BUTCHERS OF THE NORTH

THEIR JAILERS CAME FOR THEM in the late evening. Every night for over a week, 100 or more Taliban prisoners were taken away on long flat-bed trucks. The ride out into rolling pasture beyond the northern town of Shiberghan took nearly one hour. The trucks halted at a desolate spot called Nine Wells, where shepherds watered their flocks. According to local military sources, the prisoners, hands bound, were herded to the edge of the wells and pushed down. In some cases they were directly tipped into the wells from the trucks. Then their captors rained down grenades, anti-personnel mines and small-arms fire on the bodies struggling some 20 metres below. Later a bulldozer filled in most of the wells with earth.

The butchery at Nine Wells last July was not the only war crime to have occurred in northern Afghanistan last year. A powerful body of evidence suggests other Taliban prisoners were slaughtered by their ethnic-Uzbek captors near the provincial capital Mazar-i-Sharif and the town of Maimana. Most of these atrocities took place soon after the disastrous attempt by the Taliban, who pretty much control the rest of the country, to seize the north. And in what might have been reprisals, ethnic-Pushtun Taliban troops stand accused of having massacred villagers near Mazar later in the summer and in the district of Qaisar in January this year as fighting swept the area.

Now the dirty secrets of a largely forgotten war may come under the harsh glare of international attention. Last month a U.N. exploratory mission visited the sites of the atrocities to assess the feasibility of a full-scale war-crimes investigation. That would involve excavation of the mass graves, and the collection of detailed forensic evidence and testimony from survivors and others. It might also lead to a special tribunal and legal proceedings against those likely responsible, bringing to Asia for the first time the standards the international community is applying to Bosnia and Rwanda. "It's extremely important some measure of accountability be established," says a senior U.N. official in Islamabad. "If you're ever going to have a resolution to the conflict, the bitterness and desire for revenge need some kind of satisfaction."

During the ten-day mission, the U.N. team visited mass graves near Shiberghan and Mazar where some of the worst atrocities occurred. At the Nine Wells site the stench of death from uncovered wells was still overpowering. Spent cartridge casings and parts of detonators from anti-personnel mines lay scattered. Near roadsides outside Shiberghan, scores of skeletons lay only partially covered by sand where they had been mown down or dumped, their Pushtun-style shalwar kamiz clothing still visible. Preliminary evidence indicates that between late May and mid-July last year, more than 1,000 of an initial total of 1,680 Taliban prisoners from the Shiberghan jail alone were systematically murdered. The team also visited villages near Mazar and Qaisar district where they heard reports of massacres of local Shias and Uzbeks by Taliban or pro-Taliban Pushtun troops. It will submit a report shortly to U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson, who will then decide whether to launch a full investigation.

The work of the exploratory mission was made possible by the extensive cooperation of northern strongman Abdul Rashid Dostam, whose motives are predictably political. "Dostam wants to placate the Taliban and at the same time come across as a caring human being," says a U.N. official. Dostam is also keen to facilitate any process that would serve to blacken the name of his former deputy and rival Abdul Malik. It was Abdul Malik's mutiny and brief alliance with the Taliban that brought the Islamic militia into the north. But the alliance was short-lived. After disagreements over power-sharing, Malik turned on the Taliban and led a counterattack on them in which hundreds were killed and thousands captured. The massacres of the Taliban all took place during Malik's three-and-a-half month reign as head of the Uzbek-dominated Jombesh-i-Milli Islami faction. At the time Dostam was in exile in Turkey. Some 650 remaining Taliban POWs were released by Dostam when he reasserted control over the country's northwest late last year.

The slaughter of the Taliban POWs could hardly have occurred without direct orders from either Malik, a man with a reputation for brutality, or his closest associates. At present the former warlord is in exile in Iran. "Afghan warlords have come to believe they are totally free to do whatever they want with no comeback," reflects a U.N. official. "It would be lovely to see one with crimes to answer come before an international tribunal." The first tentative step along that long road has perhaps been taken.