In the past two decades, Afghanistan witnessed one of the darkest chapters in its contemporary history; an era intertwined with the military occupation by the United States and its Western allies and the rule of the corrupt republican regime.
During this period, under the banners of slogans such as “democracy,” “human rights,” and “freedom,” great and unforgivable atrocities were committed against the suffering people of this land, whose deep wounds still remain on the body of Afghan society.
Nevertheless, institutions that claim to uphold justice and human rights either remained silent in the face of all these crimes or, by covering them up, exempted the perpetrators from accountability.
Indiscriminate bombings, nighttime operations, mass killings, widespread destruction of villages, and the forced displacement of thousands of families are just a part of the realities recorded in the memory of the Afghan nation, overshadowed by the silence of the media and international institutions, including the International Criminal Court.
Numerous reports from the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA), the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), and some independent media confirm that in these twenty years, at least 46,000 to 50,000 Afghan civilians have been martyred by government forces and occupiers.
Moreover, more than 75,000 civilians have been injured, and over 4 to 6 million people have been displaced. Despite these horrifying figures and undeniable evidence, the International Criminal Court has not opened any serious and independent cases against the officials of the Republic and their Western supporters, and even the names of the main perpetrators of these atrocities are not seen in its list of accused.
Silence against the criminals of Ashraf Ghani, Amrullah Saleh, Dostum, Atta Mohammad Noor, and dozens of other notorious figures whose hands are stained with the blood of many innocents, both during the republic and before it, and their foreign supporters, while today arrest warrants are brazenly issued for current leaders, raises a significant question about the true nature of the so-called justice of this court.
If justice is to be implemented, it must have a unified face; selective and nominal justice can not be called justice but rather a tool serving the interests of great powers.
The experience of the Afghan people has also proven that these institutions, under the guise of justice, are not used to uphold the rights of the oppressed but rather to exert political pressure on independent governments.
With all this, experience has shown that such rulings, rather than having executive power or truly paving the way for justice, are more about propaganda and politics.
Indeed, such decisions stem from the tables of Western policymakers and can not undermine the legitimacy and standing of the Afghan government.
Ultimately, it can be said that the Criminal Court and institutions claiming to uphold justice must prove that their standards are uniform and that they do not discriminate between the oppressed and the oppressor based on political affiliation if they want to gain the trust of nations.
Moreover, it should be mentioned that the people of Afghanistan will never forget the crimes of the Republic and foreign occupiers, and this silence and the dual approach of the International Criminal Court will be recorded in the historical memory of this nation as a sign of permanent injustice and political maneuvering.
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