In September 2013 a list of 4785 disappeared people in Afghanistan dating back to the early 1980s was published by the prosecutor's office in the Netherlands. The list included the names of many of those who had been forcibly disappeared under the communist regimes of Noor Mohammad Taraki and Hafizullah Amin governments from April 1978 to December 1979. The list includes students, teachers, government employees, mujahideen and others detained and killed because they were considered a threat to the government. The list also includes their 'crimes', including those of being Ekhwanist, Khomainist, Ashrar, Maoist or having any anti-regime political affiliation.
To recognise how remarkable the publication of this list is requires an appreciation of the long struggle for justice waged by victims of Afghanistan's protracted conflict, with successive regimes victimising various groups of people stigmatised as the 'other' or the 'enemy'.
Afghanistan has been struggling with conflict since the late-1970s, when a bloody national coup prompted the Soviet Union to invade it. The decade-long Soviet occupation and the ensuing conflict between different Mujahideen factions resulted in killings, massacres, internal and external displacements and loss of property and livelihoods. The Taliban movement emerged in the mid 1990s as a reaction against the chaos of the civil war. The Taliban received little international recognition, and this contributed to pushing Afghanistan further towards the brink of humanitarian crisis. The Taliban's harsh and discriminatory justice victimised especially women, ethnic and religious minorities.
After more than three decades of conflict, many in Afghanistan have done things that they prefer not to speak of; most Afghan families have been victimised by the conflict in one way or another. In a place like Afghanistan, then, transitional justice cannot be reduced to digging up dirt about every individual known to have been involved in the conflict, for it would be impossible to provide solace for all the suffering. However, the strategy adopted by the international community and the Afghan government during the past decade in the effort to bring peace and stability to Afghanistan has been to allow some of the worst perpetrators back into power. As a result, the suffering of their many, many victims has been ignored.