Afghan security units backed by the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) have carried out extrajudicial killings, forced disappearances, indiscriminate air strikes and other rights abuses and should be disbanded, Human Rights Watch said on Thursday.
In a report, the group said that it documented 14 cases from late 2017 to mid-2019 in which CIA-backed Afghan counterinsurgency forces committed serious abuses, some amounting to war crimes.
“The US and Afghan governments should cooperate with independent investigations into these allegations,” said PatriciaGossman, associate Asia director of HRW. “These are not isolated cases but illustrative of a larger pattern of serious laws-of-war violations – and even war crimes – by these paramilitary forces.”
HRW said that in many of the night raids it investigated, the Afghan forces attacked civilians because of mistaken identity, poor intelligence, or political rivalries in the locality.
These units have also sometimes targeted houses based on intelligence that family members had provided food to Taliban or ISIS insurgents, even if under duress, it said.
In one case, a paramilitary unit killed eight men who were visiting their families for the Eid holidays and three others in the same village, the report said.
HRW said that the Afghan government lacked the capacity and the political will to investigate incidents involving the forces. The group cited a diplomat referring to them as “death squads.”
“They largely have been recruited, trained, equipped, and overseen by the CIA,” Human Rights Watch said.
“They often have US special forces personnel deployed alongside them during kill-or-capture operations; these US forces, primarily Army Rangers, have been seconded to the CIA.”
A CIA spokesman said that the agency conducts its operations “in accordance with law and under a robust system of oversight.”
“The Taliban does not operate with any similar rules and -even worse – conducts an extensive propaganda campaign to discredit those who support the legitimate Afghanistan government,” the spokesman, Timothy Barrett, was quoted as saying by Reuters.
Afghanistan’s National Security Council in a statement said that some actions had been taken on cases mentioned in the report.
It said that while there were realities in the report there were also mistakes. It said that it would assess every point of the report before and provide detailed response.
