NewsMax.com Wires
Tuesday, Nov. 13, 2001

In several cases, the human rights violations that the U.S.-allied Northern Alliance are accused of happened in the very same cities they have now wrested back from the Taliban, with U.S. aid.

The situation raises the specter that U.S. soldiers will be present for, but unable to prevent, war crimes by their Afghan compatriots.

It may have already happened: On Tuesday, the United Nations reported Northern Alliance forces had massacred some 100 Taliban recruits they found hiding in a school in Mazar-i-Sharif.

"Today in Mazar, we've had several sources that have corroborated that over 100 Taliban troops who were young recruits hiding in a school were killed by the Northern Alliance Saturday," said Stephanie Bunker, a U.N. spokeswoman in Islamabad.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said special forces are counseling Northern Alliance commanders to observe human rights laws.

"They can give advice and counsel and they can report back that which they've seen, and we haven't heard back from them yet," Rumsfeld said at a Pentagon press conference Tuesday. "There is no question people are getting killed. I don't doubt that for a minute."

He noted the city has changed hands "dozens of times" over the centuries and that each time it involved a bloodletting, making a point to say the Taliban did the same thing when it took over Mazar i-Sharif five years ago.

"The last time the place changed hands, the Taliban came in and killed hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people," he said. "I'll guess when this is over this will have proved to be the change of hands with the least loss of life."

For the most part in Afghanistan, special forces are too few to be able to intercede to protect civilians.

"They are in a position to influence it but they can't stop it," a defense official told United Press International. "They will be a witness to it. They will be able to provide documentation" to prosecute war criminals after the conflict is over.

The United States is straddling a difficult line in Afghanistan. If it is not ready or willing to put in conventional ground forces of its own, it must rely on and support the Northern Alliance to be its proxy. "It's a deal with the devil," said a Pentagon official.

Marine Corps Commandant Gen. James Jones said last week the United States military should take some responsibility for what happens during the course of this war.

"It's complex," he said. "When you are the nation of influence, you have a responsibility that you have to step up to."

The prevailing hope is that the presence of Americans -- and the promise of continued aid -- will deter such behavior, but defense officials are under no illusions that they can prevent a massacre if it begins.

"We've said from the beginning that if we are going to fight this war on terrorism, we are going to have to associate with some very unsavory characters," said a Pentagon official who has a background in special operations.

In fact, Special Forces are trained for just such eventualities, according to Maj. Richard Patterson, spokesman for the John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School at Ft. Bragg, N.C.

"Should they witness a human rights violation in any operation they have an obligation to report it up through the chain of command," he said.

Special Forces -- also known as Green Berets -- receive "extensive training" on the Geneva Convention, which covers human rights in warfare. They are also taught how to teach these subjects to foreign soldiers, Patterson said.

"Special Forces soldiers go through what we call moral dilemmas throughout their Special Forces qualification training to reinforce appropriate responses to these type of situations," he said.

In some cases, the soldiers may be authorized to take specific actions to stop the abuse or protect civilians, actions that are covered under classified rules of engagement drawn up for each mission.

U.S. Special Forces on the ground in Afghanistan are identifying targets for U.S. planes to attack and are helping resupply rebels with food, blankets, weapons, ammunition and supplies for their horses, according to the Pentagon. Their debut on the battlefield coincided with the targeting of deployed Taliban and terrorist fighters, and dramatically improved the effectiveness of the bombing campaign.

The general in charge of the 38-day old war in Afghanistan took great pains Nov. 8 -- the day before Mazar i-Sharif fell -- to portray the U.S. relationship with the Northern Alliance not as an endorsement but simply a function of a confluence of interests.

"What we have said is that we are interested in providing support and assistance to opposition groups, north and south, which share our goals and share our interests, and wherein we find a mutually beneficial relationship," he said.

He and other defense officials point out that the Northern Alliance doesn't exist as a formal organization -- it is merely a loose coalition of ethnic groups and local warlords -- an attempt to distance each group from the potential stains of the others.

Franks is aware of the pitfalls of the association.

"The question about ... human rights violations, and so forth, is very much an issue with us as we work to be sure that the opposition groups with whom we do work understand the point ..." Franks said last week at a Pentagon press conference.

The precedent for abuses is real, and chilling. The State Department has published numerous accounts of rapes, murder, kidnapping, and mass executions by all sides in Afghanistan’s long civil war, some of the worst going back to 1993. More recently, the State Department reported that, "armed units of the Northern Alliance, local commanders, and rogue individuals were responsible for political killings, abductions, kidnappings for ransom, torture, rape, arbitrary detention, and looting.”

Defense officials say the record of the Taliban is worse, "If the human rights record of the Taliban and al-Qaeda were written, it would make the book of the month list, I'll tell you," Rumsfeld said last week.

It's a question of choosing the lesser of two evils, and the United States government cast its lot firmly with the rebels in the wake of Sept. 11, said one defense official.

"It's a case of the old adage, my enemy's enemy is my friend," another defense official said.

Defense officials confide that behind closed doors at the Pentagon, there is not much hand-wringing about human rights in Afghanistan. "I'm telling you right now that maybe down at (Central Command) they have done it in some groupings. But at no (internal) briefing here have we talked about human rights abuses," a senior defense official told UPI.

"The military's job is to kill people and rubble-ize (things)," he said. "The State Department's job is to put together what comes after. "The whole place is ugly," the official said.

The situation raises this nightmare public relations scenario: "News reports after the war could reveal that, ‘As women and children were raped and killed, U.S. soldiers stood by and did nothing,’” the special operations officer said.

"If at any point we decide the situation is turning south, we don't have to play with them," the senior defense official said.

Copyright 2001 by United Press International. All rights reserved.

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