Click to expand Image Mourners at a mass funeral for victims of a US drone strike, including seven children, look up as fighter jets circle a cemetery in Kabul, Afghanistan, on August 30, 2021. © 2021 Marcus Yam/The Los Angeles Times via Getty Images (Washington, DC) – The United States and coalition countries have yet to provide genuine justice or redress for war crimes and other grave abuses in Afghanistan in the 25 years since the war began on October 7, 2001, Human Rights Watch said today, issuing a timeline of its reporting of the conflict. After Al-Qaeda’s September 11 attacks on the United States, the US government authorized the use of interrogation methods of suspected militants amounting to torture. Human Rights Watch and others also documented torture and other ill-treatment by US forces in Afghanistan, including beatings, humiliation, waterboarding, prolonged sleep deprivation, and mock executions. Many civilian detainees were released only after months or years without ever being charged with a crime. The US government has never provided full accountability or compensation for these abuses. Afghanistan: 25 Years Since the US-Led Invasion This feature compiles Human Rights Watch reporting on international human rights and humanitarian law issues by all parties during the conflict and the continuing need for accountability. Read more here “Twenty-five years on, Afghans tortured in US custody and families of those wrongfully killed still have no clear path for filing a claim or receiving redress from the US government,” said Patricia Gossman, senior associate Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “Successive US administrations have swept grave abuses under the rug, leaving those most affected with neither compensation nor justice.”The 20-year US conflict in Afghanistan, which ended with the Taliban’s recapture of Kabul in August 2021, was governed by the Geneva Conventions of 1949and customary international humanitarian law, which prohibits summary executions, torture and other ill-treatment, and deliberate or indiscriminate attacks on civilians, as well as international human rights law, including the United Nations Convention Against Torture.A farmer told Human Rights Watch that US forces detained him in Ghazni in 2019 while he was recovering from an eye operation. He said that he permanently lost his eyesight after US soldiers beat him during questioning and did not provide him with medical care. “Whenever one didn’t like my answers, the other American would hit me with his rifle butt,” he said. “They told me I was lying and beat me with fists, kicks, and rifle butts.” He was never charged but only released in August 2021.The United States prosecuted some US soldiers for unlawful killings. Sgt. Robert Bales was convicted in 2012 for killing 16 Afghan civilians in Kandahar. In the so-called “Kill Team” murders of 15 Afghan civilians in Kandahar in 2010, Staff Sgt. Calvin Gibbs was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison, Specialist Jeremy Morlock received 24 years, and 2 other unit members were sentenced—one to 3 years and the other to 7—for failing to prevent the killings.Many other prominent cases were never prosecuted, including the massacre of at least 18 civilians in the Nerkh district of Wardak province in 2014. US President Donald Trump pardoned several US soldiers convicted of unlawful killings: Lt. Clint Lorance was convicted of murder on the basis of testimony by fellow soldiers but was pardoned after serving 6 years of a 19-year sentence. The US army dropped charges against Maj. Mathew Golsteyn, who admitted to killing an Afghan man and then covering it up, after Trump pardoned him in 2019.Other coalition forces have also done little to meaningfully address serious abuses by their military personnel. While both Australia and the United Kingdom have investigations underway into alleged summary killings and mistreatment of civilians by their forces, progress has been slow. Almost six years after the release in Australia of the Independent Afghanistan Inquiry (the Brereton Report), which detailed alleged war crimes by Australian special forces in Afghanistan from 2005 to 2016, there have only been two arrests, the trials have not begun, and no victims or their families are known to have received compensation.After media in the UK exposed evidence of summary executions and other war crimes by British special forces in Afghanistan, successive UK governments tried to prevent any prosecutions by covering up crimes and shutting down criminal inquiries. An independent inquiry into the Afghanistan allegations was eventually established in December 2022, but its scope was limited to three years, 2010-2013.US-backed strongmen in the then-Afghan government were responsible for serious abuses, including attacks on civilians, the torture and rape of detainees, and enforced disappearances. Local militias funded and trained by US forces and CIA-run Afghan “strike forces” carried out summary executions and disappearances.The Taliban and other insurgents targeted civilians and caused thousands of civilian deaths and injuries during the conflict. Taliban forces assassinated women officials and journalists and attacked embassies, hotels, polling places, and aid organizations. The Taliban’s use of indiscriminate improvised explosive devices on public roads and in populated areas was a leading cause of civilian deaths and injuries. The Taliban did not hold their personnel to account for abuses. Other armed groups, including an Islamic State affiliate, carried out suicide attacks targeting the Hazara and other minority communities.The International Criminal Court (ICC) initially undertook an investigation into possible war crimes and crimes against humanity in Afghanistan since May 1, 2003, by all warring parties, including the Taliban, the Islamic State, Afghan government forces, and the US military and CIA. The Trump administration denounced any attempt to investigate alleged crimes by US personnel and sanctioned the court’s judges and prosecutors. In 2021, then-ICC Prosecutor Karim Khan prioritized only those crimes allegedly committed by the Taliban and Islamic State. Investigations into crimes by other parties have not publicly progressed.In October 2025, the UN Human Rights Council crucially decided to establish an independent investigative mechanism for Afghanistan to collect, consolidate, preserve, and analyze evidence of past and ongoing international crimes by all parties, and to prepare files to facilitate future prosecutions. UN leadership should ensure the mechanism receives adequate resources and begins its investigations without delay. Judicial authorities abroad should engage with the mechanism to ensure that its work includes consultations with Afghan survivors of abuses, including women and girls, and supports prosecutions of those implicated in serious international crimes.“The United States and other countries that took part in the war in Afghanistan should properly investigate and prosecute alleged war crimes by their forces and provide appropriate redress to the victims of abuses and their families,” Gossman said. “The indifference of governments and the passage of time should not deny people the justice, compensation, and recognition they are due.”