By David L. Chaplin II
Impunity Watch Reporter, Asia

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan – Weddings, once a sacred ceremony, fall victim to tragedy as the Taliban indiscriminately attacks civilians. On Wednesday, in Afghanistan’s Kandahar’s southern province, 39 people were killed and 73 others were wounded.  The explosion came during a wedding dinner, between 9:30 and 10 p.m., striking the area where the men and boys were dining separately from the women. All the casualties were men or boys, village officials said.

Toror Yalai Wesa, the governor of Kandahar, told Al Jazeera that a survivor had said a car bomb was the cause of the explosion.  “We don’t have any women casualties. Most of them are adult men and some are young children,” he said.  The man getting married was a policeman from one of the checkpoints in the area, the governor said.  The groom was one of those wounded in the attack, according to his brother, Mohammad Zanif.  “We don’t know what happened.  There was an enormous explosion and as a result everyone there was either killed or injured,” he told AFP.

The International Security Assistance Force confirmed the bombing but had no information on casualties.  They and Afghan forces have secured the area.  It is unclear what caused the blast or why the wedding was targeted.  No one has yet said they planted a device.  Last week, Afghanistan held a national peace council and endorsed a plan to seek peace with the Taliban. But violence has continued unabated.

Relatives of the wounded gathered at an area hospital and local television appealed for people to donate blood to help treat the injured. Local television appealed to people for blood donations to help those injured.  Although the surrounding district is a base for the Taliban, the families at the wedding were not known to have links with the authorities or security forces, AFP reported.

On Monday, Nato’s International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) lost 10 soldiers on its deadliest day in months within what has been a violent week.  In earlier violence on Wednesday, four American Nato soldiers were killed when their helicopter was shot down in neighbouring Helmand province.  The Taliban claimed its fighters had shot down the aircraft with a rocket-propelled grenade in Sangin district.  More than 20 Nato soldiers have died this week.

Kandahar is set to be the next focus of Nato’s military drive against the Taliban.

For more information, please see:

CNN World News – 39 dead in blast at Afghanistan wedding – 9 June 2010

Al Jazeera English – Dozens killed in Afghan wedding – 9 June 2010

BBC News – Afghanistan explosion ‘kills dozens’ in Kandahar – 9 June 2010

Image courtesy of the Washington Post

By Kwangmin Ahn
Impunity Watch Reporter, Asia

KABUL, Afghanistan –Afghan President Hamid Karzai has ordered a review of the cases of every Taliban suspect in the country’s prisons. cThe head of international forces in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal, told the BBC that Mr Karzai had asked “to get sovereignty over all detention operations in Afghanistan and we are working full speed to do that”, with the aim of achieving this by the end of the year.

General McChrystal said Mr. Karzai had asked him to release suspects in cases where evidence was doubtful, or where they did not pose a threat. He added that as Mr. Karzai’s review process took off, he anticipated that international forces would be able to provide “good visibility on the background why a person was detained, rationale for release or continued detention”.

Mr. Karzai’s announcement of prisoner case reviews is the first official response to the national peace conference, which ended on Friday. The conference discussed measures to promote reconciliation, including negotiations with militant factions, and recommended the release of Taliban suspects being held in Afghan police custody and by the US military if they were being held on “inaccurate statements or unsubstantiated allegations”.

Delegates to the conference also urged the Taliban to cut its ties with the al Qaeda terror network and asked that Taliban prisoners be freed from international detention centers. Among other things, the delegates recommended that names of all Taliban members should be removed from blacklists maintained by the United States and United Nations. Those lists contain the names of suspected militants that U.S. authorities and their allies would like to arrest.

For more information, please see:

Al Jazeera – Afghan officials resign over attack – 06 June 2010

CNN – Afghan officers quit over peace conference attack– 06 June 2010

BBC – President Hamid Karzai orders Afghan prisoner review– 06 June 2010

By David L. Chaplin II
Impunity Watch Reporter, Asia

WAZIRSTAN, Afghanistan – Nine people were killed one Friday night when a suspected U.S. drone struck North Waziristan, near the border of Pakistan and Afghanistan, according local officials.  The dead consisted of two children, two women and five men, Pakistani intelligence and administrative officials said.  Investigators from the US military have found that “inaccurate and unprofessional” reporting by US operators of a drone was behind a missile strike that killed 23 Afghan civilians in February.”

Four American officers – two described as senior – received formal reprimands over the incident.  Ge.neral Stanley McChrystal, the top US and Nato commander in Afghanistan, called for the Air Force to investigate the actions of the crew involved in the incident.  “Our most important mission here is to protect the Afghan people,” he told reporters.  McChrystal had apologized to Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president, shortly after the attack.

“Inadvertently killing or injuring civilians is heartbreaking and undermines their trust and confidence in our mission. We will do all we can to regain that trust.”

Because the drone strikes kill innocent civilians and bystanders along with leaders from far away, they “infuriate the Muslim male”, said Addicott, thus making them more willing to join the movement. The men in Pakistan’s tribal region “view Americans as cowards and weasels”, he added.

The UN says at least 2,412 civilians were killed in the Afghan conflict in 2009 – a 14 per cent increase over the previous year.  Nato and Afghan government forces were responsible for 25 per cent of the deaths and of those, about 60 per cent were due to airstrikes, the UN said in a report published in January.

