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8/14/2019 United Nations Security Council Study Guide-Agenda 2.pdf
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MUMBAI MUN 2013
United Nations Security Council (UNSC)
Study Guide
Agenda: The Situation in Afghanistan
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
I. Introduction
II. The Civil War
III. Human Rights Violations
A. Taliban: Abuses of an Oppressive Regime
B. Post-Taliban
i. Controversy over torture
ii. Elections during combat
iii. Law and order
iv. Freedom of speech and the media
V. Religion issues
VI. Past UN actions/resolutions
VII. Questions a Resolution Must Answer (QARMA)
VIII. References
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I. INTRODUCTION
This is one agenda that all of us are well acquainted with. Afghanistan has been
the victim of serious civil war, human rights violations and myriad other issues
since decades. With the foreign forces planning to dismantle their bases and leave
Afghanistan by around 2014, there are numerous issues which plague the Afghan
people at present. The Taliban has been successfully resurrecting itself across
Afghanistan. Hazaras continue to be tormented by them. A lot of foreign nations
are using Afghanistan as a strategic ally too. The situation is developing on a daily
basis and it is important for the United Nations Security Council to come up with a
comprehensive plan to ensure peace and stability in the region.
The challenges for peace and stability in a country ravaged by more than three
decades of war are considerable. Efforts to guarantee stability continue to be
undermined by the Taliban-led insurgency that has access to safe-havens in
Pakistan, concerns about the international communitys long-term commitment
to Afghanistan following the transition to Afghan security lead in 2014, as well as
by the implications of a political settlement with the Taliban and other armed
opposition groups. After more than a decade of intervention in Afghanistan, the
insurgency (Taliban and other groups) remains resilient, the Afghan government
weak, and the international community fatigued.
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II. THE CIVIL WAR
At nine years and counting, the U.S. war in Afghanistan is the longest in our
history, surpassing even the Vietnam War, and it will shortly surpass the Soviet
Unions own extended military campaign there. With the surge, it will cost the
U.S. taxpayers nearly $100 billion per year, a sum roughly seven times larger than
Afghanistans annual gross national product (GNP) of $14 billion and greater than
the total annual cost of the new U.S. health insurance program.1 Thousands of
American and allied personnel have been killed or gravely wounded.
The U.S. interests at stake in Afghanistan do not warrant this level of sacrifice.
President Obama justified expanding our commitment by saying the goal was
eradicating Al Qaeda. Yet Al Qaeda is no longer a significant presence inAfghanistan, and there are only some 400 hard-core Al Qaeda members
remaining in the entire Af/Pak theater, most of them hiding in Pakistans
northwest provinces.
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III. Human Rights Violations
The situation of Human Rights in Afghanistan is a topic of some controversy and
conflict. While the Taliban were well known for numerous human rights abuses,
several human rights violations continue to take place in the post-Taliban
government era.
A. Taliban: Abuses of an Oppressive Regime
Prior to the rise of the Taliban, women in Afghanistan were protected under law
and increasingly afforded rights in Afghan society. Women received the right to
vote in the 1920s; and as early as the 1960s, the Afghan constitution provided for
equality for women. There was a mood of tolerance and openness as the country
began moving toward democracy. Women were making important contributions
to national development. In 1977, women comprised over 15% of Afghanistan's
highest legislative body. It is estimated that by the early 1990s, 70% of
schoolteachers, 50% of government workers and university students, and 40% of
doctors in Kabul were women. Afghan women had been active in humanitarian
relief organizations until the Taliban imposed severe restrictions on their ability to
work. These professional women provide a pool of talent and expertise that will
be needed in the reconstruction of post-Taliban Afghanistan.
Islam has a tradition of protecting the rights of women and children. In fact, Islam
has specific provisions which define the rights of women in areas such as
marriage, divorce, and property rights. The Taliban's version of Islam is not
supported by the world's Muslims. Although the Taliban claimed that it was acting
in the best interests of women, the truth is that the Taliban regime cruelly
reduced women and girls to poverty, worsened their health, and deprived them
of their right to an education, and many times the right to practice their religion.
