Read Transitional Justice in the Twenty-First Century: Beyond Truth versus Justice Online
Authors: Naomi Roht-Arriaza
[15]
Email communication with participant.
[16]
Interview with journalist in Kabul, April 2005.
[17]
A pilot program took place in 2003, demobilizing some 6,000 soldiers, according to some reports. Afghan Research and Evaluation Unit,
The A to Z Guide to Afghanistan Assistance
(Kabul: AREU, 2004 3rd edn), p. 25. Others put the figure of those actually demobilized lower.
[18]
Rubin et al.,
Building a New Afghanistan
.
[19]
Email communication from Barnett Rubin.
[20]
Email communication with political analyst involved in discussion on the DDR effort.
[21]
Barnett R. Rubin, “Afghan Dispatch”,
Wall Street Journal
, February 10, 2004.
[22]
Thier,
Politics of Peace‐Building
, pp. 55–56.
[23]
Interview in Afghanistan with former UN official.
[24]
Analysis of ethnicity as factor in constitutional debates derives from interviews with human rights expert in Afghanistan.
[25]
Ahmed Rashid, “Lessons from the Loya Jirga”,
The Nation
(Lahore, Pakistan), January 12, 2004.
[26]
Interview with intelligence analyst, Kabul, February 2004.
[27]
International Crisis Group,
Judicial Reform and Transitional Justice
(Brussels/Kabul: 2003).
[28]
Another justice on the court with more than 30 years' experience as a judge stated that the “fatwa council”, a throwback to the Taliban era, was illegal under Afghan law. J. Alexander Thier, “Attacking Democracy from the Bench”,
New York Times
, January 26, 2004.
[29]
The defendant was a former commander accused of summarily executing civilians during the civil war in Kabul in the early 1990s. In addition he was charged with working for another commander and carrying out orders to
take hostage and torture Afghan men and women. He was initially arrested on charges of trying to murder his wife, and with having murdered three other women. In interviews with human rights researchers he admitted that he had killed civilians when acting under orders, but denied the other charges. Afghanistan Justice Project,
Casting Shadows
.
[30]
The defendant had offered to show mass grave sites to human rights researchers. Interview with this author, 2004.
[31]
Afghanistan never had a working telephone service for most of the country before the war; what did exist was destroyed early in the war. Mobile telephones are now common among wealthier Afghans in urban areas, but their range is limited. Internet connections are weak outside major areas as well.
[32]
Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission, “A Call for Justice”, January 2005.
[33]
Afghanistan Justice Project,
Casting Shadows
.
[34]
Cherif Bassiouni, email communication made available to this author.
[35]
James Rupert, “Making enemies instead of friends, Afghans, human rights investigators say killing of civilians undermines support for U. S.”,
Newsday
, November 14, 2004.
[36]
In November 2004, three expatriate UN staff members were kidnapped and held for three weeks in Kabul. A massive manhunt led to the arrest of scores of suspects, many of them former members of the Hizb‐i Islami faction. Further investigations pointed to the involvement of forces loyal to Sayyaf and Fahim. All three UN staff members were released unharmed. UN staff and others involved in investigating the incident read it as a warning.
[37]
The UN report included documentation from a number of incidents from the different periods of the war; the most controversial section named current political leaders.
[38]
Afghanistan Justice Project,
Addressing the Past
.
[39]
Barbara Crossette, “UN Investigates Report of Slaying of 2,000 Taliban Fighters”,
New York Times
, November 18, 1997.
[40]
Human Rights Watch, “The Massacre in Mazar‐i Sharif”, (New York: Human Rights Watch, 1998).
[41]
Steven R. Ratner and Jason S. Abrams,
Accountability for Human Rights Atrocities in International Law
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), pp. 156–57.
Reed Brody
International Commission of Jurists and the United Nations Mission
The regime of Chadian ex‐President Hissène Habré, in eight years of repression (1982–90), was responsible for thousands of cases of political killings, torture, “disappearances” and arbitrary detention. After his ouster, the new government led by his former defense chief established a Truth Commission, but then buried its report and ignored its recommendations. Ten years later, Chadian and international activists joined forces to obtain Habré's landmark indictment in his Senegalese exile. Through several twists and turns, the case has survived and Habré now faces extradition to
Belgium. The international prosecution had an immediate impact back in Chad, empowering his victims and putting transitional justice issues back on the table for the first time in many years. But Chad remains a repressive society with no tradition of accountability, and Habré's victims continue to wait for the Chadian government to address the suffering that they or their families endured.
Chad, a former French colony half covered by the Sahara desert, is as far from the mainstream as any place on earth. Chad routinely makes it onto the list of the world's ten poorest countries. Half of its 8.7 million people can neither read nor write, and three‐quarters have no access to clean drinking water. The average person can expect to live just 48 years. N'Djamena, the dusty capital, has no working traffic lights and no working elevators. Almost no one in Chad can afford to connect to the internet.
