Mass graves may contain victims of Taliban regime

LOS ANGELES TIMES

Originally published Monday, April 8, 2002

KABUL, Afghanistan -- A U.N. team flew to the central Afghan town of Bamian on Sunday to investigate local reports that three mass graves containing victims of a Taliban massacre late last year had been uncovered.

Bamian residents said the graves located near their town's airport contained bodies of ethnic Hazaras, who have a long and bloody history with the Pashtuns, the dominant ethnic group of the Taliban. There were no details on the number of victims found, the precise dates of the killings or the circumstances.

"Representatives of the Hazara community in Bamian believe that the graves contain bodies of members of their community killed approximately one month before the fall of the Taliban," U.N. spokesman Manoel de Almeida e Silva said.

U.N. officials, who traveled to the area with a representative of Afghanistan's interim government, said they would prepare a report before releasing any public statement on their findings.

Bamian province, a stronghold of ethnic Hazaras, has been the site of several massacres in recent years. But the graves reported Friday to the United Nations were previously unknown.

Afghanistan's population is weary of war and longs for peace, but one of the biggest threats to stability is bitter rivalry among ethnic groups.

Hazaras, who make up 19 percent of Afghanistan's population, are Shiite Muslims, while the majority of Afghans are Sunni. The Taliban frequently targeted Hazaras in the Bamian province and Mazar-e-Sharif in the north, but Hazaras have also massacred Pashtuns at various times.

De Almeida e Silva said the bodies at the Bamian site, about 50 miles northwest of Kabul, had not been exhumed. Community leaders were eager to bring the mass graves to international light, he said, but at the same time were anxious to bury the victims as quickly as possible.

The United Nations has reported that several hundred villagers, along with hospital staff and representatives of international organizations, were killed in Yakawlang, in western Bamian province, in January and February 2001. Hazara commanders later claimed to have intercepted radio messages in which Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar personally authorized the killings.

Men were rounded up and shot outside a relief agency, near a hospital and behind a mosque, among other sites, according to the U.N. report. A number of mass graves were found in the area.

The United Nations also has recorded recent cases in which Hazaras and others have carried out reprisal killings against Pashtuns for their support of the Taliban.

The Olympian Copyright 2002

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