The Taliban is out of step with the Muslim world and with Islam.
Afghanistan under the Taliban had one of the worst human rights records in the
world. The regime systematically repressed all sectors of the population and
denied even the most basic individual rights. Yet the Taliban's war against women
was particularly appalling.
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The Taliban first became prominent in 1994 and took over the Afghan capital,
Kabul, in 1996. The takeover followed over 20 years of civil war and political
instability. Initially, some hoped that the Taliban would provide stability to the
country. However, it soon imposed a strict and oppressive order based on its
misinterpretation of Islamic law.
The assault on the status of women began immediately after the Taliban took
power in Kabul. The Taliban closed the women's university and forced nearly all
women to quit their jobs, closing down an important source of talent and
expertise for the country. It restricted access to medical care for women, brutally
enforced a restrictive dress code, and limited the ability of women to move about
the city.
The Taliban perpetrated egregious acts of violence against women, including
rape, abduction, and forced marriage. Some families resorted to sending their
daughters to Pakistan or Iran to protect them.
Afghan women living under the Taliban virtually had the world of work closed to
them. Forced to quit their jobs as teachers, doctors, nurses, and clerical workers
when the Taliban took over, women could work only in very limited
circumstances. A tremendous asset was lost to a society that desperately needed
trained professionals.
As many as 50,000 women, who had lost husbands and other male relatives
during Afghanistan's long civil war, had no source of income. Many were reduced
to selling all of their possessions and begging in the streets, or worse, to feed their
families.
Restricting women's access to work is an attack on women today. Eliminating
women's access to education is an assault on women tomorrow.
The Taliban ended, for all practical purposes, education for girls. Since 1998, girls
over the age of eight have been prohibited from attending school. Home
schooling, while sometimes tolerated, was more often repressed. Last year, the
Taliban jailed and then deported a female foreign aid worker who had promoted
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home-based work for women and home schools for girls. The Taliban prohibited
women from studying at Kabul University.
As a result of these measures, the Taliban was ensuring that women would
continue to sink deeper into poverty and deprivation, thereby guaranteeing thattomorrow's women would have none of the skills needed to function in a modern
society.
Under Taliban rule, women were given only the most rudimentary access to
health care and medical care, thereby endangering the health of women, and in
turn, their families. In most hospitals, male physicians could only examine a
female patient if she were fully clothed, ruling out the possibility of meaningful
diagnosis and treatment.
These Taliban regulations led to a lack of adequate medical care for women and
contributed to increased suffering and higher mortality rates. Afghanistan has the
world's second worst rate of maternal death during childbirth. About 16 out of
every 100 women die giving birth.
Inadequate medical care for women also meant poor medical care and a high
mortality rate for Afghan children. Afghanistan has one of the world's highest
rates of infant and child mortality. According to the United Nations InternationalChildren's Emergency Fund (UNICEF), 165 of every 1000 babies die before their
first birthday.
Further hampering health, the Taliban destroyed public education posters and
other health information. This left many women, in a society already plagued by
massive illiteracy, without basic health care information.
In May 2001, the Taliban raided and temporarily closed a foreign-funded hospital
in Kabul because male and female staff allegedly mixed in the dining room andoperating wards. It is significant to note that approximately 70% of health services
had been provided by international relief organizations -- further highlighting the
Taliban's general disregard for the welfare of the Afghan people.
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The Taliban also required that windows of houses be painted over to prevent
outsiders from possibly seeing women inside homes, further isolating women
who once led productive lives and contributing to a rise in mental health
problems. Physicians for Human Rights reports high rates of depression and
suicide among Afghan women. One European physician reported many cases of
burns in the oesophagus as the result of women swallowing battery acid or
household cleaners--a cheap, if painful, method of suicide.
