KABUL: Afghanistan is finding national reconciliation difficult after two decades of conflict, with the Taliban deadlier than ever and warlords accused of crimes still evading justice, analysts say.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) called on Tuesday for a truth and reconciliation court to deal with war crimes and human rights abuses in Afghanistan, including by some who still “hold high office”.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai and the international community “have tried and failed to establish peace without justice ... now it is time to hold the killers accountable,” the watchdog said.

Both former communist and anti-Soviet warlords occupy key positions in the government, despite being accused of crimes, and benefit from an impunity that angers non-governmental organisations.

The 1979-1992 communist regime -- under which more than 200,000 people were tortured according to aid groups -- was overthrown by the “mujahideen”, whose ensuing civil war lasting until 1996 spawned ethnic massacres.

Out of this period of bloodshed emerged the Taliban, themselves accused of atrocities and dramatically stepping up attacks this year against the government. Sima Samar, president of Afghanistan's Independent Commission for Human Rights, said he believed the government was “confusing amnesty with reconciliation”.

“A process of national reconciliation cannot be at the expense of justice. The victims of all these years of serious violations deserve justice, and we must ensure they obtain it by a legal route rather than by dispensing justice themselves,” she said.

“The people implicated in these events must at least be dismissed from their positions,” she added.

For the International Crisis Group, a leading think-tank, “this culture of impunity merely saps efforts to stabilise the country and counter the insurgency”.

Those two aims were precisely the mission of the Commission for Peace and National Reconciliation, set up in May 2005 to “convince the insurgents, Taliban and loyalists of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar (former Afghan premier and head of the radical Hezb-i-Islami group) to rejoin the peace process in exchange for protection and privilege,” said its spokesman, Sayed Sharif Youssofi.—AFP