The Obama administration is expressing alarm over reports that thousands of political workers and captured Taliban insurgents have disappeared into the hands of Pakistan’s police and security forces.


The issue came up in a State Department report to Congress last month that urged Pakistan to address this and other human rights abuses.

The concern is over a steady stream of accounts from human rights groups that Pakistan’s security services have rounded up thousands of people over the past decade, mainly in Balochistan, and are holding them incommunicado without charges.


Separately, the report also described concerns that the Pakistani military had killed unarmed members of the Taliban, rather than put them on trial.

“The Pakistani government has made limited progress in advancing human rights and continues to face human rights challenges,” the State Department report concluded.

After the Sept. 11 attacks, the administration of President George W. Bush urged Pakistan to capture militants linked to the Taliban and Al Qaeda. Since then, human rights groups have said that Pakistan’s security forces used that campaign as a cover to round up hundreds, if not thousands, of political activists and guerrilla fighters in Balochistan and hold them in secret detention.

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