کابل پرس

Toll of Conflict on Afghan Women Worsens

Human Rights Watch — 2017-07-20T05:38:54Z

An Afghan woman walks past a damaged car after a suicide attack on French restaurant "Le Jardin" in Kabul, Afghanistan January 2, 2016.

Many more women are being killed and injured in Afghanistan today than a year ago, according to the United Nation's latest civilian casualty report. They are casualties of an intensifying armed conflict that is also claiming more children as victims every year.

As news outlets focus on increases in US troop numbers and policy shifts in Afghanistan, it's easy to forget the terrible toll the war has on Afghan civilians.

The mid-year 2017 report from the United Nations Assistance Mission to Afghanistan (UNAMA) says casualties among women leapt 23 percent to 174 deaths and 462 injuries over the same period in 2016. The report, released earlier this week, tallies casualties between January 1 and June 30, 2017.

Many of these women were civil servants killed or injured when the Taliban or other insurgents launched deliberate or indiscriminate attacks on government institutions – like when a bomb exploded on a shuttle bus taking female staff to work at Kabul's Water Supply Department in May, killing two and injuring four, including a child. Or the February suicide attack targeting the Afghan Supreme Court's staff, which left nine women dead and seven injured. The list goes on.

Following the trend of previous reports, in which every year brings higher casualties than the last, UNAMA documented a total of 1,662 war-related civilian deaths, and 3,581 injuries for the first half of 2017, roughly the same as the record set last year. An appalling number of those casualties continue to be children, with 436 deaths and 1,141 injuries – a 9 percent increase over the previous year.

The Taliban and groups linked to the Islamic State (also known as ISIS) were responsible for 67 percent of all civilian casualties during the period. Many of these were the result of deliberate attacks on civilians, which are war crimes.

The good news is that civilian deaths and injuries by pro-government forces and their allies during ground engagements have declined since 2016. However, aerial operations by government and international forces were another story, as civilian casualties from air attacks jumped 43 percent from a year ago to 95 deaths and 117 injuries. There is a need for the government to better address fundamental weaknesses in training these forces, in tracking and addressing civilian harm, and paying compensation for wrongdoing in order to minimize such losses in the future.

View online : https://www.hrw.org/news/2017/07/19...

Military Justice for War Crimes in Afghanistan?

Human Rights Watch — 2017-07-17T01:15:50Z

A British soldier looks through the scope of a machine gun to observe an area in Kabul, Afghanistan November 26, 2016.

It's a familiar story: Soldiers blame the “fog of war” for civilian deaths. Sometimes it only takes one soldier with a conscience to reveal the truth, but it requires a government's commitment to see justice done.

That commitment seems sorely lacking in the United Kingdom, whose military has been dogged by allegations of killing of citizens in Afghanistan. Australia – whose military has also been tarnished by horrific allegations in Afghanistan – should take note of the UK's missteps as it tries to get to the truth.

Since early 2016, the UK authorities have investigated allegations that British Air Services (SAS) troops murdered at least 53 civilians between 2009 and 2011, snatching some from their beds, handcuffing and hooding them before shooting them dead.

Despite that, the inquiry into these allegations is being largely shut down.

The Royal Military Police (RMP) investigation, Operation Northmoor, reportedly started in early 2016 and was meant to continue through 2021, but was ordered closed down in February 2017, according to a recent report in the Sunday Times. The government wanted to avoid having “any of the detail getting into the press,” a military police source explained to the paper. The Ministry of Defence later claimed the decision had been taken by the military police.

The shutdown comes despite credible evidence against the SAS unit, senior military police and defense sources told the Sunday Times, which also disclosed that Northmoor had uncovered doctored reports blaming Afghan special forces partners for the killings.

On the other side of the world, an inquiry into abuses by Australia troops in Afghanistan – including the deaths of two children – is underway.

