By Justin Huggler
Kabul - Thousands of former Taliban fighters are being held prisoner by a United States ally in Afghanistan in conditions that resemble Auschwitz, a European Union envoy has charged.
In the prison at Shebarghan, northern Afghanistan, Klaus-Peter Klaiber, the EU's envoy, came face to face on Monday with the reality of the war in Afghanistan.
"The people have nothing on their bones anymore," Klaiber said. "They are being treated like cattle, crammed into tents. The kitchen, you cannot imagine. There were ghost-like figures just stirring soup."
More than 2 000 former Taliban fighters are being held at a camp in Shebarghan, the main base of General Abdul-Rashid Dostum, one of the most powerful warlords in Afghanistan and a vital US ally in the war against the Taliban.
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In November, at least 150 non-Afghan Taliban volunteers being held prisoner by Dostum's forces were killed when the US reacted to a prison revolt by ordering airstrikes on the Qalai Janghi fortress in Mazar-i-Sharif where the prisoners were hemmed in.
Like the fighters who died in Qalai Janghi, many of the 2 000 men being held in Shebarghan were captured at the end of the siege of Kunduz, one of the last two Taliban strongholds in Afghanistan.
They are being fed on nothing but thin soup, and about 400 of them are so malnourished that they are receiving emergency rations from the Red Cross.
The prisoners in Shebarghan are ethnic Pashtuns. The Taliban were dominated by Pashtuns, and now Afghanistan's other ethnic groups - like Dostum's Uzbeks - are taking revenge.
The US and its allies have done nothing to stop this, continuing to claim the war has made life better for ordinary Afghans.
Klaiber called for urgent action on Monday, apparently suggesting Hamid Karzai, Afghanistan's interim prime minister - a Pashtun - would like to intervene. But Karzai's rule does not extend to Shebarghan, where Dostum is effectively king. - Independent Foreign Service
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