian law, or the laws of war.

“They are illustrative of a larger pattern of serious laws-of-war violations – some amounting to war crimes – that extends to all provinces in Afghanistan where these paramilitary forces operate with impunity.”

In one attack armed men are said to have burst into a home in the middle of night, drove four brothers into separate rooms, their hands bound, then shot them in the head and heart.

The Afghan government claimed the operation was directed at Isis in a remote region of Nangarhar, when in fact it took place in the provincial capital Jalalabad near the Justice Ministry offices.

In an interview with The Associated Press, the family said the dead brothers included a school teacher and an assistant to a member of parliament. The truth of their deaths was eventually revealed by local and international media and the country’s intelligence chief, Masoom Stanikzai, was forced to resign.

A resident in Wardak province told HRW that Strike Force troops “destroyed the gate to our compound with an explosive device. They killed one of my sons at the back of our home and took the other with them ... The forces accused us, ‘Why are you feeding the Taliban?’ But the Taliban come asking for food. If you don’t feed them, then they harass you.”

Patricia Gossman, HRW’s associate Asia director and the report’s author, said “In case after case, these forces have simply shot people in their custody and consigned entire communities to the terror of abusive night raids and indiscriminate airstrikes.”