The Australian government inquiry began in September 2016, but has been carried out in secret, with details only emerging in recent media reports. Crucially important, it focuses on the entrenched impunity that often pervades the elite world of special forces “who operate with the belief that they are above the law.” A former officer described the killings as part of a “culture of recklessness” and indifference to Afghan life.

This is not the first time UK authorities have shown themselves unwilling to investigate and prosecute military figures for war crimes. Let's hope Australia does better by transparently investigating all allegations of abuses, and releasing such reports to the public.

View online : https://www.hrw.org/news/2017/07/17...

Forgetting About Girls in Afghanistan – Again

Human Rights Watch — 2017-07-07T15:45:37Z

Members of Afghan robotics girls team which was denied entry into the United States for a competition, work on their robots in Herat province, Afghanistan July 4, 2017.

We want to make a difference and most breakthroughs in science, technology, and other industries normally start with the dream of a child to do something great.
– Team Afghanistan's statement on the competition website

They seized the chance to study in a country that has long denied that advantage to many girls. They excelled in science and technology – a male-dominated field. And they competed successfully to represent their country against some of the brightest young minds in the world.

But, after overcoming these improbable odds, a robotics team of six Afghan girls found a hurdle they couldn't clear: the United States government, which denied them visas to attend the robotics competition in Washington, DC.

The robot they built is being shipped to the US, but the girls will participate via Skype. Almost all other teams were allowed in, including those from countries barred under the US travel ban, such as Iran and Sudan.

In the days after the September 11 attacks on the US, Americans heard a lot about Afghan girls. Images of women in blue burqas and girls yearning hopelessly to go to school helped build support for the US-led military intervention. Laura Bush, Kofi Annan, Cherie Blair, and Hillary Clinton were among those speaking out in the weeks after 9/11, pleading for the world to aid Afghan women.

Today, many Afghan women feel betrayed. The Trump administration is formulating a new Afghanistan strategy, but the talk is all about troop numbers, not school books – and certainly not girls. The number of girls attending school in parts of the country is falling due to rising insecurity and poverty, and declining donor support. The Taliban's grip on the country is growing and their desire to deny girls education largely unchanged.

This context makes the achievements of the robotics team exceptional. The team members are in their teens, an age when many Afghan girls leave school because of child marriage, child labor, lack of secondary schools for girls, and social barriers. Sixty-six percent of girls ages 12 to 15 are out of school. In a country where only 37 percent of adolescent girls and 19 percent of adult women are literate, donor countries should be sweeping these girls up to see how their achievement can be replicated – not slamming the door in their faces.

The robotics team, struggling to call in to Washington, DC, via Skype on a lousy internet connection, in the middle of the night, is all too emblematic of the hollowness of US efforts to empower girls in Afghanistan.

View online : https://www.hrw.org/news/2017/07/07...

Pentagon Admits Major Investigation Flaw: They Rarely Talk to Air Strike Witnesses or Victims

Human Rights Watch — 2017-06-30T08:30:53Z

Smoke rises after a U.S. airstrike during the operation against Islamic State militants near Mosul, Iraq, October 24, 2016.

In a transcript of a Pentagon Press Briefing, released this week by Airwars, n.S. Central Command's Deputy Director for Operations made a striking admission about U.S. investigations into civilian casualties in Syria:

Q: Okay. So, you didn't talk to anybody on the ground and nobody visited the site. Is that — that correct, right?

GEN. BONTRAGER: That is correct, Bill, and that's common. It's a rare thing with strikes like this that we can get on the ground in person, or that we can talk to anybody on the ground is not uncommon at all.

The admission was made as Bontrager described his investigation into the March 16, 2017 al-Jinah strike, a U.S. strike that human rights NGOs say may have killed up to 38 civilians praying at a mosque. Bontrager concluded, in contrast, that only one civilian “likely” died.

Human rights groups have long voiced concerns about the inadequacy of U.S. investigations into the consequences of U.S. strikes in Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Syria, Yemen, and elsewhere, but it is rare to see such an open and general acknowledgement from the Pentagon that its investigators rarely conduct site visits or speak with witnesses and other people on the ground.

