Al Jazeera reports on an armed group that will be saving Afghanistan from armed groups.
Every day they hear the thunderous sound of motorcycles approaching their houses.
Minutes later, residents of Balkh province see a group of about 25 armed men - their faces covered with black scarves, the Afghanistan national flag wrapped around their bodies - performing security checks.
New Afghan militia sets its sights on ISIL, Al Jazeera
The somewhat ambiguous report says that the group, which is named Death, is not looking for trouble. Quite the opposite, in what Al Jazeera labels as fact.
This is not an unusual sight for people living in a country that has seen decades of war and conflict, except this particular gang is not looking for trouble - quite the opposite in fact.
This is the Marg - a new homegrown paramilitary organisation in Afghanistan that has vowed to fight off various armed groups - including the latest threat by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) - that have little concern for the civilian population.
As the United States withdraws, groups like Death plan to replace us.
Marg, meaning "death" in the Afghan Dari language, plans to fill the gap left by the United States when it pulled the bulk of its troops out of Afghanistan last year.
This has been a part of the U.S. plan for withdraw as well, though not under such an explicitly spelled out name.
The United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan has released another report on torture. Overall, the incidence of torture in the latest survey is somewhat down.
UNAMA observed that overall the number of detainees interviewed who experienced torture or ill-treatment was 14 per cent lower in the current period compared to the previous period.27 While the current study found that 35 per cent (278 of 790 detainees interviewed) experienced torture or ill-treatment, UNAMA’s previous report determined that 49 per cent (314 of 635 detainees interviewed) were tortured or ill-treated.28
Update on the Treatment of Conflict-Related Detainees in Afghan Custody, UNAMA
The torture methods are very similar to the previous reporting.
Sixteen different methods of torture were described by detainees. Torture was experienced in the form of prolonged and severe beating with cables, pipes, hoses or wooden sticks (including on the soles of the feet), punching, hitting and kicking all over the body including jumping on the detainee’s body, twisting of genitals including with a wrench-like device, and threats of execution and/or sexual assault. Other forms reported were suspension, electric shock, stress positions, forced prolonged standing including in extremely hot or cold conditions, forced standing and sitting down or squatting repeatedly, forced drinking of excessive amounts of water and denial of food, water and prayer time.
Several incidents of removal of finger and toenails and stuffing cloth or plastic bags in a detainee’s month, holding his nose and choking him causing the detainee to start to asphyxiate and also lose consciousness described as “waterboarding without the water” were reported. Detainees interviewed reported that different forms of torture were often used on them with increasing levels of pain particularly when they refused to confess to the crime they were accused of or failed to provide or confirm the requested or suggested information. Most detainees reported that torture stopped once they made a forced confession including sometimes in front of a video camera or when they thumb printed a paper that documented a confession.32
The partial reduction in the incidence of torture might be partially explained by Hamid Karzai's 2013 decree.
Why the reduction in overall incidents of torture? Why still such high numbers
Two major changes in the ‘torture climate’ happened during the last two years. One was President Hamed Karzai’s Decree 129 (read the text at the end of this dispatch) issued on 16 February 2013. Torture had already been multiply illegal – banned by the constitution, penal code and the Convention Against Torture which Afghanistan signed in 1987. However, after reacting largely with denial to the three earlier torture reports by UNAMA and the AIHRC, in January 2013, Karzai sent his own commission out to investigate.
Because of Impunity: UN reports Afghan forces still torturing Afghans, Afghanistan Analysts Network
And also by strengthened ISAF monitoring, after earlier failed monitoring efforts.
The second major shift in the last two years of UNAMA’s reporting was ISAF’s changing role. It finally started monitoring detainees it transferred to NDS, being shamed into action by UNAMA’s 2011 report and various legal actions and scandals in home countries over transferred detainees being tortured. When UNAMA’s 2013 report found torture persisted even in some facilities which ISAF had certified as ‘torture free’, ISAF strengthened its monitoring. In its new report, UNAMA recognises that:
ISAF’s programme contributed to efforts to prevent most international forces from transferring detainees to Afghan facilities where they faced a risk of torture. The programme also improved awareness among NDS and ANP of the prohibition of torture with fewer incidents of transfer to facilities where torture was used.
Monitoring by ISAF, though, no longer exists.
ISAF’s successor, NATO’s non-combat training mission, Resolute Support, has no such mandate and does not monitor Afghan detention facilities, (5) so whatever benefits ISAF’s monitoring may have brought could slip away.
The UNAMA report singles out extra-judicial killings in Kandahar province, under U.S. backed police chief Abdul Raziq.
UNAMA notes that Zheray district is where Kandahar’s provincial chief of police General Raziq had told journalists during the same period (on 7 August 2014) that he was “extremely grateful to [...] all security forces for identifying and targeting [insurgents] on the spot,” an act that avoided “giving a chance to [corrupt] judges or prosecutors to take money from them and release them [for a bribe].”176 In late January 2015, a media broadcast made a renewed reference to General Raziq’s speech. These and similar statements ordering and approving of executions of captured alleged insurgents made by other military and police officials in August 2014 may amount to the war crime of “declaring no quarter.” This raises serious concerns about the possibility of extra-judicial or summary executions of alleged insurgents and others following ANSF operations.
Update on the Treatment of Conflict-Related Detainees in Afghan Custody, UNAMA
Raziq is not the only official quoted by the media stating give-no-quarter attitudes.
However, he was not the only senior official, because of the fear corrupt judges would release detainees, to apparently declare no quarter (ie giving enemy fighters no chance to surrender) or encouraging security forces to kill prisoners – both illegal and possibly amounting to war crimes. UNAMA said that between August and October 2014, it recorded at least six ANSF commanders and one district governor making similar statements. (3)
Because of Impunity: UN reports Afghan forces still torturing Afghans, Afghanistan Analysts Network
Al Jazeera reports the Death group in northern Afghanistan taking the same give-no-quarter line.
Marg fighters portray themselves as part of a grassroots movement among ordinary people who oppose religious hardliners and thugs.
"If we find out about a sympathiser of the Taliban and ISIL, or someone who wants to join them, we will kill that person without any doubt," Mahdiyar said.
...
Meanwhile, Marg members said they have no intention of establishing prisons, because for them, any person who sympathises with the Taliban and ISIL will be put to death.
New Afghan militia sets its sights on ISIL, Al Jazeera
The period of the UNAMA reports includes the 2013 torture, extra-judicial killings, and multilations at a U.S. Special Forces base in Wardak province. This gets brief mention in the report. Apparently because UNAMA interviewers came across a torture victim in some other prison.
Two of the 36 provided sufficiently credible and reliable accounts of torture in a US facility in Maydan Wardak in September 2013 and a US Special Forces facility at Baghlan in April 2013. Relevant authorities advised UNAMA the allegations were investigated.54
Update on the Treatment of Conflict-Related Detainees in Afghan Custody, UNAMA