B. Post-Taliban
The Bonn Agreement of 2001 established the Afghan Independent Human Rights
Commission (AIHRC) as a national human rights institution to protect andpromote human rights and to investigate human rights abuses and war crimes.
The Afghanistan Constitution of 2004 entrenched the existence of the AIHRC.
While the on-going turmoil, violence and reconstruction efforts often make it
difficult to get an accurate sense of what is going on, various reports from
NGOs have accused various branches of the Afghan government of engaging in
human rights violations. There have also been various human rights abuses by
American soldiers on Afghan civilians, most notably in the Baghram prisons where
innocent civilians endured torture, humiliating conditions, and inhumane
treatment. The United States was heavily criticized for lenient sentencing for the
soldiers responsible.
Former Afghan warlords and political strongmen supported
by the US during the ousting of the Taliban were responsible for numerous
human rights violations in 2003 including kidnapping, rape, robbery, and
extortion.
i. Controversy over torture
In March 2002,ABC Newsclaimed top officials at the CIA authorized
controversial, harsh interrogation techniques. The possible interrogation
techniques included shaking and slapping, shackling prisoners in a standing
position, keeping the prisoner in a cold cell and dousing them with water,
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and water boarding. A United Nations study in 2011 reported on interviews with
379 detainees. It found those held by police or intelligence services were
subjected to beatings, removal of toenails and electric shocks.
ii. Elections during combat
Several elections have been held in Afghanistan since 2001. The most recent
election was held 18 September 2010, for the Afghan Parliament with a reported
2,499 candidates competing for 250 seats. During the elections,
the Taliban
attacked many of those involved, killing 11 civilians and 3 Afghan National
Policemen in over 300 attacks on the polls. The low death toll at the hands of the
Taliban can be attributed to stepped up operations specifically targeting theleaders of insurgents planning attacks in the days leading up to the elections
which captured hundreds of insurgents and explosives. Turnout at election was
40%.
iii. Law and order
The National Security Directorate, Afghanistan's national security agency, hasbeen accused of running its own prisons, torturing suspects, and harassing
journalists. The security forces of local militias, which also have their own prisons,
have been accused of torture and arbitrary killing Warlords in the north have used
property destruction, rape, and murder to discourage displaced Pashtuns from
reclaiming their homes. Child labour and human trafficking remain common
outside Kabul. Civilians frequently have been killed in battles between warlord
forces. Poor conditions in the overcrowded prisons have contributed to illness
and death amongst prisoners; a prison rehabilitation program began in 2003. Inthe absence of an effective national judicial system, the right to judicial protection
has been compromised as uneven local standards have prevailed in criminal trials.
Fair trial principles are enshrined in the Afghan constitution and the criminal
procedure but frequently violated for various reasons, including the lack of well-
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educated, professional staff (especially defence lawyers), lack of material
resources, corruption and unlawful interference by warlords and politicians.
iv. Freedom of speech and the media
The government has limited freedom of the media by selective crackdowns that
invoke Islamic law and has encouraged self-censorship. The media remain
substantially government-owned. The nominally lesser restrictions of the 2004
media law have been criticized by journalists and legal experts, and harassment
and threats continued after its passage, especially outside Kabul.
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V. RELIGION ISSUES
Freedom of religion is restricted severely. Due to the absence of a constitution
and the on-going civil war, freedom of religion is determined primarily by the
unofficial, unwritten, and evolving policies of the warring factions. In 1999 the
Taliban, the ultraconservative Islamic movement that controls approximately 90
per cent of the country, claimed that it was drafting a new constitution based on
Islamic law. Although a spokesperson for the Taliban claimed that the new
constitution would ensure the rights of all Muslims and religious minorities,
custom and law require affiliation with some religion, and atheism is punishable
by death. By the end of the period covered by this report, a new constitution had
not been promulgated.