Bontrager described his investigation into the al-Jinah strike as “leaving no stone unturned.” The U.S. Director of National Intelligence has elsewhere criticized NGO research into U.S. strikes and asserted that the U.S. government uses “post-strike methodologies that have been refined and honed over the years.”

But the U.S. government's failure to regularly interview witnesses is a critical flaw in their investigation methodology. A lack of on-the-ground networks, security concerns and/or issues related to impartiality are not insurmountable and can all be addressed if they are considered to be necessary to a robust investigation.

The U.S. government's investigations regularly exclude one of the most important sources of evidence, and are at odds with international fact-finding best practice, developed over the past decades by researchers and investigators with human rights NGOs, the United Nations, and international criminal tribunals. It would be unthinkable in those contexts to maintain a regular practice of “investigating” human rights or humanitarian law violations without site visits where possible and without actually speaking with witnesses, victims, and family members. Interviewing is so essential that it has been described as the “bedrock” of human rights fact-finding, and every major guide to or principles for human rights fact-finding contains significant sections on witness interviewing (see here, here, here, here).

Human rights investigators have developed techniques to conduct on-the-ground investigations and witness interviews all around the world, in highly insecure and conflict areas including in Afghanistan, the Philippines, the Central African Republic, Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Yemen. Sites are visited to observe first-hand physical damage, and witnesses and survivors are interviewed to obtain essential information about what happened, how, when, and where.

Witness evidence, of course, can be flawed: eyewitnesses may have poor recall, they may be biased, they can intentionally falsify. (Meghan Foster Lynch's chapter in the edited volume Counting Civilian Casualties (2013) and Nancy A. Comb's Fact-Finding without Facts (2010) both include excellent overviews of the challenges in obtaining reliable and credible testimony). This is why human rights investigators need to be trained in interviewing techniques, why large numbers of people are often interviewed, and it is why researchers seek to corroborate witness statements with other sources of information, such as site visits, physical evidence, photographic evidence, medical reports, hospital records, and so on.

Bontrager said his team reviewed “all available video and images.” Many human rights groups are increasingly using satellite imagery techniques and other technologies to document human rights abuses and humanitarian law violations. But these techniques can rarely stand as a full substitute for speaking with victims and witnesses, who help provide important contextual details, resolve inconsistencies, and can shed light on people's identities, motives, and intentions. This direct contact can also help dispel false assumptions that foreign militaries may have about unfamiliar “pattern of life” behavior. Accounts from Afghan civilians were key to coalition forces learning that it could be farmers, not Taliban fighters, who were escaping the sun by planting their crops, and not IEDs, near the road during the night.

Speaking to victims, witnesses, and other people on the ground also helps provide these investigations a degree of transparency. Without this, affected communities often criticize these investigations as being secretive and incomplete. It is similarly important for as much of the investigation results to be made public as is possible — something the Pentagon has not done in this case and which inhibits independent detailed reviews of their methods and findings. A short (closed) press briefing is deeply insufficient.

The investigation into the al-Jinah strike is a prime example of how important it is to interview witnesses. In the immediate aftermath of the attack, U.S. authorities claimed that it had struck a community hall. True, the building did not have a dome or a minaret that would indicate that it was a mosque to aerial surveillance. But multiple witness statements explaining in great detail the layout and use of the targeted building, together with photos and videos of the interior, allowed civil society organizations to conclude that the targeted building was part of a mosque, a fact that the Pentagon also had to admit after its investigation.

A thorough investigation of the al-Jinah strike could also determine, for example, how many of the people in the mosque were fighters and how many were civilians and whether the pre-strike intelligence provided a correct estimate of this. Although not the only issue to consider in determining the lawfulness of the attack, establishing such facts is nonetheless important in evaluating the reliability of the intelligence so that lessons can be learned from attacks that cause higher than expected civilian casualties. Interviewing witnesses would provide important information about who was a civilian and who was a fighter, especially if people don't carry weapons or wear uniforms.

