Russell Tribunal denounces
The Russell Tribunal hearings on Afghanistan deserve, and will get, a more attentive hearing on the left than other studies of the question. It is important to examine the results carefully. The following article from the December 31 issue of Rouge, the weekly paper of the French section of the Fourth International, represents an initial look at them. It has been somewhat edited and abridged
Michel LEQUENNE The second session of the Permanent Tribunal of the Peoples was held in Paris December 16-20. It was devoted to Afghanistan.
First of all, the question has to be taken up of what the authority was for holding such an inquiry, since the Stalinists will certainly not fail to question its legitmacy.
For example, when Jean-Paul Sartre condemned the Soviet intervention Hungary in 1956, he was asked: "What right do you have to protest? On the basis of what principles, what philosophy are you protesting? Is it your own?"
In fact, there is a very long tradition for such protests. It goes back to Voltaire. Among the more recent cases are those of Zola and Anatole France, who took up Dreyfus's defense well ahead of the organizations in the workers movement. We should also mention in the Dewey Commission on the Moscow purge trials.
This tribunal's authority derives from the concept of justice in whose name these great intellectuals spoke out, against the interests of their own class; from the humanistic principles that are given lip service even by those who by their deeds trample on them.
It is on this basis - although with a greater understanding of the relativeness of these principles - that the team of internationally known intellectuals who make up the Permanent Tribunal of the Peoples have taken it upon themselves to judge war crimes and violations of the rights of peoples.
This is not in the name of some abstract morality elevated obove the class struggle but in the name of principles that have become elementary in our time and have been recognized by the concerned parties themselves in accords, conventions, and protocols that they have signed or ratified
The Soviet intervention in Afghanistan and the continuing war in that country have been difficult questions for the socialist and workers movement to deal with.
There are a number of obvious reasons for this — the remoteness of the country; the backwardness of its social structure; and the fact that, for material reasons in particular, the organizations leading the struggle of the Afghan people are strongly influenced by right-wing forces and institutions. Moreover, these rigntwing forces are trying to exploit the conflict to whip up an anti-Communist campaign and justify an imperialist war drive against the workers states.
Nonetheless, the question is extremely important for the socialist movement, especially because of the use that the imperialists are trying to make of it. It is above all a political question, since there is no direct military confrontation between the Soviet Union and the imperialists in the Afghan region, and even the potential for one is highly dubious.
Therefore, the Soviet intervention cannot be justified on the grounds of overriding needs of the military defense of the workers states.
On the other hand, since the extent of the conflict is now clear, is it possible to justify the Soviet invasion or even to refrain from denouncing it and from fighting it politically on the grounds that the resistance is reactionary? possible for massive resistance of a poorly armed people against a powerful military machine to be reactionary through and through to have a reactionary dynamic? Can socialists approve the imposition of progress by massive military force? Those are extremely important questions particulary when the world capitalist crisis is opening the way for a revival of socialist ideas in the advanced countries. They have implications that go far beyond Afghanistan. 20
Is it
The tribunal has a considerable authority to judge the case of Afghanistan because it has previously condemned crimes against the peoples committed by hangmen of different social and political natures.
Thus, the tribunal has issued verdicts in the cases of the conflict in the western Sahara (Brussels, November 1979), Argentina (Geneva, May 1980), the Philippines (Antwerp, November 1980), Salvador (Mexico City, February 1981), Timor (Lisbon, June 1981), and finally Zaire (Rotterdam, September 1982).
In its first verdict on the conflict in Afghanistan, the tribunal established that the Soviet intervention represented aggression. The purpose of the recent session was to establish, through the work of a special commission of inquiry, whether the Soviet forces in Afghanistan could be charged with "violating the humanitarian code of war, in particular with respect to the treatment of civilian populations."
The results of these studies and the mass of testimony heard were devastating
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Kremlin forces' atrocities in Afghanistan
for the Soviet bureaucracy.
Testimony was heard from researchers assigned by the tribunal, doctors (including 59 from various French medical aid groups), Afghan witnesses from all walks of life - fighters, members of resistance, and ordinary civilians —journalists, photographers, and experts who spent time in the country between 1980 and 1982. Photographs were presented, offical reports, and press analyses. On the basis of this evidence, a picture was built up that leaves no doubt about the atrocious inhumanity of this dirty war.
