Gruesome massacre at Mazar-i-Sharif

A fog of confusion still shrouds the mayhem at a fortress holding Taliban prisoners outside Mazar-i-Sharif. According to conflicting reports, the number of prisoners killed in the shootout on Sunday range between 100 and 700. The captives, mainly foreign Taliban fighters, had surrendered to Northern Alliance forces in Kunduz on Saturday following a prolonged siege of what was the last Taliban-held city in northern Afghanistan. According to Northern Alliance spokesmen, the violence was sparked off by a riot at the fortress controlled by local warlord Abdur Rashid Dostum. According to this version, the instigators were the hard core Chechen, Arab, Uzbek and Pakistani fighters whom the US views as the elite force of Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda network. A fierce shoot-out took place when the prisoners managed to disarm the guards and sieze weapons from them. The Pentagon, however, claims that the prisoners had somehow managed to smuggle weapons into the fortress. When the riot could not be quelled, some reports say that US planes were called in to provide support to the Alliance, and heavy bombardment of the prison compound followed. In the ensuing chaos, a large number of prisoners are believed to have died. According to unconfirmed reports, one US advisor was also killed while directing the operation from the ground. Eyewitnesses claim that a number of plain-clothed US personnel were present during the shootout.

After the dust settles on this gruesome episode, a number of important questions are likely to be asked. One fear being voiced is that the massacre may have been deliberately instigated or allowed to go out of control, a charge that the Northern Alliance strongly denies. While no direct evidence is available, the intense hatred among the Alliance for the foreign fighters is more than obvious. Senior US spokesmen have also maintained that the foreign Taliban were legitimate targets because of their links to al Qaeda. During the siege of Kunduz, it had become clear that the foreign Taliban were not likely to be treated with the kind of magnanimity displayed towards their Afghan counterparts. The foreign fighters expressed reservations about surrendering to the Alliance because they feared for their lives. Many foreigners had earlier been lynched or severely beaten up following the withdrawal of the Taliban from city after city.

Bowing to international pressure, acting president Burhanuddin Rabbani announced in Kabul that foreign Taliban prisoners would not be harmed and would be handed over to the UN. However, in the chaotic conditions prevailing in Afghanistan, what is decreed in the capital need not automatically prevail in other parts of the country held by different warlords. The Pakistan government, already wary about the intentions of the Alliance and under public pressure to press for the release of its captured nationals, has strongly condemned the massacre and stated that it contravenes UN Security Council resolutons urging respect for the Geneva Convention. The Northern Alliance as well as the US-led coalition must immediately launch an inquiry into the terrible events in Mazar-i-Sharif if they want to restore the victors’ credibility in the eyes of the world. With the fall of the last Taliban stronghold of Kandahar imminent, the authorities will have to move swiftly to quell fears for the safety of the thousands of foreign fighters in the city.

Vital banking reform

THE State Bank’s latest directive limiting family control over banking and non-banking financial institutions is a welcome step as far as cleansing the vital arteries of the nation’s economic life is concerned. On Friday, the central bank issued orders to the banks to reduce the number of directors on the boards belonging to one family from 50 per cent to 25 per cent within 90 days. The law defines family members as wife, parents, sons, daughters, brothers and sisters. The directive is intended to stop the prevalent practice of converting the banks into virtual one-man shows by appropriating half the board’s directorship through sponsorship and by appointing friends and other relatives as chief executives and professionals. This kind of one-family domination of the banks opens the floodgates of irregularities and misuse of depositors’ funds.

During the sixties of the last century before the banks’ nationalization, most of the banks’ deposits had been monopolized by the owners of the banks, with the result that a score of families had become the owners of most of the nation’s financial and industrial assets. This family domination had denied new entrepreneurs and medium and small enterprises access to banking credit. This situation had prevented a diffusion of the national wealth. Medium and small enterprises flourished only when the concentration of banking credit was broken through the nationalization of banks in the seventies.

A pre-1970s situation may again emerge if families are allowed to monopolize the banks’ resources, especially when the big nationalized banks are due for de-nationalization. Already, within a decade of the establishment of private banks, about half a dozen of them have gone bankrupt because of gross irregularities and misuse of financial resources, made easy by individual or family control. Even after the implementation of the SBP’s latest directive, scope would still exist through manipulation of the laws to appoint benami directors and retain control, denying representation on the boards to the legitimate minority shareholders. But that is in the realm of the future, and checks could be devised when such a situation develops.

Too horrible for words

THE parading naked of a robbery suspect by a station house officer (SHO) in a cricket ground in Sujawal in Thatta district has probably brought the reputation of the Sindh police to a new low. The suspect had been arrested, the police claimed, because he and his accomplices were roaming around ‘suspiciously’ and after some weapons were allegedly recovered from him. The police personnel who arrested the man, particularly the SHO, have also taken the defence that the suspect was a known criminal and was resisting arrest. However, this justification actually goes to show how much the police rely on torture and extra-judicial methods while dealing with suspects. As far as the SHO is concerned — and this applies to SHOs everywhere — having a bad reputation or simply loitering around seems ground enough for arrest. However, nothing that the suspect seems to have done — and the version we are going by comes from the police — would warrant his being stripped naked and paraded in front of dozens of people.

It goes without saying — but perhaps such things need to be repeated for the benefit of our police — that recourse to this kind of barbarism goes against the basic human dignity to which every human being is entitled, even if he is a criminal. In this case the man was not even a criminal convicted by a court but a mere suspect. Such actions reinforce the perception that those entrusted with upholding the law are very often its worst violators. The government must order an enquiry into the incident and proceed accordingly with the full force of the law against those found guilty of overstepping their official authority. This is absolutely necessary as a deterrent so that other police officials think twice before ‘emulating’ the Sujawal SHO.