In some cases, NGOs and the UN face difficulties in visiting or interviewing at the sites of an alleged abuse—because of extreme insecurity, denial of access by a government or non-state actor, or concerns about retaliation to witnesses or families if they are seen with investigators. In such cases, human rights researchers have found other ways to obtain evidence. Some researchers conduct interviews in highly discrete locations or work with other researchers who can more safely meet with witnesses; witnesses are brought to other sites, interviewed in other towns or countries far away from the site of an attack; and interviews are conducted by phone or video link. The UN's Commission of Inquiry into North Korea, for example, when North Korea denied their entry, interviewed scores of witnesses in other countries. The international criminal tribunals and the International Criminal Court have interviewed witnesses away from the immediate site of conflict.

When NGOs or the UN have not conducted site visits or interviews, governments lambast them. The U.S. government, for example, heavily criticized a 2006 report of UN Special Rapporteurs in these terms:

It is particularly unfortunate that the Special Rapporteurs rejected the invitation to visit Guantanamo. [The visit was rejected by the Special Rapporteurs after the U.S. said it would only permit a visit subject to restrictions on access, including to detainees.] As a result, their Report does not reflect the direct, personal knowledge that this visit would have provided… We categorically object to most of the Report's content and conclusions as largely without merit and not based in the facts… [During a visit, the UN team] would have observed first-hand the conditions of detention.

The U.S. government accused the UN investigators of not doing “any meaningful investigation,” listed their failure to visit Guantanamo as the first “flaw” in the UN's investigation, and critiqued the UN team for not speaking directly with U.S. Department of Defense officials in Washington, DC.

It is undeniable that it can be difficult for the U.S. government to speak directly with victims and witnesses to the al-Jinah strike or its other strikes in insecure locations. This does not, however, allow the government to shed its responsibilities for conducting thorough investigations where there are such serious allegations of civilian casualties and human rights abuse. International law requires governments to carry out comprehensive investigations of alleged serious human rights and humanitarian violations. Investigations into alleged unlawful deaths should be prompt, effective, thorough, independent, and transparent, and victims and families have a right to information about what occurred.

Human rights investigators have demonstrated that the hurdles are not insurmountable. The U.S. government's failure to speak to people on the ground demolishes Bontrager's claim that his investigation left “no stone unturned.” Human Rights Watch, in contrast, interviewed 14 people by phone who had first-hand knowledge of the attack, including four who were in the mosque at the time of the attack; eight local residents, first responders, and local journalists who arrived at the site shortly after the attack; and two medical personnel who treated people injured in the attack. Significant reforms are needed to the U.S. government's investigations to ensure it meets its responsibilities to account for its possible violations of international legal obligations.

Note: This piece was co-authored by Sarah Knuckey, Ole Solvang, Jonathan Horowitz, and Radhya Almutawakel

View online : https://www.hrw.org/news/2017/06/29...

US General's Photo Op with Accused Torturer in Afghanistan

Human Rights Watch — 2017-06-26T19:59:49Z

A photo depicting General John Nicholson, Commander of United States forces in Afghanistan (C) with Kandahar's General Abdul Raziq (R).

When it comes to cosying up to alleged torturers in Afghanistan, the United States military has been a slow learner.

The US-led NATO Resolute Support Mission in Afghanistan just published a photo of Gen. John Nicholson, commander of US forces in Afghanistan, sharing a laugh with Kandahar strongman Gen. Abdul Raziq, long accused of forcibly disappearing detainees and having his henchman drill holes in the heads of some of them. Raziq runs secret prisons where torture is rife, and he's also been implicated in corruption involving cross-border smuggling and unpaid custom duties. Both the United Nations and Afghan human rights activists have accused Raziq's forces of extrajudicial killings going back at least a decade.

