Sayyaf MP?

Here is a short extract from the HRW report I mentioned earlier, which serves to illustrate why some Afghans feel so strongly that some of the parliamentary candidates had no right to stand for office. In Paghman district, just west of Kabul, the election posters on display showed the face of only one man, Abdul Rabb al Rasul Sayyaf. In his previous incarnation, he was the leader of the predominantly Pashtun Ittihad party, supported by Saudi Arabia.

Human Rights Watch interviewed a Pashtun man who, despite his Pashtun ethnicity, was held by Ittihad forces in the summer of 1992 because of a non-ethnic dispute with troops. The man said he was put in detention, and […] that night, as fighting raged outside, the man said that the Ittihad forces brought in Hazara civilians: “Sayyaf’s forces brought thirty or forty Hazara civilians. . . . They were not fighters, but civilians, old and young. […] [T]he fighting got severe. We could hear the artillery. There was a lot of shooting. I could hear these people, Sayyaf’s people, talking about retreating. And at one point, one of them said to Commander Tourgal, “What should we do with these prisoners?” They were speaking in Pashto, and the Hazara people couldn’t understand them. But I could understand. Somebody said, “Go and shoot them.” I was near the door. When I heard this, I hurried away and hid away from the door, in the corner of the room [on the side of the room with the door]. A person came, and opened the door, and shot all over the room with his kalashnikov, on automatic. He just fired randomly all over the room. About ten people were killed, immediately, and four were wounded. . . . After, no one moved. We [who were still alive] were trembling with fear. The fighting outside was serious—the commander called on this guy to come back to fight at the windows with them, so the man left, to go back to fighting.”

It is hard not to agree with HRW, that, having allowed such men to compete for seats in the new parliament, this election represents somehow a lost opportunity for the Afghan people to pursue a future of peace. Arezu agrees: “If only the government had had the courage to exclude these warlords, these murderers! Do you know how many people would have voted then? Millions, and millions more than voted yesterday”.