United Nations Security Council Study Guide-Agenda 2.pdf

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

Documents

United Nations Security Council Study Guide-Agenda 2.pdf