An artificial state throwing together northern Muslim tribes who have ruled for the last 20 years and southern Christians who were dominant during the French colonial period, Chad has never known democracy. Indeed, Chad has never been of much interest to outsiders, except during the 1980s when France and the United States built up Hissène Habré as a Cold War rampart against
Moammar Qadafi of Libya,
Chad's northern neighbor. Recently, again, outsiders have begun to pay attention to Chad because of the discovery of oil in its south, the appearance of Al‐Qaeda elements in its barren north and the massive atrocities in Sudan's
Darfur province bordering on Chad's east.
Hissène Habré ruled Chad from 1982 until he was deposed in 1990 by current president
Idriss Déby and fled to Senegal. On his arrival to power, Habré swiftly established a dictatorship. His one‐party regime was marked by widespread atrocities and campaigns against his own people. During his eight years as head of state, he attempted to destroy all forms of opposition to his regime. Habré persecuted different ethnic groups whose leaders he perceived to be posing a threat to his regime, such as the Sara and other southern ethnicities in 1984, the Hadjaraï in 1987, and the
Zaghawa in 1989. The exact number of Habré's victims is not known. A 1992 Truth Commission, established by Habré's successor, accused Habré's regime of 40,000 political assassinations and systematic torture.
[2]
Most predations were carried out by Habré's dreaded political police, the Documentation and
Security Directorate (DDS), whose leaders all came from Habré's Gorane ethnic group and who reported directly to Habré.
In 1989, Habré was a local warlord with a reputation for brutality, having kidnapped a French anthropologist and killed the French army officer who came to negotiate her release. Under President Ronald Reagan, however, the United States gave covert CIA paramilitary support to help Habré take power. Later, the United States provided Habré with massive military aid and gave training and support to the DDS.
Today, Chadians still attest to the state of general suspicion that was present throughout the country during Habré's regime. The average citizen explains how he would not dare speak even to his or her spouse, children, or friends without fear that the words might one day be repeated. In certain cases, agents went to children for information, since they could be oblivious of the impact of their words. One DDS intelligence record from April 1988 discovered by Human Rights Watch reports, for example, how a 12‐year‐old child furnished political information he had overheard his parents discussing during the evening meal.
Hissène Habré's security apparatus was composed of a number of repressive organs. It was the Documentation and Security Directorate (DDS), however, which distinguished itself, according to the Truth Commission, “by its cruelty and contempt for human life.” The
DDS was headed by agents who reported directly to the president and who combed national as well as international territory to imprison or eliminate “enemies of the state.”
Habré created the DDS by presidential decree on January 26, 1983, as a force that was to be “directly responsible to the Presidency of the Republic, due to the confidential nature of its activities.” These activities included primarily “the collection and centralization of all intelligence information . . . that threatens to compromise the national interest . . . and collaboration in suppression through the creation of files concerning individuals, groups, collectivities, suspected of activities contrary to or merely detrimental to the national interest.” Very quickly, the DDS was transformed into a ruthless repressive machine. Torture was a common practice in the DDS detention centers. Seven prisons were used in N'Djamena for political prisoners and prisoners of war, one of which was on the grounds of the Presidential compound for “very special” prisoners that Habré wanted to have close at hand. The most sinister of prisons was
without a doubt the underground “
Piscine
” (swimming pool). Formerly the Leclerc swimming pool reserved for the families of French soldiers during the colonial period, the
Piscine
was, under Habré's orders, covered by a concrete roof and divided into ten dank cells that were linked to the surface by a single staircase.
In May 2001,
Human Rights Watch discovered, in the abandoned former DDS headquarters in N'Djamena, thousands of documents of this sinister political police. Following this discovery, the Chadian government granted the Chadian Association of Victims of Political Repression and Crimes (
AVCRP), assisted by Human Rights Watch and by the
International Federation of Human Rights Leagues, access to these documents and the right to use them freely. They include death certificates, daily lists of prisoners, intelligence reports, lists of DDS agents, and letters addressed to President Habré. The documents trace in detail the campaign against the ethnic groups that Habré perceived to be threats to his regime.
[3]
A preliminary analysis of the DDS documents by the Human Rights Data Analysis Group of the Benetech organization
[4]
shows that the death rate of political detainees was sixteen times greater than the general Chadian population, which includes infant mortality rates.
Habré's regime was marked by several years of war, with government forces facing off against those of the GUNT (Transitional Government of National Unity), which was supported by Libya. Several battles yielded hundreds of prisoners, notably at Faya‐Largeau in 1983 and then again in 1986 and 1987. Those who were not executed on the spot
were transferred under Habré's orders and imprisoned, in some cases, in N'Djamena prisons under horrible conditions.
After taking power in N'Djamena in 1982, Hissène Habré began planning the “pacification” of the south of the country. Beginning in September 1984, a particularly murderous wave of repression was unleashed with the apparent goal of eliminating the southern elite and replacing them with people loyal to Habré. This period is commonly known among Chadians as
“Black September.”