While using drones to attack what amounts to military targets might not be strictly illegal under existing laws of war, Alston says, because such practices “make it easier to kill without risk to a state’s forces, policymakers and commanders will be tempted to interpret the legal limitations on who can be killed, and under what circumstances, too expansively.” Moreover, Alston says, “Because [drone] operators are based thousands of miles away from the battlefield and undertake operations entirely through computer screens and remote audio feed, there is a risk of developing a ‘PlayStation’ mentality to killing.” Alston recommends that governments should also make public “the number of civilians collaterally killed in a targeted killing operation, and the measures in place to prevent such casualties.”

For more information, please see:

CNN World News – 9 killed in suspected U.S. drone strike in Pakistan – 22 May 2010

IPS News – CIA Drone Operators Oppose Strikes as Helping al Qaeda – 3 June 2010

Al Jazeera English – US crew faulted for drone deaths – 30 May 2010

Image Courtesy of A Pakistan News

None of the Afghans moved as the rockets landed.  “All stood [still] including 300 women, they were defiant. The signal was ‘we are used to this, we are ready for it but we want to continue’,” Staffan de Mistura told the BBC. The meeting is continuing.

An official in charge of organising the event, Farooq Wardak, said three heavily-armed militants dressed in burkas were involved in the attack. Police later said they had surrounded a home in Kabul where suspected insurgents, believed to be responsible for the attack, were holed up. Two people, described as suicide bombers, were killed and one was arrested in connection with the attack, Karzai’s spokesman said.

The Taliban have been waging a battle to overthrow the US-backed government and expel the 130,000 foreign troops there. The attack underscored the Taliban’s opposition to what they have dubbed as a “phony reconciliation process” stacked with Karzai’s supporters and an ignored female presence. They insist they will not negotiate until all foreign troops leave the country. Abdullah Abdullah, Karzai’s main rival in last year’s presidential election, declined to attend the conference, saying the hand-picked delegates do not represent Afghan public opinion.

The jirga is due to finish late on Friday, with a declaration expected on what steps should be taken to end the insurgency, which groups should be included in the process, and how they should be approached.  President Karzai has proposed offering an amnesty and reintegration incentives to low-level Taliban who accept the constitution. He has also offered to negotiate the removal of some Taliban from a UN blacklist, and to give certain leaders asylum in another Islamic country for the purpose of holding peace talks.

The United States has already promised financial help for the program to lure Taliban foot soldiers to give up fighting.

For more information, please see:

The Huffington  Post – Taliban Attacks Afghanistan Peace Conference – 2 June 2010

BBC News – Violence mars Afghanistan peace meeting in Kabul – 2 June 2010

Al Jazeera English – Taliban attacks Afghan peace jirga – 2 June 2010

Image Courtesy of The National Post

By Kwangmin Ahn
Impunity Watch Reporter, Asia

BEIJING, China – Liang Chao was a farmer’s son who migrated to the city seeking a better life. He worked at Foxconn, a company widely known for producing components for Apple, Dell, Hewlett-Packard and other companies. But the 21-year-old worker was found dead on May 14 after falling from the seventh floor of a factory dormitory, according to local police. A few days after Liang’s death, another Foxconn employee died after falling from a building at the Shenzhen factory complex. In all, state-run media reports there have been 10 deaths and two failed suicide attempts over the past five months.

In Foxconn, the employees work six days a week with one day off and every day they work two hours overtime. Entry-level workers earn about 900 yuan ($132) a month at the Shenzen factory. Obviously work is tiring and there’s pressure. There are lots of rules here, for example a worker has to wear a uniform and a badge. He cannot smoke in public areas and only allowed to walk in authorised areas within the factory. A normal working day is 8am and 5.30pm but many people work till 8pm. The night shift starts at 8pm and ends at 8am. Workers don’t have much time to communicate with each other and they feel quite lonely. The salary is quite low for newcomers, the lowest in Shenzhen.

Foxconn is one of the world’s top electronics manufacturers. Of its 800,000 employees in China’s mainland, 420,000 are in Shenzen, where they work in shifts and live in the sprawling factory complex.

Both the company and Chinese authorities appear anxious to offset some of the negative attention caused by the suicides, telling Chinese newspapers to tone down their reporting of the incidents. Meanwhile, the chairman of Foxconn, Terry Gou, led media personnel on a tour of the factory and promised to do more to prevent further deaths.

Right now, there are no concrete answers as to what drove the workers to commit suicide. Foxconn insists that its workers are treated well and there could be a number of factors at play. However the company admits that “It’s true our employees basically stay at the same place 24 hours a day, seven days a week.” “We also find some young employees don’t know their roommates’ names and don’t communicate with each other.”

Foxconn said it is taking measures to improve its workers’ lives, organizing recreational activities, calling in Buddhist monks to offer spiritual consolation and setting up a 24-hour help line, but the company was overwhelmed because counselors were scarce.

For more information, please see:

Al Jazeera – Alarm over Apple factory suicides – 26 May 2010

CNN – China, company seek answers to rash of suicides– 28 May 2010

BBC – Suicide-hit Foxconn factory to increase wages– 28 May 2010