The status of respect for religious freedom continued to deteriorate during the
period covered by this report due to the civil war, the policies of the Taliban, and
the policies of the Taliban's opponents. Repression by the Taliban of the Hazara
ethnic group, which is predominantly Shi'a Muslim, was particularly severe.
Although the conflict between the Hazaras and the Taliban is political and military
as well as religious, and it is not possible to state with certainty that the Taliban
engaged in its campaign against the Shi'a solely because of their religious beliefs,
the religious affiliation of the Hazaras apparently was a significant factor leading
to their repression. The Taliban sought to impose its extreme interpretation of
Islamic observance in areas that it controlled and has declared that all Muslims in
areas under Taliban control must abide by the Taliban's interpretation of Islamic
law. The Taliban relies on a religious police force under the control of the
Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice (PVPV) to enforce
rules regarding appearance, dress, employment, access to medical care,
behaviour, religious practice, and freedom of expression. Persons found to be in
violation of the edicts are subject to punishment meted out on the spot, which
may include beatings, detention, or both. In practice, the rigid policies adopted
both by the Taliban and by certain opposition groups affect adversely adherents
of other branches of Islam and of other faiths.
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Relations between the different branches of Islam in the country are difficult.
Historically, the minority Shi'a faced discrimination from the majority Sunni
population.
The U.S. Embassy in Kabul has been closed since 1989 for security reasons.Although the United States does not recognize any of the warring factions as the
Government of Afghanistan, U.S. Government officials have raised religious
freedom issues with representatives of the factions on several occasions during
the period covered by this report. U.S. Government officials have made similar
approaches to other governments, including countries with influence in
Afghanistan.
In September 2000, the former Secretary of State identified the Taliban as a
particularly severe violator of religious freedom.
Persecution of Hazara people
This refers to systematic discrimination, ethnic cleansing and genocide of
the Shia Hazara people, who are primarily from the central highland region
of Hazarajat in Afghanistan. Significant populations of Hazara people are also
found in Quetta, Pakistan and Mashad, Iran. The persecution of Hazara people
dates back to the 16th century, with Babur from Kabulistan. It is reported that
during the reign of Emir Abdur Rahman (1880-1901), thousands of Hazaras were
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killed, expelled and enslaved. Syed Askar Mousavi, a contemporary Hazara writer,
claims that half the population of Hazaras was displaced, shifted to
neighbouring Balochistan of British Indiaand Khorasan Province of Iran.
However, "it is difficult to verify such an estimate, but the memory of the
conquest of the Hazrajt by Abd-al-Ramn Khan certainly remains vivid among
the Hazras themselves, and has heavily influenced their relations with the
Afghan state throughout the 20th century." This led to Pashtuns and other groups
occupying parts of Hazarajat. The Hazara people have also been the victims of
massacre by Taliban and al-Qaeda. Although the situation of Hazaras improved in
Afghanistan with the ousting of Taliban government from power in 2001,
hundreds of Hazara have been victimised in neighbouring Pakistan, in recent
years.
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VI. Past UN Resolutions
1. Resolution 1444 (2002) adopted by the Security Council at its 4651st meeting,
on 27 November 2002
2. Resolution 1413 (2002) adopted by the Security Council at its 4541st meeting,
on 23 May 2002
VII. Questions a Resolution Must Answer (QARMA)
Is there a need for mandating the formation of a Transitional FederalGovernment in Afghanistan post 2014?
What measures need to be taken by member nations of the UN to preventthe increasing influence of Taliban in the interior regions of Afghanistan?
What steps need to be taken to protect the rights of minority communitiesin Afghanistan like the Hazaras?
What measures can be taken to ensure that the law and order situation inAfghanistan is kept under control?
What possible sanctions can be imposed on member nations supportingextremist factions like the Taliban in Afghanistan?
VIII. REFERENCES
www.britannica.com
http://www.afghanistanstudygroup.org/2010/08/13/summary/
http://www.un.org
http://www.reuters.com
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