A First Look Back at the Horror

Afghans Begin to Address Decades of Brutality at Ex-Official's Trial

Mary Aman, 38, holds a photo of her brother, Yahya. He was 17 in 1979 when he was seized in the night by communist officials and was never heard from again. (By Griff Witte -- The Washington Post)

KABUL, Afghanistan -- If there ever were lights in the makeshift courtroom where Asadullah Sarwari is on trial for his life, they are gone. The room is cold and cramped, the breath of the accused and his accusers swirling together in a faint gray haze.

"I t has been 27 years, and we don't know where our brothers and uncles and husbands and fathers are buried," Obeidullah el-Mogaddedi, 75, said during the trial last month, his voice cracking and his finger stabbing the air. "We want to know their fate."

Afghanistan's first war crimes trial has brought emotional pleas from witnesses and a lengthy catalogue of charges against Sarwari, a communist-era intelligence chief who is accused of ordering executions in the late 1970s. But no one who testified at the hearing saw him commit a crime.

Lack of evidence is one of many problems that have arisen as Afghanistan attempts to confront its violent past, conducting the first such trial after a quarter-century of conflict that claimed at least a million lives.

Until recently, the country had seemed more intent on burying its history than reliving it through potentially explosive investigations and trials. That is beginning to change. But as the process gets underway, it is revealing unpleasant truths about the present as well as the past.

In many ways, the Sarwari case has degenerated into a farce. The defendant, who has been imprisoned for 14 years, has had difficulty keeping an attorney because lawyers are pressured not to represent him. The prosecutors have presented scant evidence. Witnesses have spoken at length about what they heard from relatives or friends, but none has produced evidence.

Afghan human rights activists and international observers said the problems are symptomatic of a justice system that is undeveloped, corrupt, highly politicized and poorly equipped after decades of neglect and manipulation.

"This trial is so fundamentally flawed in so many ways, we're recommending it not continue," said Patricia Gossman, director of the Afghanistan Justice Project, an international group that has pushed for accountability. "Totally left out is any concern for the truth. It's not fair to the defendant or to the victims."

Yet the stakes are enormous. The Sarwari trial could set precedents for future war crimes cases in Afghanistan, a country in which years of civil war and turmoil have produced countless atrocities. Hundreds of former militia commanders could be brought to trial.

Afghan officials and their Western backers, especially the United States, have felt it is too soon to aggravate such raw wounds. Although surveys have shown that most Afghans want abusers brought to justice, officials have said peace must come before justice in a fledgling democracy with a weak government, well-armed private militias and deep ethnic and ideological divisions.

But now, with rural insurgents, drug traffickers and regional strongmen gaining power, some wonder whether postponing Afghanistan's reckoning with the past may be ruining its chance for a different kind of future.

"The people clearly link security with justice," said Nader Nadery, a member of Afghanistan's Independent Human Rights Commission. "They say that if there is no justice for crimes of the past, there will be impunity and therefore no peace."