\n Human Rights Watch Sunday called for the prosecution of Afghan militias loyal to dreaded former warlord Abdul Rashid Dostum, accusing them of killings and looting during an anti-Taliban operation.\n<\/p>\n
\n The Junbish militia last month killed at least 13 civilians and wounded 32 in the northern province of Faryab after accusing them of supporting the Taliban, the New York-based rights group said.\n<\/p>\n
\n It was the latest allegation of human rights abuses facing the militia controlled by Dostum, Afghanistan's first vice president who has a catalogue of war crimes attached to his name.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"The killings in Faryab are the latest in a long record of atrocities by Dostum's militia forces,\" HRW said in a statement.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"The fact that these forces, and Vice-President Dostum himself, have never been held accountable, has undermined security in northern Afghanistan.\"\n<\/p>\n
\n The fearsome Uzbek general has sought to defend his home territory by reactivating private militias to fight Taliban insurgents, who are making steady inroads into northern provinces.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"They were carrying guns like Kalashnikovs and shouting 'You're Taliban!'\n<\/p>\n
\n and firing as people came out of their houses,\" said a Faryab villager quoted in the HRW statement, referring to a recent raid by Junbish militiamen.\n<\/p>\n
\n It also cited residents as complaining that the militiamen forced them to hand over food and money.\n<\/p>\n
\n The Afghan government is cultivating numerous militias with chequered pasts in the region as a short-term security fix to supplement ground troops suffering record casualties.\n<\/p>\n
\n But the rise of these groups, a throwback to the devastating civil war in the 1990s that set the stage for a Taliban takeover, risks aggravating factionalism and pushing Afghanistan deeper into conflict.\n<\/p>\n
\n Civilian casualties, at the hands of both insurgents and of pro-government forces, are a matter of growing concern in Afghanistan.\n<\/p>\n
\n The UN said civilian casualties soared to a record high in the first half of 2016, with children in particular paying a heavy price for growing insecurity as the conflict escalates.\n<\/p>\n
\n It reported a 47 percent increase in casualties inflicted by forces loyal to the Afghan government.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Human Rights Watch Sunday called for the prosecution of Afghan militias loyal to dreaded former warlord Abdul Rashid Dostum, accusing them of killings and looting during an anti-Taliban operation. The Junbish militia last month killed at least 13 civilians and wounded 32 in the northern province of Faryab after accusing them of supporting the Taliban, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":60,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[553],"tags":[],"ji_location":[],"class_list":["post-28648","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-live-feed"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n