It's worth adding, also, that many Iraqis will try to survive this war by fleeing to Iraq's borders and trying to enter the neighboring countries. So far, of the neighbors -- Iran, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria and Turkey - - only Iran has indicated a willingness to allow refugees to cross the border and to seek refuge, and even there it's been a somewhat grudging acceptance with some fairly strict limits on the numbers. Everyone else has said they will not permit refugees to flee into their territory. That's a clear violation of international refugee law, but more importantly, it would mean potentially sending people to their death or to very severe humanitarian situations. We know that there is no such thing as a safe haven in a country at war. Refugees or displaced people should have a right to flee a country at war. We hope that the U.S. government will put pressure on Iraq's neighbors to live up to their international legal duty to allow these people in.

What else can be done to make a war in Iraq more civilized?

Human Rights Watch has been focusing our attention on the various parties to a potential war in Iraq -- not only the U.S. government but Saddam's forces, the anti-Saddam opposition, and the neighboring governments of Iraq. We have concerns with respect to each of them.

With the U.S. government our worry is that, first, they not use certain weapons which we know are likely to cause significant civilian casualties -- for example, cluster bombs. We know that these weapons can be devastating if they're used near civilian populations. During the Yugoslav war, roughly a quarter of the civilians who died as a direct result of the NATO bombing died because cluster bombs were used near populated areas.

So a very simple lesson for the Pentagon to learn is that it simply should not use cluster bombs anywhere near civilians. In Afghanistan, the Pentagon seemed to have drawn that lesson to a significant extent. We need to make sure that they follow through in Iraq. These are the only dumb weapons that the Pentagon considers using in populated areas and it's time to end that exception.

Another issue with respect to the Pentagon is that we know that Saddam is going to use human shields to try to protect his military facilities. That's a war crime that Saddam and his forces would be committing. But that does not relieve the Pentagon of the responsibility of weighing the military advantage of attacking a particular facility against the civilian cost, including the potential loss of lives of the human shields. Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld has simply talked about Saddam committing a war crime and has not accepted the remaining responsibility on U.S. forces to balance the relative military advantage to civilian cost.

A separate set of concerns has to do with the behavior of Iraqi forces. We have every reason to fear that Saddam Hussein, if he sees that his end is near, will bring as many Iraqis with him as possible. This is a man who, by our count, has been responsible for a quarter of a million deaths during his reign. He does not have the ordinary human inhibitions against mass slaughter. So we fear that he will attempt to use whatever chemical or biological weapons he has at his disposal. If he doesn't have those, he will simply use machine guns or artillery to kill as many people as possible, particularly the Kurds in the north or the Shi'a in the south, whom he sees as more generically opposed to his rule.

The question is, how do you prevent that? Obviously, there may be certain military steps that can be taken. But one of the most important things would be to signal to Saddam's lieutenants that if they follow his orders to kill civilians, they will be prosecuted for war crimes and crimes against humanity. That's an important message to send. It's one that President Bush -- on occasion -- has articulated, but it runs counter to the Pentagon's desire to minimize talk of prosecutions for fear that the threat will discourage people from defecting to the U.S. side.

The flip side of our concerns about Saddam's forces is that we are also deeply worried about the behavior of the anti-Saddam opposition. We know that during the uprisings that followed the Gulf War, Kurdish forces in the north and Shi'a forces in the south killed large numbers of Ba'a Party officials or other perceived Saddam supporters. They simply summarily executed these people. Again, we have reason to fear they will pick up where they left off if suddenly a security vacuum is created. If Saddam's forces begin to topple in, say, southern cities like Basra, Karbala, Najaf, the anti-Saddam opposition may believe they can proceed to settle scores that may have been lingering for a decade or more.

Again, the way to avoid this is, on the one hand, to send a strong message that people who commit these atrocities will be prosecuted. Second, it's important for the Pentagon -- as its forces presumably rush toward Baghdad for the ultimate battle -- not to ignore the security vacuum that will be created in the south, but to vigorously patrol those areas to try to avoid reprisal killings.

That runs counter to the Pentagon's instincts to avoid any risk to its forces. Undoubtedly, patrolling in newly occupied territory is risky. But the responsibility to ensure security to prevent atrocities would lie with the United States if it becomes the occupying power. And that requires the kind of vigorous policing that the French and the British in the past have been willing to do, but the U.S. has been extremely reluctant to do in places like Kosovo or Bosnia, but which they will absolutely have to do in southern Iraq.

Are you concerned about accommodations the U.S. might make with other Iraqi leaders in an effort to ease the way for an American occupation?

If you look at Saddam's crimes, you have crimes like the Anfal genocide of 1988, in which 100,000 mostly Kurdish men and boys were rounded up and executed. Now Saddam may have directed this, but this is not something any single man can do by himself. There were other people, like Ali Hassan al-Majid -- otherwise known as "Chemical Ali" -- who oversaw the gassing and executions of many Kurds. There were other lieutenants. It would be awful if under some misguided effort to retain a viable Iraqi state people like this were given a "get-out-of-jail-free card" in return for simply cooperating with the U.S. invading forces.

