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Historical context of Afghanistan
For over 30 years, the Afghan population has endured a series of conflicts ultimately leading to social deterioration and to the constant violation of human rights.
In 1973 the king was overthrown after a coup d’etat instigated by his cousin and supported by the USSR. In 1979, after several transitional governments, Afghanistan was invaded by the Soviet Union for strategic reasons. The United States, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia supported the Afghans. It was at this time that the first migration of refugees to bordering countries took place. The war between Afghanistan and the USSR lasted 10 years. After the withdrawal of the Soviet troops, civil war broke out between different extremist factions fighting for power. The Northern Alliance won the war by imposing terror on the population through acts of torture and all kinds of violations of human rights.
From August 1994 to September 1996, the Taliban, a group of theology students from the region of Kandahar, who were supported by the United States among others acting in support of their economic interests, took advantage of the country’s widespread political chaos and attacked and occupied the main cities of Afghanistan, such as Kandhar, Ghazni and finally Kabul. In the territory they conquered, the Taliban established a restrictive version of Islamic law that had nothing to do with its religious precepts: the imposition of gender segregation in public places, the denial of access to work, education and health care for women, the prosecution of women walking alone in the street, and the prohibition of "unholy" activities such as football, kite-flying, cinema, etc. Changes were introduced in their criminal code to make more stringent laws and sentences, which violated basic human rights.
Apart from the humanitarian disaster caused by different conflicts, in May 1998 a series of earthquakes shook the northern region of the country, resulting in 5,000 deaths. In August 1998, Afghanistan had to endure air raids from the United States in reprisal for the attacks against their embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, where over 300 people died. The Saudi millionaire Osama Bin Laden, leader of the terrorist group Al-Qaeda who took refuge in Afghanistan, was suspected of being behind these attacks. In September 1999, the UN imposed sanctions against the Taliban regime for failing to hand Bin Laden over.
It goes without saying that the Taliban regime became more and more isolated after the attacks of 11th September, 2001 in New York. On 7th July, 2001 the British and American forces began their strategic bombing of Afghanistan.
Resistance against the Taliban regime in Afghanistan was split into two groups: on the one hand, the Northern Alliance, who were renamed “United Front” and were recognised as a legitimate organisation by the international community; and on the other, the former King Zahir Shah, who was exiled in Italy, one of the candidates to rule the country in the transitional period after the fall of the fundamentalists. After the Bonn Agreement, the Constitutional Loya Jirga was convened, and eventually Hamid Karzai, supported by the United States, became the leader of the transitional government. In this political, social and economic framework, as usual with this kind of conflicts, it is the human rights of civilians that suffer most. Other so-called collateral damage endured by civilians is lack of food, medicines, houses and jobs, producing thousands of refugees. |