Despite its limited means, the Tribunal of the Peoples was able to establish to its satisfaction that most of the accusations made were proven. It issued the following verdict:
" The tribunal condemns the Soviet Union for violating the provisions of the accepted law of war as set forth in the body of its report.
"It states that such abuses are bound up with the violation of the inalienable rights of the Afghan people, and that respect for the fundamental rights of peoples is an essential precondition for respecting the basic human values inherent in the law of war."
THE METHODS EMPLOYED
It was established incontrovertibly that several kinds of weapons prohibited by international conventions are being used in Afghanistan by the Russian troops. This included dum-dum bullets; fragmentation genades; explosive booby traps disguised as pens, watches, and toys, or hidden under bodies. Evidence was also presented of the use of substances that produced the sort of effects that poisonous gas does - prolonged unconsciousness and wounds take an unusually long time
Photographers showed pictures of the victims and the results of their studies were developed.
The difficulty of making a conclusive judgement about the use of such weapons tribunal to conclude that the U.N. mission assigned to investigate this had done an inadequate job with respect to such a serious question. demonstrated the use of napalm. THE TREATMENT OF THE WOUNDED
AND PRISONERS
It was clearly established that Soviet troops have been finishing off wounded fighters, and that this is being done in such a way that it seems that "orders have been given to leave no survivors." It was also clearly shown that the bodies of dead fighters are being profaned (which is an outrage to the cultural conceptions of the country) and that prisoners are being subjected to degrading treatment.
Torture is a general practice, and is inflicted both on fighters and civilians. Along with beatings and deprivation of sleep, the use of electric shock is widespread. Women have not been spared, and some have been raped. Soviet operatives are generally present and participate in these tortures.
The most horrifying testimony given to the tribunal was certainly that of the medical student Farida Ahmadi, who was held from April 24 to September 20 1981. She told how she had been subjected to several types of torture over a number of weeks, and had seen still more atrocious forms of torture inflicted on other prisoners, such as cutting off parts of the body and gouging out of eyes.
### MASS TERROR
The Soviet forces are waging war on an entire people. Their experience with guerrilla warfare (people's war) has taught them that the only way to defeat guerrillas is to destroy their social base. Perhaps for that reason, they are waging a war of terror against the civilian population. The objective of the operations seems to be to force the local populations to
Antipersonnel mines are planted the roads, in the meadows, around villages. Old people, women, and children are slaughtered. corn are burned (in particular by helicop ters). Livestock is killed. Villages whose inhabitants have fled are destroyed. The total effect is to create a climate of all-pervasive fear.
AN UNPRECENTED EXODOS
The testimony presented tells of the destruction and pillaging of mosques, of whole villages destroyed by bombing. Hospitals are systematically destroyed, including those marked by a red cross (such making is no longer used because it increases the threat of bombing rather than reduces it).
One massacre was studied in detail, on the basis of testimony by researchers, the mayor, a peasant, and a mullah from the village of Padlahwab-e-Sharra in the province of Logar to the south of Kabul. Five hundred bodies were taken out of an irrigation canal where the population had taken refuge, along with a few mujahedin, some migrant workers, and some people who had fled from other areas. slaughter was accomplished by the burning and explosion of various chemical products in the water.
The effect of this generalized terror is an unprecedented exodus. a half million have taken refuge in Pakistan, several hundred thousand have fled
Out of a total population of about 15 million, leaving aside the question of how many have been killed, this represents between a fifth and a quarter of the entire population who have been forced to flee their country by the Russion invasion. It is the largest body of refugees in the world.
the Soviet forces remain bogged down. In 1982, there has been a considerable increase in the number of Russian operations. However, the resistance has grown stronger.
MEMBERS OF THE TRIBUNAL
Francois Rigaux, chairman, professor of private international law at the Catholic University of Ouvain, Belgium; Richard Baumlin, professor of constitutional law at the University of Bern, member of the Swiss federal parliament; Vladimir Dedijer, historian Yugoslavia; Francois Houtart, sociologist, professor at the Catholic University of Louvain; Edmond Jouve, professor of international relations in the third world at the Sorbonne, France; Jan Kulakowski, general secretary of the World Confederation of Labor; Leo Matarasso, lawyer, France; Sergio Mendez Arceo, bishop of Cuernavaca, Mexico; Ajit Roy, economist and journalist, India; Laurent Schwartz, mathematician, professor at the University of Paris VII, member of the Academy of Sciences.
Afghan resistance fighters (DR) 21