The National Directorate of Security (NDS) was established after the appointment of the Afghan interim government in 2001 as the successor to the former Afghan National Intelligence Service Khadamat-e Etela'at-e Dawlati (KHAD). It provides support to fight terrorism, anti-government elements (AGEs) and drug offences. To this end, it collects and analyses information and provides policy support to the Afghan government. The NDS also has the power to detain suspects of crimes against the country's internal or external security for 72 hours and carry out its own operations. The directorate is part of, and cooperates with, the Afghan national security forces. However, it functions independently: the director general of the directorate reports directly to the president of the republic.
The directorate consists of numbered departments, each with its own area of responsibility. Within these departments are units with specific tasks. The main services of the NDS are intelligence gathering, detaining suspects in provincial and local detention centres and conducting operations. It also runs its own forensic laboratory and its own courts. Throughout its existence, the directorate has also been linked to pro-government militias that are not officially under its direction. Examples include militias created by the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) such as the Khost Protection Force (KPF) and Zero Units, the Orgun Strike Force, the Sangorian, the Shaheen Forces and the Wakunish.
Although Afghanistan is party to international conventions aimed at protecting civilians from torture and extrajudicial killings, human rights organisations have been receiving reports of human rights violations committed by officers of the directorate since 2004. International organisations are mainly concerned that the authority to place persons in pre-trial detention and conduct investigations is not separate from the authority to prosecute and detain persons. During the existence of the NDS, three main categories of human rights violations have been observed: arbitrary arrests, torture during detention and the killing of Afghan civilians.
Regarding arbitrary arrests, journalists critical of the government are the main victims. There have also been reports of arrests carried out for ransom. Torture during detention occurs mainly for the purpose of obtaining confessions or other relevant information. The United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) has been conducting research on torture in NDS detention centres since 2009. It identified the systematic occurrence of torture at different times, at provincial centres in Farah and Kandahar, and at Department 90/124/241/041 detention centre, among others. In 2020, 70% of those detained by NDS-03 reported torture. NDS-02 is linked to 15 reports of torture in the same year.
Finally, during the violent conflict that took place in Afghanistan from 2001 to 2021, there was a significant number of civilian casualties as a result of operations conducted by NDS special units and militias linked to the directorate. As these units are often grouped together in news reports, figures for specific units are scarce. In general, an increase was observed in the number of fatalities caused by the special units in the years 2018 and 2019. During the same period, the number of attacks on medical facilities also increased. From 2020, after the withdrawal of US troops, a sharp drop in the number of casualties was observed due to the decreasing number of operations by the special units of the NDS, FPF and Zero Units.
Policy
The overall security situation in Afghanistan in recent decades has been largely determined by a long-running internal armed conflict, as a result of which many Afghans are internally displaced or have sought refuge abroad. The Taliban took power in August 2021, after many years of conflict between the former government, its security forces and foreign troops on the one hand, and rebel groups such as the Taliban and the ISKP on the other.
The end of the fighting between the former government and the Taliban resulted in a sharp decline in conflict-related violence and a significant drop in civilian casualties. In assessing the need for international protection, the Commissioner General takes into account that the Taliban's control of the entire Afghan territory has a significant impact on the human rights situation in the country and on the risk faced by many Afghans in case of return.
Following the seizure of power by the Taliban, the Commissioner General announced a temporary, partial suspension of refugee status determination decisions. In the period between 15 August 2021 and 1 March 2022, no rejection decisions were taken for Afghan applicants. However, it was apparent that many persons clearly were in need of protection; positive decisions granting refugee status were taken for those cases during that period. This also applied to many persons evacuated from Kabul.
In early March 2022, the suspension was ended. Since then, the CGRS has been taking decisions again for all cases.
The CGRS has to assess whether a need for protection exists for each applicant for international protection. Every application is assessed individually. This is done on the basis of the refugee and subsidiary protection definitions contained in law and international treaties. The CGRS does not make "political" assessments of a regime and grant protection status on that basis.