Afghanistan has been at war since April 1978. During every phase of the conflict—the

revolution of April 1978 that brought to power the factionalized Marxist-Leninist People’s

Democratic Party of Afghanistan, its radical reform measures and brutal crackdown on the

uprisings that followed; the Soviet invasion of December 1979, occupation and

counterinsurgency war; the Soviet withdrawal and the civil war; the repressive rule of the

Taliban, and finally the U.S.-led intervention that ended it—different armed factions, both

Afghan and foreign, committed crimes against humanity and serious war crimes. These war

crimes have included large-scale massacres, disappearances and summary executions of at

least tens of thousands of Afghans, indiscriminate bombing and rocketing that killed hundreds

of thousands of civilians, torture, mass rape and other atrocities. In the twenty-seven years

since the war began, there has been no serious effort, international or domestic, to account for

these crimes.

To say that all of the armed forces that fought in Afghanistan committed war crimes is

not to say that every single fighter has been guilty of such actions. What the Afghanistan

Justice Project has documented are incidents in which senior officers and commanders ordered

actions amounting to war crimes by their forces, or allowed such actions to take place and did

nothing to prevent or stop them. The Afghanistan Justice Project’s intent in documenting

these incidents is not to impugn the cause for which any of the armed groups fought, but rather

to call for accountability where those actions amounted to war crimes.

Accounting for the worst of the crimes committed continues to be an issue of great

concern to many Afghans: the report published in January this year by the Afghan

Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC), “A Call for Justice,” indicates strong

support among Afghans to address the legacy of the past. How that should take place remains

a choice for the Afghans to make. When given the opportunity to discuss their views about the

past, as did those consulted for the AIHRC’s survey, and as those interviewed by the

Afghanistan Justice Project and other human rights groups have done, Afghans across a broad

political, ideological and social spectrum have expressed strong support for several key steps,

including:

Afghans interviewed by human rights organizations have also consistently charged that

commanders and others responsible for serious abuses abuses retain power in many parts of

the country, and continue to violate the rights of local citizens. They see that so long as those

responsible for past crimes enjoy impunity, the security of ordinary citizens is at risk.

The Afghanistan Justice Project has documented a number of key incidents from the

different phases of the war in Afghanistan. that are important because of the magnitude of the

crime or because of the involvement of people who continue to wield power. In this report, we

have included a number of these incidents. The dossiers reproduced here represent only part of

the Afghanistan Justice Project’s work, as we have gathered more information about violations

from every period than we were able to include in this report. In each case that we have

included, the Afghanistan Justice Project has attempted to include not only direct witness

testimony about the events that took place but an analysis of the command and control of

troops responsible for the operations.

No single report can adequately document the many grave war crimes committed by all

parties to the conflict in Afghanistan’s twenty-five years of war. What we have covered in this

report represents only a fraction of the many crimes that drove millions of Afghans from their

homes, laid waste to their farmlands and cities, and killed and maimed more than one million.

In this report we have included incidents

Although the original mandate of the Afghanistan Justice Project was to document war

crimes only through 2001, some patterns of abuse identified in this report have continued in the

years since 2001. In the concluding chapter in this report we examine how U.S. forces allied

themselves with commanders who were responsible for some of the worst war crimes committed

during the civil war. They did so because they believed these commanders could help the U.S.

defeat al-Qaeda and the Taliban. Nearly four years later, many of these same commanders have

grown richer and more powerful, with links to organized crime and the narcotics trade, while the

Taliban continue to pose a threat. The U.S., along with senior officials in the U.N. and in some

other governments, has also opposed efforts to investigate past abuses, arguing to do so would

imperil “stability.” In addition, U.S. forces have replicated some of the same torture techniques;

unacknowledged and secret detentions employed by their predecessors, and have thereby

undermined efforts to establish in Afghanistan accountable institutions that adhere to the rule of

law.