Human Rights Watch recently sent a team to the western Afghan city of Herat to see what life is like under a warlord, in that case Ismail Khan. What we found was that women had been packed up back in their burqas, they were for the most part denied the right to travel outside without a male relative; many were denied the right to go to school. There was no public dissent; people who dared to say negative things about Khan's government risked death threats and torture. There was no civil society, no independent press. It was essentially Taliban redux -- life under the Taliban without the Taliban. That is hardly what most Americans thought they were doing when the Taliban was overthrown, but that is the cheap way to reconstruction in Afghanistan.

Now the Bush administration is pledging that Iraq will be different, but its record in Afghanistan hardly gives a reason for confidence. If all that the Bush invasion of Iraq accomplishes is to substitute one tyrant for another -- awful as Saddam has been -- that will be far, far short of the grand promises of a new democratic Iraq that we hear increasingly emanating from Washington. Frankly, I have to accept those pledges with skepticism, given the awful record that the United States has had in Afghanistan outside of the capital.

What will happen to the Kurds if the U.S. invades Iraq?

In many ways the Kurds have never had it so good as the last decade. They have suffered horribly under various regimes, and of course the worst case was the Anfal genocide. They have been the target of repeated use of chemical weapons. They have been ignored or compromised or betrayed by the United States on many occasions, including even during the 1991 uprising, after the Anfal genocide, after the United States had continued giving commodity credits and loan guarantees to Saddam despite his commission of this genocide. After Saddam invaded Kuwait and lost the Gulf War, the United States still refused to come to the aid of the Kurdish uprising but allowed Saddam to use helicopters to crush that uprising. Only belatedly did the United States establish a no-fly zone in the north which ultimately has led to the creation of the Kurdish mini-state or quasi state that has existed in northern Iraq for the last decade. So the Kurds have been betrayed and have suffered horribly for years.

What they fear now is yet another betrayal. I think that they fear that whatever autonomy they have been able to secure, whatever civil society that's been allowed to emerge in northern Iraq -- and indeed, there's a relatively free atmosphere in northern Iraq -- that this will come to an end if Saddam's overthrow leads to the emergence of another thug on the order of Ismail Khan in Herat. Unless the United States really lives up to its expressed aims of establishing democracy in Iraq, there may be a stronger centralized government that reasserts its control over Iraq's Kurdistan under circumstances of far less freedom than the Kurds enjoy today.

Human Rights Watch could be criticized for not being aggressive enough in fighting for human rights by advocating military action against particularly repressive regimes. On the other hand, antiwar activists could criticize the organization for not taking a stronger stand against a war in Iraq -- or any war, for that matter -- to protect what could be considered the ultimate human right -- to live. How do you negotiate a path between those two positions?

This is an issue that often comes up and it's a very difficult one. It's important to note that there is a difference between pacifism and support of human rights. The two are similar in many respects. I think people come to the two causes out of quite similar motivations. But a pacifist is against war in any circumstance. A human rights activist accepts that sometimes war is necessary whether you like it or not. We see our role as trying to mitigate the harm that arises to civilians in the course of war.

Have you supported any wars?

The only kinds of wars that we have supported have been on the very rare occasions when we feel that war is the only way to stop genocide -- or comparable mass slaughter. For example, we did support a war -- unfortunately without success -- in the case of the Rwandan genocide, where we urged anyone to intervene. No one from the international community did. It really took, ultimately, Rwandan forces from Uganda to come in and stop the genocide.

Similarly, we urged military intervention in the case of Bosnian genocide, particularly just after the massacre in Sbrenica. There, within a month or so, the U.S. government and its allies did heed the call from Human Rights Watch and others, and that genocide was brought to an end.

It's only in the extreme cases in which war is a lesser evil to the systematic slaughter of civilians that Human Rights Watch will take a position on whether there should be a war or not. In any other circumstance we are strictly neutral.

In the case of Iraq, even though Saddam has been responsible for genocide in the past, that of course was at a moment when the U.S. was supporting him. While we are fully aware of Saddam's horrendous past human rights record, there is no serious allegation that today he's committing the kind of mass killing that would lead Human Rights Watch to call for his overthrow.

So why would we go to war with him now?

The U.S. has offered a range of justifications, and because Human Rights Watch doesn't take a position on whether there should be a war in Iraq or not, I'm not going to comment on them. The one thing I can say is that the claim that this is being done for human rights reasons has an element of truth in that, undoubtedly, this is one of the worst regimes and the Iraqi people will probably be better off without Saddam.

But one has to look at it also somewhat cynically because at the moment of the most intense killing by Saddam, whether it was the use of chemical weapons during the Iran-Iraq War or Saddam's genocide against the Kurds, these were all moments when the United States was supporting him. The U.S. gave him ongoing intelligence support while he was using chemical weapons against Iranian troops. The U.S. continued to give him commodity credits and loan guarantees after he had slaughtered the Kurds.

So to suddenly say that Saddam's horrendous human rights record justifies war -- it's difficult to sustain that in light of the U.S. government's abysmal record of standing up to Saddam when it really mattered.

Are we going to war no matter what?

I don't think it's inevitable in the sense that there could still be a coup. It's conceivable that Saddam could choose to go into exile. There are a number of things that could happen that might avoid a war. But it seems increasingly unlikely that anything the Iraqi government could do in terms of compliance with Security Council standards would be sufficient to deter an administration that seems quite determined to go to war.

What will happen to the antiwar fervor once war breaks out?

Clearly, there have been massive demonstrations throughout the world against the war. There is a danger that if war proceeds, everybody just throws up their hands and says, "Well, that's Bush, what can we do about it?"

I worry about that. Frankly, I think that it's much more likely than not that there will be a war, despite public opposition. In that circumstance, it's essential that pressure be brought on the Bush administration -- both because of its own conduct and its capacity to affect Iraqi conduct -- to do everything possible to spare civilians.

My fear is that at the moment of greatest need -- when war might break out -- that the mass mobilization we've seen over the last few months suddenly throws up its hands in despair. That is the moment when we need the help of every one of those protesters.

I hope that everybody realizes that even if they lose the battle over whether there is a war or not, there is still another battle to be waged, a critically important battle -- and that is the battle to spare civilian lives in the midst of war.

Recent Stories