Freedom in the World 1999 - Afghanistan

1999 Scores

Status: Not Free
Freedom Rating: 7.0
Civil Liberties: 7
Political Rights: 7

Overview

Ten years after the Soviet Union withdrew the last of its occupying troops and left behind a devastated country, in 1999 Afghanistan's warring factions appeared no closer to achieving a military or political solution to a decade of civil conflict. The continued fighting brought more civilian deaths, displacement, and hardship. The ruling Taliban's severe, centuries-old social code also continued to create acute health care and economic crises for women and girls.

Following a nineteenth-century Anglo-Russian contest for domination, in 1921 Britain recognized Afghanistan as an independent monarchy. King Zahir Shah ruled from 1933 until being deposed in a 1973 coup. Since 1978, when a Communist coup set out to transform this highly traditional society, Afghanistan has been in continuous civil conflict. In December 1979, the Soviet Union invaded seeking to install a pro-Moscow Communist faction. More than 100,000 Soviet troops faced fierce resistance from U.S.-backed mujahideen (guerrilla fighters) before finally withdrawing in 1989.

After overthrowing the Communist government in 1992, the ethnic-based mujahideen militias, backed by neighboring countries and regional powers, battled each other for control of Kabul. Between 1992 and 1995, factional fighting in and around Kabul killed more than 25,000 civilians. The fighting has intensified cleavages between the rural-based Pashtuns, who form a near majority and have ruled for most of the past 250 years, and the large Tajik minority. Initially, the key protagonists were Gulbuddin Hekmatyar's Pashtun-based Hizb-i-Islami (Islamic Party) and the Tajik-dominated Jamiat-i-Islami (Islamic Association), headed by Burhanuddin Rabbani.

In September 1996 the Taliban, a new, Pashtun-based militia organized around theology students, ousted a Rabbani-led nominal government in Kabul. The Taliban has since co-opted or defeated most of its rivals. In August 1998, the Taliban captured the key northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif and several northern provinces from the ethnic-Uzbek warlord Rashid Dostam, which contributed to the fragmentation of a self-styled opposition Northern Alliance of ethnic Tajiks, Uzbeks, and Hazara Shiites. In September, Taliban troops also captured central Bamian province, the Hazara Shiite stronghold. This left the northern Panjshir Valley, the stronghold of anti-Soviet military commander Ahmad Shah Masood, as the last major area outside Taliban control.

In April 1999, negotiations over a power-sharing agreement between the Taliban and Masood, the only active link to the Rabbani administration, collapsed, as did talks in Tashkent in July. In May, the Taliban accused Iran of being behind a failed uprising in the western city of Herat, after which authorities arrested dozens of ethnic Hazaras. On July 28, the Taliban launched an offensive that captured the Shomali plains north of Kabul. During the attack Taliban fighters committed atrocities that caused some 65,000 refugees to flee their homes. In early August, Masood's forces counterattacked and recouped half of the lost territory. In another development, in February, a powerful earthquake southwest of Kabul displaced 30,000 people and destroyed numerous homes and buildings.

Political Rights and Civil Liberties

There are no democratic processes or institutions at any level in Afghanistan. The Taliban rule by decree through an inner circle of clerics based in Kandahar, led by former mujahideen fighter Mullah Mohammed Omar. Appointed local shura (councils) also rule by decree. These decrees regulate nearly all aspects of social affairs and are strictly enforced.

The Taliban control roughly 90 percent of the country, although only three foreign governments formally recognize it. Most of the remaining territory is held by either Masood's Tajik-based forces or the small Hazara Shiite-based Hezb-i-Wahadat militia in central Afghanistan. On November 14, aviation and financial sanctions imposed by the United Nations Security Council took effect after the Taliban refused to extradite the Saudi-born militant Osama bin Laden, who allegedly plotted the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

Several civilian-based opposition parties function clandestinely, but the Taliban has harassed many of their members. In March 1999, Amnesty International reported that the Taliban had arrested and severely tortured up to 200 Afghan political figures in the past year on account of their peaceful political activity. Some had been released as of February, but more than a dozen had been killed and around 100 remained in detention.

The Taliban have largely neglected most functions of government and rely on the UN and foreign nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) to provide basic services, food-for-work programs, mine clearance, and refugee repatriation. The militia finances many of its activities through narcotics trafficking.

