The Afghanistan War Commission, created by the U.S. Congress in 2021, will deliver its final report in about two months on lessons learned from the 20-year war. The commission has already noted that the U.S. government, by empowering strongmen and failing to build accountable institutions, badly undermined the state-building effort.

Nonetheless, some former Afghan officials remain in denial about why things went so badly wrong and have tried to paint a rosy picture of human rights in the country before the Taliban takeover in August 2021.

In 2017, an Afghan government delegation led by the country’s attorney general appeared before the United Nations Committee Against Torture to answer questions  about what the government was doing to curb torture. By that year, reports of torture had reached their highest levels since the UN had begun monitoring detention conditions in 2010.

In particular UN officials asked about General Abdul Raziq, a U.S. ally whose police forces were responsible for systematic torture and enforced disappearances. The delegation dodged the questions, giving only bland reassurances about training.

Raziq was a product of the U.S. tendency to prioritize short-term military gains over protecting human rights and building accountable institutions in Afghanistan. This shortsightedness and the resulting abuses and corruption helped fuel local support for the Taliban, undermining the counter-insurgency effort. When Human Rights Watch raised these concerns, U.S. and European diplomats simply shrugged that guys like Raziq were needed to protect their forces.

The problem extended beyond fighting the Taliban. Afghan government officials acknowledged to Human Rights Watch that they could not prosecute prominent figures who had powerful friends.

Keramuddin Karim — the former head of Afghanistan’s Football Federation, who had close ties to the political leadership — drove several members of the woman’s football team to flee the country after several of them reported that Karim and his colleagues had sexually assaulted and harassed them. After dragging its feet, FIFA, the global football body, banned Karim for life. But Afghan authorities never prosecuted Karim.

Even before the Taliban dismissed all female judges, Afghan women faced significant barriers to justice. In most cases, police, prosecutors, and judges deterred women from filing complaints of abuse and instead pressured them to seek mediation. Family pressure, financial dependence, the stigma associated with filing a complaint, and fear of reprisals — including losing their children — also discouraged women from pursuing cases.

While the Taliban takeover has made things far worse for women, Afghanistan’s  previous civil code also failed to adequately protect girls from child and forced marriage, contrary to international human rights standards prohibiting marriage under age 18.

The office of the prosecutor at the International Criminal Court (ICC) is currently investigating possible serious international crimes in Afghanistan. The court in July 2025 issued arrest warrants for two senior Taliban officials for the crime against humanity of gender persecution. However, before 2021 the former Afghan government tried to get the ICC to delay or drop any investigations into war crimes or crimes against humanity — crimes that it had utterly failed to prosecute itself.

When the ICC prosecution sought to investigate crimes by parties to the Afghan conflict, including those committed by U.S. military and CIA personnel, as well as the Taliban and Afghan government forces, the U.S. response was to sanction ICC officials.

Now former Afghan officials are pressing international human rights treaty bodies to hold the Taliban accountable for rights violations, including their bans on women and girls’ secondary and higher education and restrictions on freedom of movement and employment. Justice is needed, but it should not be selective.

Last fall, over 100 Afghan and international human rights groups successfully advocated  the establishment of a comprehensive UN accountability mechanism for Afghanistan, insisting that it should be mandated to investigate both past and ongoing crimes. Their plea was clear: all victims should have equal access to justice, regardless of who was responsible.

On October 6, 2025, the UN Human Rights Council decided by consensus to establish this independent mechanism, tasking it with investigating, collecting, and preserving evidence of past and ongoing international crimes committed by all parties in Afghanistan — and to support efforts to bring those responsible to justice.

The council resolution puts officials of all parties to the conflict on notice that evidence will be collected and prepared so they may someday face justice. By adopting the resolution by consensus, council members sent a powerful message against double standards for justice or a hierarchy of victims and demonstrated growing international resolve to bring those responsible for international crimes into account.

It is now crucial for the new mechanism to get up and running quickly so that it can begin to collect, prepare, and preserve evidence, and build files on those responsible for international crimes in Afghanistan.

As the Afghanistan War Commission wraps up its work, it too should ensure that its assessment of the U.S. war addresses grave human rights violations and the need for genuine accountability. That will send an important signal, and hopefully lead to reforms, though more action is needed.

---

---