At the UN Committee Against Torture session in April, delegates repeatedly raised Raziq's horrific record, citing in particular a UN report that month documenting that “a staggering 91 percent of detainees interviewed gave credible and reliable accounts of being subjected to the most brutal forms of torture and ill-treatment” in Kandahar that included “having water forcibly pumped into the stomach, having their testicles crushed with clamps, being suffocated to the point of losing consciousness and having electric current applied to their genitals.”

But the Resolute Support Mission, which “trains, advises and assists” Afghan national security forces, seems undeterred. This latest debacle comes just three years after US Lt. Gen. Joseph Anderson found himself embroiled in controversy when he also posed for a photo op with Raziq. Since US taxpayers effectively pay Raziq's salary and for the training of his men – including, ironically, human rights education – you would think the US government would care a bit more about what Raziq does with that money.

But the US has treated Raziq as its man in Kandahar, credited with keeping the Taliban at bay – though for how long is a pertinent question. Raziq's forces' killing spree has alienated tribal rivals and nurtured grievances against the government throughout the province. For years, the US sought to justify Raziq's murderous actions as necessary for stability in Kandahar. By now the US and the Afghan government should know that backing corrupt and abusive security forces inflame insecurity. The Taliban certainly do.

View online : https://www.hrw.org/news/2017/06/26...

How Wars and Disasters Fuel Child Labor

Human Rights Watch — 2017-06-22T11:18:28Z

Hazrat Hussain, 10, loads bricks onto a truck. Hazrat doesn't go to school and works alongside his two teenage brothers at a brick kiln outside Kabul.

Rahimullah, a 15-year-old Afghan boy, told Human Rights Watch last year that he has worked as a brick maker for five years, working from 4:00 a.m. until nightfall.

“My smaller siblings also work,” he said. “When they turn five, they start working... It's not just one thing we do; there are a lot of things to do in the brick business – go clear the ground, take the shovel, bring the pickaxe, do this thing, bring me the bucket… the point is, everyone works.”

In Afghanistan, years of armed conflict have fueled poverty, and by extension, child labor. At least a quarter of Afghan children aged five to 14 work to support their families – often for long hours and with little or no pay.

This year's World Day against Child Labor focuses on the impact of conflict and natural disasters on the issue. About 250 million children live in areas affected by armed conflict, and another 70 million are affected by natural disasters. In total, 168 million children around the world are pressed into child labor.

In conflicts and disasters, parents may lose their jobs, and schools may be destroyed. With few other options, children often begin working. Migrant and refugee children are especially vulnerable to child labor. Children can end up separated from their parents, and need to support themselves, or may feel pressure to help support their families. For example, around 60 percent of Syrian refugee families in Jordan rely on money earned by children, due to inadequate aid and dwindling family funds.

Desperate economic circumstances often lead to child labor, but putting kids to work is no solution to extreme poverty. In fact, research shows that child labor perpetuates poverty. Many children who work miss out on an education, and become less likely to find well-paying jobs as adults.

Kids shouldn't have to sacrifice their health, safety, and education to help their families make ends meet. Governments should make providing an education for children affected by war and disasters a top priority, and help their parents access decent work too. Urgent action is needed, so that children like Rahimullah can have the chance to just be a kid.

View online : https://www.hrw.org/news/2017/06/12...

The Safe Schools Declaration: Protecting Schools During Wartime

Human Rights Watch — 2017-06-22T11:18:28Z

The blood stains on the classroom walls couldn't be washed away following the Taliban attack on the middle school in Postak Bazaar village in Afghanistan. ‘We had to chip it away from the wall with an axe,' a school official told Human Rights Watch.

But the blood wasn't that of the school's students. It was that of seven members of the Afghan National Police, a counter-insurgency force that had set up their military base inside the school. That attack was in 2010. After the Taliban retook the area, their fighters too slept in the school.

An Afghan policeman stands guard at the entrance of a local school in Kandahar City

By 2015, government forces were back, and established their base with sandbagged positions on the second floor, while students tried to continue their schooling below.