Hissène Habré never hesitated to turn on his old comrades‐at‐arms, nor to take his vengeance on the family or the entire ethnic group of a person or group of people who crossed him. The
Hadjeraï and the
Zaghawa ethnic groups, for example, were savagely persecuted when some of their members dared to oppose him. Hadjeraï leaders had long backed Habré and they even constituted the principal force that brought him to power in June of 1982. Habré nevertheless began to mistrust the Hadjeraï as early as 1984 when his Minister of Foreign Affairs at the time, Idriss Miskine, a Hadjeraï, became increasingly popular and began to overshadow Habré. In 1987, Habré began attacking Hadjeraï dignitaries who were increasingly voicing their dissent with him, as well as blaming their families and the entire ethnic group in general.
In 1989 Habré suspected Idriss Déby, his advisor on defense and security matters, Mahamat Itno, Minister of the Interior, and Hassan Djamous, Commander in Chief of the Chadian Army and the man who defeated the Libyans, of plotting a coup against him. All three men were ethnic
Zaghawa. Habré not only had Itno and Djamous arrested, and killed (Déby managed to escape), but he turned on the rest of the Zaghawa as well, whether or not they were linked to the plotted rebellion. Hundreds were seized in raids, tortured, and imprisoned. Dozens died in detention or were summarily executed.
According to ex‐DDS agents, in 1987 and again in 1989, Habré created specific committees within the structure of the DDS that
were responsible for arresting and interrogating Hadjeraïs and then
Zaghawas. A list dated May 26, 1989, titled “Re: Situation of the traitorous Zaghawa agents arrested for complicity and guarded in our facilities following a plot organized by Hassane Djamous” contains the names of 98 people, including shepherds, drivers, students, businessmen, soldiers, etc. The reason for the arrest of each person on the list is invariably stated as “suspected accomplice of the traitors,”
with the exception of some people who were related to the rebels.
In December 1990, a rebel force led by current President Idriss Déby swept Habré from power. The jail doors swung open and hundreds of political prisoners who were held in various secret detention centers in the capital were freed. As the US State Department reported:
Some released political prisoners presented to the media were unable to walk and bore scars of torture. Chadian television broadcast reports on police detention facilities and featured close‐up views of partially covered corpses with bound wrists and feet, as well as of electrical torture instruments.
[5]
Habré's fall was followed by a burst of democratic activity. Déby's
MPS (Patriotic Front for Salvation) formed a broad‐based transitional government with a mandate to draft a new constitution and lead the country towards multi‐party democracy. Political parties were legalized. A provisional constitution included guarantees of fundamental rights and freedoms. Déby largely avoided reprisals against Habré supporters. Many who fled the country following the MPS takeover returned, and several were invited to serve as government ministers or presidential advisors.
Shortly after taking power, Déby created a “Commission of inquiry into crimes and embezzlement committed by the ex‐president and his accomplices,” led by a distinguished jurist, Mohamat Hassan
Abakar, and put it to work on March 1, 1991.
[6]
In addition, the government formed a special high court to try Habré, if necessary in absentia, after the Commission concluded its investigations.
The Truth Commission operated under difficult financial and security conditions; it was initially composed of twelve members: two judges, four police officers, two administrators, two archivists and two secretaries.
[7]
At first, the Commission had to fight to have even a minimal budget, had no headquarters and was obliged to set up shop in the offices of the DDS, which hardly encouraged victims to come and
give evidence. In addition, former members of the DDS who had been re‐engaged by the new
Centre de Recherches et de Coordination de Renseignements
(CRCR) were accused of intimidating witnesses and carrying out reprisals against some who appeared before the Commission. After six months, the president of the Commission called for the replacement of a number of Commission members, who were apparently too afraid to become really involved, and it was only after they had been replaced that the Commission's real work began. Even then, a shortage of vehicles prevented the Commission
from gaining access to many rural areas where massacres had occurred. Other than the advice of
Amnesty International, which had documented Habré's atrocities and campaigned for the release of political prisoners,
[8]
there was no international monetary or technical assistance to or participation in the Truth Commission. The Commission nevertheless
heard 1,726 witnesses
[9]
and conducted three exhumations.
After seventeen months, the Commission published a report, detailing the repressive methods of the Habré government, which it accused of tens of thousands of political assassinations and systematic torture.
[10]
The Commission also produced a film showing the mass graves it had exhumed, some of Habré's jails and interviews with victims.
The report lamented the reintegration of many DDS agents into key administrative and security posts within the new Chadian government.
[11]
When the report was published, some of these agents reportedly fled across the river to Cameroon in the misplaced fear that accountability would follow.
[12]
The Truth Commission was one of the only ones to date to examine the foreign role in national abuses. The report revealed that the United States was the principal supplier of financial, military, and technical aid to the DDS. The report stated that American advisers regularly visited the Director of the DDS, to give advice or to exchange information.
[13]
It also accused France, Egypt, Iraq and Zaire of helping to finance, train and equip the DDS.