Human rights activists are concerned evidence of war crimes in Balkh may disappear as untrained locals try and clear the bones from mass graves.
Human rights activists are concerned evidence of war crimes in Balkh may disappear as untrained locals try and clear the bones from mass graves.Head of transitional justice north zone office of the AIHRC (Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission) Farid Mutaqi says to Killid “20 collective graves have been discovered in the northern part of Afghanistan in recent years but the excavation has been neither scientific nor professional”.
Media reports in January 2012 say a mass grave was discovered inside a military compound in the Dehdadi district of Balkh province.
The desolate northern desert is littered with graves of victims of the widespread savagery that characterised the Afghan conflict in the early nineties, and during the Taleban regime. There are graves also of fighters killed by US forces in 2001.
AIHRC would like the mass graves to be professionally exhumed so the remains can help identify the victims and ensure those responsible are brought to justice.
Lost evidence
A non-governmental group, Forensic Science has been training locals to open the graves scientifically. The group says the graves are the responsibility of the Ministry of Interior. Ashraf Bakhtayari of the group informed Killid much of the evidence has been destroyed in mass graves that were opened unprofessionally.
Training is also being provided to the police, who are the first to receive information about a mass grave, says Mohammad Azam Esmati, a retired colonel who is an instructor in the police academy.
A mass grave was found in the west of Mazar-e-Sharif, adjoining the headquarters of the 209 Shahin ANA Corps but it has not been exhumed.
According to media reports, in the summer of 2008, police in Balkh arrested a man who found a large number of bodies as he was laying the foundation for a house in the desert, south of Mazar.
Witnesses have been interviewed saying hundreds of Taleban fighters and al-Qaeda who were killed by US forces in 2001 are also buried in mass graves.
Human rights activists have been reporting perpetrators of war crimes who are now in the government are trying to erase evidence of the graves. Only those who fear they will be implicated in war crimes have an interest in tampering with the evidence, they say.