Alarmed school officials obtained a letter from the Kabul authorities ordering the forces to leave, but their commander ignored it. At exam time, school officials again presented the letter, but the soldiers fired their guns toward the assembled teachers and students, who fled.

Since the Australia-supported military intervention in Afghanistan began in 2001, foreign donors have invested heavily in education, building schools and providing textbooks across the country. The expansion of education in Afghanistan, especially for girls, has been one of the success stories of the past 15 years. But as the security situation has deteriorated, schools throughout Afghanistan have been under threat, not only from resurgent Taliban forces but also from the Afghan state security forces mandated to protect them.

But it's not just in Afghanistan that schools are under attack, or are being taken over by military forces. In the majority of countries with armed conflict around the world, schools are being attacked and used for military purposes, often converted into military bases or barracks. As the middle school in Postak Bazaar illustrates, the military use of schools not only turns schools into targets for attack, but the presence of armed forces inside a school can also interfere with education even if the school continues operating.

On 1 June, Australia's Foreign Minister Julie Bishop announced the government would contribute $2 million to improve education for children in emergencies, including facilitating safe places to learn.

But there's one more thing Australia could do to protect children's education in emergencies, and it doesn't cost a cent: endorse the Safe Schools Declaration. The Safe Schools Declaration (not to be confused with the ‘Safe Schools' program for LGBT students being debated in Australia) marks an inter-governmental political commitment where countries pledge to protect students, teachers, schools and universities from attack during times of war. Last month marked its two-year anniversary.

So far 66 nations have endorsed the declaration aimed at ending the use of schools by militaries or armed groups. But Australia isn't yet one of them. The declaration builds a community of nations committed to respecting the civilian nature of schools and developing and sharing examples of good practices for protecting schools during war. Countries that join agree to restore access to education faster when schools are attacked, and to make it less likely that students, teachers and schools will be attacked in the first place. They seek to deter such attacks by promising to investigate and prosecute war crimes involving schools. And they agree to minimise the use of schools for military purposes so they don't become targets for attack.

On 13 February, some members of the Australian Parliament urged the government to join an international effort to protect students, teachers and schools in countries affected by war.

MPs Chris Hayes, Trent Zimmerman, and Maria Vamvakinou laid out the chilling details of how students and schools are all too frequently deliberately attacked during armed conflict, pointing to examples in Afghanistan, Iraq, Nigeria, South Sudan and Syria.

In response to a question on notice on 17 March, the Attorney-General George Brandis stated that the government had decided not to endorse the Safe Schools Guidelines and Declaration ‘as we assess they do not reflect existing international humanitarian law'. But in fact, countries such as the Netherlands and Switzerland, which have centuries-old traditions of professional militaries, were among the first to join the declaration.

The Declaration doesn't create a legal obligation, but is a political commitment. Indeed, the International Committee of the Red Cross, which is traditionally seen as the guardian of international humanitarian law, has actively disseminated the guidelines to its staff.

As both Hayes and Zimmerman noted, when Australia was on the United Nations Security Council in 2014, it felt it appropriate to encourage other countries to take action to protect schools. Australia used its vote to encourage all countries to consider concrete measures to deter military use of schools.

Australia's Ambassador to the UN, Gary Quinlan, told the Security Council members that using schools for military purposes gravely endangers the lives of children. ‘We need to do more to protect schools, teachers, and students during conflict,' Quinlan relayed to the UNSC. ‘The child victims around the world count on us.'

Quinlan, representing the Australian government, was spot on. On 15 May UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres urged all UN member states to endorse the declaration. It's now time for Australia to rediscover the position it held in 2014.

View online : https://www.hrw.org/news/2017/06/20...

Women Excluded Again from Afghanistan's Peace Talks

Human Rights Watch — 2017-06-07T01:27:07Z

Foreign delegation members listen as Afghan President Ashraf Ghani delivers a speech during a peace and security cooperation conference in Kabul, Afghanistan June 6, 2017.

