UN officials want a commission on Afghan killings

Asma Jahangir, UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary, or arbitrary executions, said at a conference in Peshawar on 11 January that as a result of her visit to several Afghan cities she will recommend next week that the United Nations establish a commission to investigate human rights abuses that have taken place in Afghanistan over the past 23 years, the BBC reported. "If this issue can create a rumpus, why not now, instead of waiting five years when there will be no one to guarantee peace?" Jahangir said, according to the BBC. The issue of past human rights abuses in Afghanistan remains a very sensitive political issue, as some of those accused of being serious violators of human rights in the past are either part of the current Afghan Transitional Administration or control swaths of the country and have more military power than the central government in Kabul. AT