Talk about stating the obvious. After I left the scene of what was the most surreal experience I’ve had in Afghanistan, I checked in with the general’s staff to find out what had happened. According to Jorat’s aides, the beating victim is an Afghan businessman said to have been close with both the Taliban regime and Al Qaeda. A fleeing Al Qaeda leader allegedly gave the businessman $34,000 in cash shortly before the Northern Alliance captured Kabul last November. General Jorat, apparently, wanted him to hand over the money–and became enraged when he didn’t. It didn’t help matters that the businessman was less than obsequious to the general. “He said he was going to give the money today and then said he never had it,” one of Jorat’s aides said. “Then he talked badly to the general.”
Jorat–whose name in Afghan means “brave”–ordered his staff to detain the man overnight, apparently to give him time to reconsider. This businessman, whose name I couldn’t find out, is not alone. No one here knows for sure how many Afghans were arrested after the toppling of the Taliban and held as non-combatants. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) says there are around 5,000 registered prisoners of war being held in 40 locations across the country. Their treatment and conditions are being monitored. Then there are those like the businessman I saw, detained under shadowy circumstances, either by authorities in Kabul, Northern Alliance forces outside the capital, or even militia groups. “We’re hearing about people being privately held,” said Tomoko Niino, a communications delegate with the ICRC in Kabul. “We cannot visit these people.”
The fact that the commander of Afghanistan’s police force was willing to beat a prisoner in his own office–and in front of a Western journalist–raises obvious questions about the treatment of those held out of sight in jail cells or private homes. Nor is it clear whether these people are guilty of any crime: both Afghans and ICRC representatives have heard numerous stories of those who settle old scores by falsely accusing neighbors or family rivals of being Taliban or Al Qaeda members. “This is happening in all the villages outside of Kabul,” says one resident of the Afghan capital.
General Aziz Urakhmon Mail, an official in the Security Service of Afghanistan’s interim government, told me that at least 200 non-combatants had been arrested since the fall of the Taliban on suspicion of being members of the regime or in Al Qaeda. He acknowledged that rivals could have falsely accused some of them. “It is our job to determine who is a real Taliban or Al Qaeda and who is not,” Mail said. “If there is no evidence, then they can go home.”
Mail said all Taliban or Al Qaeda detainees–POWs or otherwise–found to have committed serious crimes would be handed over to a United Nations tribunal. The rest, he told me, would be held in Afghan jails for up to four years. When I asked whether they would first be put on trial, he hesitated, and then said: “Oh yes, it will be done according to the law.” Still, the rule of law is not exactly a salient feature of life in Afghanistan right now. The country’s courts have reopened, but it seems that none of those arrested during or after the latest fighting has appeared before a judge so far.
Mail’s statement stuck with when I went back to General Jorat’s office to reschedule our aborted interview. As I was leaving, I noticed the same businessman sitting in the waiting room, the bruises still on his face from the previous night’s beating. I walked to the parking lot, wondering what else would be in store for him in the general’s office.