Kabul's citizens desperately need an end to the violence. The city spent much of last week burying its dead, again and again. On May 31, a truck bomb exploded at a busy intersection, killing 150 people and wounding more than 300. On June 2, nine people were killed and more wounded when police clashed with protesters marching in the wake of the bombing. On June 3, three suicide bombers detonated at the funeral of one of the slain protesters, killing at least 12 more and injuring dozens.

The last attack happened the evening before the Afghan government's latest effort at peace talks, the Kabul Process, began. And despite security challenges and the damage to the building where the meeting was to be held, the talks went ahead – a testament the urgency with which the Afghan government sees these talks.

Yet the Kabul Process is already missing a crucial factor to a successful outcome. Research shows that full participation by women in peace negotiations increases the chances of a deal being reached and it being successful. Yet the “family photo” of the meeting participants, 47 Afghan and foreign dignitaries, included only two Afghan women.

In previous talks, Afghan women have sometimes been totally absent, sometimes been relegated to note-taking roles, and have never appeared in numbers sufficient to transcend tokenism. A long-promised plan by the Afghan government to implement UN Security Council Resolution 1325, which calls for women's equal participation in issues surrounding peace and security, has been beset by delays and apathy.

The Kabul Process aims to bring together regional actors to support peace, and to put the Afghan government more clearly in charge than in prior efforts. But in the marginalization of women, the Kabul Process is already a continuation of earlier, unsuccessful, efforts.

This is a grave mistake for all Afghans who long for security. Last week, Afghan women died beside men in the bombing, and marched beside men in the protest. If peace is to come, they must also sit next to men at the negotiating table.

View online : https://www.hrw.org/news/2017/06/06...

Kabul Bombing a Reminder of Civilian Suffering in Afghanistan

Human Rights Watch — 2017-05-31T14:02:20Z

Today's bombing in a crowded area of central Kabul was yet another reminder of how deadly the war has become for ordinary Afghan civilians. The morning rush hour attack in Zanbaq Square, close to the presidential palace and a number of foreign embassies, killed at least 80 people and wounded hundreds, making it the worst such attack in Kabul in decades.

No group has yet claimed responsibility for the attack; the Taliban have reportedly condemned it. Afghan groups affiliated with the Islamic State (also known as ISIS) claimed responsibility for several similarly large-scale suicide attacks targeting civilians in July and October 2016, and social media accounts associated with the groups reportedly acknowledged today's attack.

The bomb, apparently hidden inside a water or sewage tanker truck, exploded in the street near the German Embassy compound, shattering windows in homes and offices across central Kabul. The Kabul Emergency Hospital sustained damage, but tweeted that its staff were nevertheless helping scores of wounded brought in from the blast site. Photos of those killed are now emerging on social media, reminding us all that the death toll is not just a number.

Civilian casualties have reached record levels as the Afghan conflict has intensified this past year, with two-thirds of civilian casualties caused by insurgent groups launching suicide attacks or using improvised explosive devices in densely populated areas. Attacks of this kind that deliberately or indiscriminately target civilians are war crimes, and could amount to crimes against humanity if found to be part of a widespread or systematic attack on the civilian population.

Today's contemptible act is a grim indication that Afghan civilians will continue to bear the brunt of Afghanistan's war.

View online : https://www.hrw.org/news/2017/05/31...

US: Rights Should Top Afghanistan Summit Agenda

Human Rights Watch — 2015-03-23T22:05:45Z

Afghan President Ashraf Ghani and United States President Barack Obama should make human rights issues a key agenda item during meetings the week of March 23, 2015.

(Washington, D.C.) – Afghan President Ashraf Ghani and United States President Barack Obama should make human rights issues a key agenda item during meetings the week of March 23, 2015, Human Rights Watch said today.

View online : http://www.hrw.org/news/2015/03/23/...