Millions Approach ICC to Open War Crime Cases Against US And Others in Afghanistan

The Hague based International Criminal court (ICC) received a staggering 1.17 million representations from victims of war crimes in Afghanistan. These are alleged crimes against humanity committed by the United States-led forces, Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and others intelligence organisations, Afghan government forces and warlords, and anti-government forces, including Islamic State. The representations collected by ICC’s Victims Participation and Reparations Section (VPRS) takes into account alleged war crimes committed in Afghanistan from May 01, 2003. It was in 2003, Afghanistan deposited its instrument of accession to the Rome Statute.

Established in 2002, ICC is an international judicial court set up to prosecute war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide.

Afghanistan’s accession will bring all parties to the conflict under ICC’s jurisdiction, including the US and other foreign forces. Though US withdrew from ICC in 2002, under the George Bush regime fearing prosecution of its forces for war crimes, the Americans could possibly be charged with crimes committed in countries that fall under the court’s jurisdiction.

In November 2017, the ICC’s Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda requested authorisation from Pre-Trial Chamber III to initiate an investigation into alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in relation to Afghanistan conflict. In pursuant to the Regulation 50 of the Regulations of the Court, the process of representation from victims began, i.e. to provide their views, concerns and expectations, to the ICC Judges that are considering the Prosecutor's request for an investigation.

The deadline for submitting the representation ended last month, and as per the office of the prosecution (OTP) the ICC judges in November had ordered the OTP to also provide information regarding an allegation of the attributed, to the international military forces operating in Afghanistan, apart from the following incidents:

1. Crimes against humanity and war crimes, including murder, imprisonment or other severe deprivation of physical liberty, persecution on political and gender grounds, intentionally directing attacks against civilian population, humanitarian personnel and/or protected objects, conscription or enlistment and/or use in hostilities of children under the age of 15, and killing and wounding treacherously a combatant adversary by the Taliban and affiliated armed groups;

2. War crimes, including torture, cruel treatment, outrages upon personal dignity, and sexual violence by Afghan National Security Forces, and

3. War crimes, including torture, cruel treatment, outrages upon personal dignity, rape and other forms of sexual violence by US armed forces and members of the CIA on the territories of Afghanistan, Poland, Romania, and Lithuania.

"The request to pursue abuses by all sides, including those implicating U.S. personnel, reinforces the message that no one, no matter how powerful the government they serve, is beyond the law," Richard Dicker, the international justice director at Human Rights Watch said.

More than one and half decades after the US-led invasion, Afghanistan is still attempting to find stability and peace amid daily bombings and attacks.

“There are different kinds of war crimes that have happened in Afghanistan in the past 16-17 years,” said Abdullah Haiwad, of the Afghanistan Naween Research and Studies Organization.

“Americans bombed villages, they bombed wedding parties and that’s one kind of crime. Another type of crime [occurs when] Afghan security forces enter villages and kill people, without identifying whether the people there are armed and against the government. They are just simple people living in the village.”

According to the UN data made available last year, the US airstrikes has contributed to an increase in the civilian casuality in 2017, with a 43% increase in casualties from the air.

In 2015, in one of the biggest attack against hospitals in Afghanistan, US aircrafts bombed Kunduz medical facility of Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) killing 42 people, including staffs and patients. MSF argued that the attack was deliberate, as the organization had provided the facility GPS coordinates to the US forces. The US military investigation into the incident failed to yield criminal charges.

Deliberate attacks on medical facilities are considered to be a war crime under the Geneva Conventions. Furthermore, under Article 8(b)(ix) of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, ‘intentionally directing attacks against hospitals and places where the sick and wounded are collected, provided they are not military objectives’ amounts to a war crime.