We think it's important -- not only as a matter of respect for Saddam's victims, but also as a matter of deterring future Saddams -- not to forget the crimes that these people have committed, but to hold them accountable. We want the Pentagon to resist the temptation to forgive and forget with the hope that it will somehow make a U.S. occupation of Iraq easier.

Are we in danger of picking the wrong partners in the war on terrorism as we did in the war on communism?

Yes. One of the things we saw during the Cold War was that it provided a readymade excuse to ignore human rights. You saw this in the U.S. support for the Contras in Nicaragua, the murderous Salvadoran government. In Africa you could see it in U.S. support for Mobutu in Zaire or Siad Barre in Somalia, Doe in Liberia. There were a range of vicious tyrants around the world whom the United States supported militarily, economically, because they were on our side in fighting communism.

That kind of logic, we fear, is picking up again today in the name of fighting terrorism. Not only is that simply wrong morally in a very straightforward sense in that the U.S. should never be on the side of murder, torture and repression, but it is also profoundly counterproductive.

If the United States is going to win the fight against terrorism, it cannot do that by itself. It's going to need cooperation from people around the world to help with law-enforcement efforts to dissuade would-be terrorists. But the United States will not be able to gain that cooperation if it sends the signal that the ends justifies the means because that's precisely the warped logic of terrorism. Terrorists believe that the ends of their vision of a just world somehow justify their means of blowing up the World Trade Center. That logic is one that we have to be very careful not to embrace ourselves -- accepting murder or torture or repression in the name of the very laudable goal of fighting terrorism.

If the United States is going to gain the cooperation of Indonesians or Pakistanis or Afghans, people who we need to identify and single out terrorists for arrest and prosecution, it is essential that we not signal to them that we are not indifferent to the fate of their countrymen whether in a U.S. detention facility or through U.S. support of repressive governments in their country.

What is the best way to fight terrorism?

I am absolutely convinced that terrorism can be beaten and defeated through lawful means. Use vigorous law enforcement efforts -- at times maybe even military force, if necessary -- but make sure that the United States maintains the high ground, make sure the entire war is fought consistently with human rights standards.

That means, for example, not supporting the warlords in Afghanistan simply because it's cheaper than supporting an international peacekeeping force. That means in the case of, say, Pakistan, not simply writing off efforts to reestablish democracy there simply because Musharraf happens to be on our side in fighting terrorism. Rather, make clear to the Pakistani people that the United States stands with their democratic aspirations.

It means when it comes to detention facilities -- for example Bagram Airbase in Afghanistan-- the United States repudiate the apparent practices there of torture, that, according to the Washington Post, are being engaged in right now. The Post detailed the so-called stress and duress techniques that U.S. interrogators were using at Bagram, and the Bush administration to this day has not denied those well-documented allegations. Instead it is apparently nodding and winking and saying, "Yes, indeed, this is something that is going to go forward." That sends a horrendous signal to the rest of the world that suggests that whenever they are facing a serious security threat they, too, can torture.

How do you pressure governments to build a better war?

The most important tool we have is the tool of exposure. Human Rights Watch for the most part is composed of investigators who go to the trouble spots around the world and speak to the eyewitnesses, the victims, the people who have firsthand knowledge about human rights abuses. By writing up their findings in the form of the reports we regularly issue we expose these atrocities to public scrutiny. Fortunately, the public generally believes in the human rights standards that we uphold. When we show that the United States government or anybody else is falling short of those standards, the public is unhappy with that and the government in question finds it embarrassing. That process of shaming can be a very powerful tool to push governments anywhere in the world to be more respectful of human rights.

We also at times will invoke additional diplomatic or economic pressure. For example, we might go to the World Bank or to major donor governments and say: Don't extend this grant or loan unless the following human rights abuse is stopped. In extreme cases we will encourage prosecution of offenders. We've been a major proponent of the creation of the International Criminal Court, the new global war crimes tribunal, that is now in the process of being established -- a major priority for Human Rights Watch. What that represents is a clear statement by the international community that even if tyrants can compromise their own national judicial system as a way of preventing their prosecution at home, there will always be an international tribunal sitting in The Hague, waiting to receive them as soon as they step outside the cozy confines of their own country and are subject to arrest elsewhere.

You've referred to U.S. reconstruction in Afghanistan as being done "on the cheap." Can you explain what you mean?

The United States has obviously done a tremendous service to the Afghan people by ridding it of the Taliban. If you look today at Kabul, the capital, where there are many international peacekeepers and a significant international presence, life is far, far better than it was before the Taliban were overthrown.

The problem is that the United States government as well as the Europeans have been unwilling to devote the political and military capital to extend a serious peacekeeping presence outside of Kabul. Instead, what they have done is essentially bought security in the rest of the country on the cheap by delegating it to various warlords.

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