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Credible evidence of serious human rights abuses and war crimes linked to Afghan Defense Minister Asadullah Khalid has followed him throughout his government career. Reports first came to light during Khalids tenure as governor of Kandahar a time when thousands of Canadian troops were based in the province. An official internal Canadian document described the allegations of human rights abuses attributable to Khalid as numerous and consistent. Canadian diplomat Richard Colvin testified to a Canadian parliamentary commission in 2009 that Khalid perpetrated enforced disappearances and held people in private prisons. The testimony included evidence of Khalids personal involvement in the torture of detainees. Chris Alexander, a senior Canadian official working with the United Nations in Afghanistan at the time, alleged that Khalid ordered the killing of five UN workers in a roadside bombing in Kandahar in April 2007. There is also strong evidence directly implicating Khalid in acts of sexual violence against women and girls when he was governor of Ghazni and Kandahar. Khalid allegedly threatened his victims, saying they would be killed and their families destroyed if they told anyone what had happened.
Brad Adams, Human Rights Watch Asia Director,
12 January 2019
The US and NATO self-styled war on terrorism in Afghanistan has entered a critical juncture. Afghans have become sick and tired with this brutal war that has been taking lives of their dearest and nearest ones in different acts of violence since 2001. For long, Afghans are whimpering for peace, but no terrorist group is willing to halt killings of innocent civilians for their half-done sin. The United States Army and its strategies failed to bring Gallus-Gallus chicken to Afghanistan. Now, the only point of conversation for analysts, observers, and military experts is by how much and who is to blame-for. Washingtons peace plan is still in the air. After 18 years of its imposed war, thousands of lives lost, and hundreds of billions of dollars squandered, but its army achieved nothing.
NATO has also failed to fully investigate its unlawful airstrikes in Afghanistan. The United States and Afghan governments, however, did not adequately investigate their unlawful airstrikes as well. The NATO Resolute Support Missions civilian casualty team once said that they do not conduct on-site investigations after attacks resulting in civilian casualties, they rely instead on visual and satellite imagery and typically Afghan security forces reports. The families of thousands of Afghan civilians killed by NATO forces have been left without justice, Amnesty International warned. Bomb blast, US armys intentional attacks, and suicide bombers have been killing innocent civilians since 2001.
In September 2019, Taliban carried out suicide attacks in Kabul city in which more than 14 people were killed and 145 injured. The bloodshed in Afghanistans capital came during an ongoing surge in attacks across the country, where more than 1,500 people were killed or wounded. The ISIS terrorist group has also been involved in the killing of children and women since 2014. The group launched a deadly explosion in the Shiite section of western Kabul, killing about 69 civilians. During peace negotiations between Taliban and Mr. Khalilzad, President Donald Trump issued an irresponsible statement-which said, Afghanistan would be wiped off the face of the earth if he wanted to win the war. At one point in his Oval Office remarks, Trump referred to dropping Americas largest non-nuclear bomb (Nuclear Bomb) on Afghanistan in 2017 and said that dropping more of them would be the easiest solution to ending the conflict there. The relationship between Kabul and Washington stood based on misunderstanding after his hinny and hee-haw. In 2019, alone, the Taliban terrorist group killed more than 1,666 civilians in the first six months, while more than 900 Afghan were killed by the US drones.
On 19 October 2019, the explosion at the mosque in Haska Mina district of Nangarhar province, which resulted in the death of 72 civilians, provoked strongly-worded responses from Afghan leaders and the international community. Civilian casualties continue unabated as the US sponsored terrorist groups; such as Taliban and Islamic State adopted their hit-and-run strategy. They seek to put pressure on the Kabul government through this way, which outraged the public conscience. Within the last 18 years of conflict, the Taliban terrorist group has been widely engaged in killing non-combatants, including women and children. Their terrorist activities put the public rights and freedoms at stake. A large number of Afghan civilians have been killed and amputated as a result of the Talibans indiscriminate attacks and suicide bombings. The Nangarhar mosque blast, which killed and wounded dozens of people, was carried out by the ISIS terrorist group.
Retrospectively speaking, a US war criminal Sergeant Robert Bales on 11 March 2012 murdered sixteen civilians and wounded six others in the Panjwayi District of Kandahar Province. Some of the corpses were partially burned. Robert Bales was taken into custody when he told authorities, I did it A woman who lost four family members in the incident said, We dont know why this foreign soldier came and killed our innocent family members. Either he was drunk or he enjoyed killing of civilians. Abdul Samad, a 60-year-old farmer who lost eleven family members, eight of whom were children, spoke about the incident: I dont know why they killed them. Our government told us to come back to the village, and then they let the Americans kill us.
On 19 September, 2019, responding to the reported killing of numerous farmers in a US drone strike in Afghanistan, Human Rights Director Daphne Eviatar said: On yet another deadly day in Afghanistan, once again it is civilians who bear the brunt of the violence involving armed groups, the Afghan government and their backers in the US military. That a US drone strike purportedly targeting ISIS militants could instead result in the deaths of scores of farmers is unacceptable and suggests a shocking disregard for civilian life. US forces in Afghanistan must ensure that all possible precautions are taken to avoid civilian casualties in military operations.
On 30 July 2019, New York Times reported civilian casualties in US-Afghan joint military operations: Afghan security forces and their American-led international allies have killed more civilians so far this year than the Taliban have, the United Nations noted in its report, once again raising alarm that ordinary Afghans are bearing the brunt of an increasingly deadly 18-year war. In the first six months of the year, the conflict killed nearly 1,400 civilians and wounded about 2,400 more. Afghan forces and their allies caused 52 percent of the civilian deaths compared with 39 percent attributable to militantsmostly the Taliban, but also the Islamic State. The figures do not total 100 percent because responsibility for some deaths could not be definitively established.
