CIA-backed Afghan units 'carry out illegal killings, other abuse'

KABUL: Afghan security units backed by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) have carried out extrajudicial executions, enforced disappearances, indiscriminate air strikes and other rights abuses and should be disbanded, a rights group said on Thursday.

Human Rights Watch said it investigated 14 cases in which CIA-backed Afghan counterinsurgency forces committed serious abuses in Afghanistan between late 2017 and mid-2019.

“They are illustrative of a larger pattern of serious laws-of-war violations — some amounting to war crimes — that extends to all provinces in Afghanistan where these paramilitary forces operate with impunity,” the group said in a report.

A CIA spokesman said the agency conducts its operations “in accordance with law and under a robust system of oversight”.

“The Taliban does not operate with any similar rules and -even worse – conducts an extensive propaganda campaign to discredit those who support the legitimate Afghanistan government,” said the spokesman, Timothy Barrett.

The Afghan government declined to comment until after publication of the report, but a military official acknowledged that the Afghan special units at times make mistakes.

“Because they carry out the most complicated operations but we are not assassins and there is oversight and accountability,” said the official, who declined to be identified.

The CIA-backed paramilitary forces are notorious in Afghanistan, often drawing complaints from villagers and district authorities for their brutal raids, often under the cover of night.

But the rights group said the Afghan government lacked the capacity and the political will to investigate incidents involving the forces. The group cited a diplomat referring to them as “death squads”.

While Afghan paramilitary forces nominally belong to the main National Directorate of Security (NDS) intelligence service, the CIA-backed forces do not fall under the agency’s normal chain of command, nor those of the Afghan or U.S. militaries.

“They largely have been recruited, trained, equipped, and overseen by the CIA,” Human Rights Watch said.

“They often have U.S. special forces personnel deployed alongside them during kill-or-capture operations; these U.S. forces, primarily Army Rangers, have been seconded to the CIA.”