Afghan President Hamid Karzai has angrily rejected a Human Rights Watch (HRW) report that says war criminals are holding positions in his administration. The US-based HRW report released this week named in particular legislators Abdul Rasul Sayyaf and Mohammad Qasim Fahim, former president Burhanuddin Rabbani, Energy Minister Ismail Khan and Vice-President Karim Khalili. It proposed Afghan and international judges should hear cases against them relating to the 1979-1992 communist regime, the 1992-1996 civil war and the 1996-2001 Taliban regime. I have no use for Rassoul Sayyaf, but demanding his trial - and that of Rabbani and Ismail Khan - as "war criminals" reveals either absolute ignorance about anything that's happened in Afghanistan since 1979 or a level of fatuous self-righteousness of Jimmy Carterian proportions.
A statement from his office says Mr Karzai considers the report to be
"When you pull this stuff out of your ass we'll treat it like what it is."
Several leaders who were involved in decades of conflicts and bloodshed in Afghanistan are still holding key government positions, including some working as provincial governors. Many of these leaders, known as warlords, still maintain their own private armies, making it difficult for the US-backed leader to extend his authority beyond the capital, Kabul.
On the other hand, if they didn't have their "militias," the national army would have been smothered in its crib and Karzai wouldn't be in Kabul.