There are very few signs that Afghanistan is rebuilding itself after the US invasion of its territory in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks but there are myriads of signs of the continual deterioration of the Asian nation. Opium trade is flourishing in the nation which is funding Islamic insurgence, President Hamid Karzai is at loggerheads with the international force stationed in the nation and the people themselves are increasingly getting frustrated with the daily violence in civilian areas.
To cap that, there are reports that NATO forces are illegally transferring detainees to Afghan prisons. As if that weren’t enough, NATO peacekeeping personnel have also been accused of actively torturing the Afghan detainees and to make their gruesome acts easier, they are transferring the yet-to-be tried detainees to the prisons where they are at the sole disposal of the prison authorities.
Allegations that prisoners have been deprived of food and water and have been mercilessly whipped have surfaced but it would be had for even Amnesty International to come with the needed evidence. Of course, the allegations themselves illustrate that something is certainly wrong at Afghan prisons but to what degree the allegations against the NATO officials are true remain to be judged.
For anyone with even a remote knowledge of what goes on at US detention centers in Cuba or Guantanamo Bay, the parallels are stark indeed. In US detention centers the detainees, many of them simple suspects whose crime are eventually never proved, are tortured ruthlessly to force them to confess the crimes the haven’t committed. Is Afghanistan been turned into something similar by the NATO forces? The doubt lingers on.
Image Source: Yping
Source: BBC
