A Voice for the Voiceless

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