Repealing a law that grants a pardon for war crimes and rights abuses could further destabilise Afghanistan and scupper government efforts to reconcile with insurgents, the country's justice minister said. The Afghan government confirmed for the first time publicly last month it had enacted into law a blanket amnesty, granting immunity to members of all armed factions for acts committed before the Taliban's removal in 2001 and thereafter.
The United Nations and Afghan and international rights groups have called for a repeal of the law, which appeared to have been passed unannounced, despite promises by President Hamid Karzai not to sign it after it was approved by parliament in 2007. Rights groups say they learned only this year that the bill had been published in the official gazette. Western governments have given muted responses and issued no call for its repeal.
Justice Minister Assadullah Ghalib, interviewed by Reuters on Tuesday, said scrapping the law would create "more instability" and could undermine efforts to reach out to insurgent factions. The law protects powerful people in Karzai's government who led armed factions during Afghanistan's decades of conflict, and enacting it quietly could also help lure some of the leaders of current insurgency groups to the negotiating table. Karzai has launched a furtive effort in recent months to reach out to the militants to end years of fighting and last month acknowledged he had met a delegation from Hezb-i-Islami, one of the main insurgent groups.
The group's leader, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, is a veteran militia commander accused of killing thousands of civilians during Afghanistan's civil war in the 1990s. The law would mean Hekmatyar and others accused of similar crimes could not be prosecuted by the state.
Karzai will also be holding a "peace jirga" or large assembly next month to try and promote reconciliation. Although militants have not been invited, it is likely that there could be insurgent sympathisers among some of the notables formally involved. Ghalib said reconciliation was one step towards peace.
"The goal of the Afghan society is to go towards peace and we should follow the path of accord and reconciliation," he said. But the chief UN human rights officer in Afghanistan, Norah Niland, last month said a blanket amnesty could undermine public trust in the reconciliation process and at the very least there had to be an acknowledgement of abuses committed.
Ghalib also said steps had been taken with the US military to speed up the trials of hundreds of suspected Taliban and other militants held in Bagram, the main US base in Afghanistan, and other detention facilities. "The prisoners now have access to lawyers, prosecutors check their cases regularly and written questionnaires have been sent to prisoners' villages to seek information about them or gather evidence about them," said Ghalib.
Bagram prison became a symbol of detainee abuses for Afghans after the deaths of two detainees in 2002. In June, the BBC reported allegations of abuse and neglect at the facility after interviewing 27 former inmates. The prison was housed for eight years in an ex-Soviet aircraft hangar, until December when that was shut and replaced with a purpose-built $60 million prison. In January, Afghan officials agreed to take over responsibility of the prison.