By Steve Hynd
After a week in detention on trumped-up charges with no legal representation, three Italian and five Afghan hospital workers have today been freed by Afghan authorities in Kabul, who now admit all are not guilty. A single Afghan continues to be held on charges of smuggling grenades and explosives into the Italian charity's hospital in Helmand province.
The episode must cast a shadow of doubt over both the Governor of helmand and the entire Afghan legal system.
The former had originally made wild accusations about the Italians, including that they'd been bribed with $500,000 by the Taliban to assassinate him and that they'd been involved in the death of an Afghan interpreter, Ajmal Naqshbandi, who was seized by the Taliban with an Italian journalist in April 2007. He told international journalists that the Itralians had confessed. None of this was true. The US and its allies have invested the bulk of their "surge" so far in Helmand Province, and have even parachuted in a hand-picked ally of the Governor to be the new mayor of Marjah. Yet the governor is revealed by all this to be a delusional paranoid who is willing to enlist NATO forces - in this case, British troops were present at the arrests - to enforce his erratic will.
If he's this out of control when it comes to foreign aid workers, just imagine what he's doing to his own countrymen out of the glare of international publicity. Yet Obama and McChrystal have invested a great deal of their "hearts and minds" strategy in this thug who hand-picks other thugs as his mayors.
As to the Afghan legal system - we all knew it was lacking but this case exposes just how prone to excess it is after nine years of occupation. These men were held without formal charges, denied legal representation and access to officials from their own country for a week. President Karzai had promised a full and open investigation of the allegations against them but instead they were released with a simple "they're not guilty" and now there looks to be no sign of any formal investigation into the Helmand Governor's actions. The whole matter is to be quietly dropped, apparently, leaving unfixed a massive gap in the rule of law and in official accountability.
And we expect the Afghan people to accept this? It's unsurprising that a recent survey (PDF) finds that the people trust the Taliban more than the government and concludes (h/t Alex Strick van Linschoten):
This survey�s findings indicate endemic corruption, along with a lack of security and basic services, in Kandahar Province. Collectively, this sets conditions for a disenfranchised population to respond either by not supporting the government due to its inability to deliver improvements in the quality of life or, worse yet, by supporting the Taliban.
No wonder even war cheerleader Michael Yon is writing that McChrystal is in over his head. McChrytal has certainly been no more effective than his predecessor, General McKiernan...who got canned.
No comments:
Post a Comment