The judiciary consists of tribunals in which clerics with little legal training hand down rulings based on Pashtun customs and the Taliban's interpretation of the Shari'a (Islamic Law). Proceedings are brief, defendants lack the right to legal counsel, due process safeguards are absent, and there is no right of appeal. In a society where families of murder victims have the option of carrying out court-imposed death sentences or granting clemency, victims' relatives have killed convicted murderers on several occasions. Authorities have also bulldozed alleged sodomizers under walls, stoned adulterers to death, and amputated the hands of thieves. Prison conditions are inhumane.

The Taliban have arbitrarily detained and tortured thousands of men from ethnic minority groups, often civilians rounded up during military operations. Many have been killed or have disappeared. In May, Amnesty International reported that both the Taliban and the Hezb-i-Wahadat had committed abuses against civilians in and around the city of Bamian as control of the area alternated between the two groups between September 1998 and May 1999.

The Taliban's social code and its interpretation of the Sharia have created severe hardship for women. Religious police from the Department for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice regularly flogged, beat, and otherwise punished women in detention centers and public places for violating Taliban dress codes, which include wearing the burqa, a one-piece garment covering the entire body. After visiting Afghanistan in 1999, the UN Special Rapporteur for Violence Against Women called the religious department "the most misogynist entity in the world." Throughout the country, soldiers, militiamen, and renegades from the various political factions were responsible for occasionally abducting and raping women.

The Taliban continued to enforce the rural Islamic custom of purdah even in urban areas. Under purdah, women are isolated from men who are not relatives and cannot leave home unless escorted by a close male relative. The Taliban also continued to ban most women from working, creating extreme hardship through the loss of income and female-based relief services. The Taliban reportedly exempted destitute widows from the prohibition on female employment. However, the ban continued to cover most female medical workers in Kabul's hospitals. Health care is segregated, and women are forced to seek treatment in two poorly equipped hospitals. A 1998 report by the Boston-based Physicians for Human Rights found that most women in Kabul had little or no access to health care, for reasons that included lack of a male chaperone and unavailability of a female doctor.

The Taliban continued to formally ban girls from going to school, although it did allow some privately funded, underground "home schools" for girls to function despite their being banned in 1998, and authorities reportedly ran limited primary schools for girls in Kabul. Only about one-quarter of boys attend school, largely because 80 percent of teachers are women and they can no longer work. In 1998, an international aid group estimated there are some 28,000 street children in Kabul.

In 1999, the civil conflict continued to cause civilian casualties, although at a far reduced rate than in the mid-1990s. Armed factions have committed several massacres of civilians and soldiers. Most notably, in 1997 Uzbek-dominated opposition troops reportedly executed thousands of Taliban prisoners of war, and in August 1998 the Taliban reportedly massacred thousands of ethnic Hazaras. Observers also alleged that the Taliban committed massacres in May 1999 after regaining control of the central city of Bamian.

Some 400,000 civilians in Kabul rely on international NGOs for health care, subsidized bread, and other aid. In 1998, most international NGOs left Kabul after refusing Taliban orders to move to an abandoned building on the capital's outskirts, and many have not returned. UN international staff left Afghanistan in 1998 following the killing of an Italian UN worker in Kabul, and only a few have returned.

The Taliban sharply restrict freedoms of speech, press, and association. The militia tightly controls its sole broadcast outlet, Radio Voice of Shari'a. In 1998, the Taliban banned televisions, videocassette recorders, videos, and satellite dishes, and destroyed stock found in shops. There are few, if any, civic institutions and no known trade unions.

The Taliban continued to sharply restrict religious freedom and force men to grow beards. Roughly 85 percent of the population is Sunni Muslim, and the Taliban and other factions have meted out particularly harsh treatment to the Hazara Shiite minority.

Outside areas of Taliban control, the rule of law is similarly nonexistent. Justice is administered arbitrarily according to Shari'a and traditional customs. Rival groups carry out torture and extrajudicial killings against opponents and suspected sympathizers. Opposition groups operate radio stations and publish propaganda newspapers. The loosely-organized opposition Northern Alliance operates the only television station in Afghanistan from its headquarters in Faizabad. The Northern Alliance also operates schools for both boys and girls.

The UN estimates that even after ten years of mine clearance, Afghanistan remains the most heavily mined country in the world. The 20 years of fighting since the Soviet invasion have left tens of thousands of Afghans internally displaced, and some 2.6 million others as refugees in Iran and Pakistan.