[News] Torture, Slaughter and Lies

[Anti-Imperialist News]

http://www.counterpunch.org/cloughley12242008.html

December 24, 2008


War With Contempt for Civilians


Torture, Slaughter and Lies

By BRIAN CLOUGHLEY

In September an Afghan journalist, Jawed Ahmad, 
was released from a US military prison in 
Afghanistan where his jailers " broke two of my 
ribs during the beatings." He worked for Canadian 
TV and the BBC, among other media outlets, and he 
had done nothing wrong. That is obvious, because 
he was freed without charge after a year of 
hellish treatment at the hands of uniformed filth 
whose claim to being human is at best feeble. If 
there had been the slightest genuine suspicion 
that he had committed a crime he should have been 
put on trial, but that is not the way the US 
system works, in these horrible days. Bush policy 
in Iraq and Afghanistan is never to admit that 
anyone can be innocent because everyone arrested 
is automatically guilty. But will it get any 
better under Obama? Can he alter what has become 
normal behavior on the part of the robotic minions of the commander-in-chief?

In February Jawed Ahmad was declared an "enemy 
combatant," which is a glib catch-all description 
used by Washington's foulest to describe any 
foreigner who, in shades of the horrible McCarthy 
years, they suspect of possibly being involved in 
what they term anti-American activities. These 
victim of hysteria, of whom there are countless 
thousands around the world, are locked up in 
prisons where their treatment varies from casual 
brutality to hideous torture. From the 
British-owned, US-leased island of Diego Garcia 
in the Indian Ocean to the US colonial enclave at 
Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, by way of Bagram and 
Kandahar in Afghanistan and equally horrible 
prisons in Iraq, the misery of innocent – or even 
guilty – detainees casts a dreadful blot on what 
the world used to think was a fair and free democracy.

Two Afghans were beaten to death by American 
soldiers in Bagram in 2002 (and these are the 
ones we know about). As recorded by McClatchy 
Newspapers "Spc. Jeremy Callaway, who admitted to 
striking about 12 detainees at Bagram, told 
military investigators in sworn testimony that he 
was uncomfortable following orders to "mentally 
and physically break the detainees." He didn't go 
into detail. "I guess you can call it torture," 
said Callaway." The maximum punishment awarded to 
the killers was three months in confinement. 
Imagine the penalty that would have been meted 
out if an American had been beaten to death by an 
Afghan. Imagine the sentence if an American in 
America had been murdered in this fashion : the 
death penalty, automatically. But Afghans don't matter. Nor do Iraqis.

Anyone unfortunate enough to be taken captive by 
US forces or intelligence people can expect 
nothing but the direst conditions, indefinite 
confinement without charge and without legal 
representation, and – oh joy – methods of 
interrogation that "have been deemed not to cause 
significant physical or psychological harm."

That quotation is from one of the worst 
Secretaries of State the US has suffered, the 
Bush protégé Condoleezza Rice, who wrote to 
Congress on 12 September that the "simulated 
torture techniques" administered to would-be 
members of US special forces during their training, would not harm them.

Right. Of course it wouldn't harm them : because 
these volunteers knew that the 'torture' would 
end immediately if they just once shouted Stop, 
Please Stop It. And they knew, also, that it 
would certainly end, sometime. Maybe in an hour 
or two; maybe longer. But they knew it would not 
go on indefinitely. And when it ended they would 
be free to boast that they got through it without any problem.

But real prisoners, held in filthy primitive 
conditions, beaten by vicious barbaric laughing 
guards and interrogated by demented sadists, have 
no idea when their torture is going to end. They 
can't hold up a hand and say "Stop." It is 
absurdly naive – or despicably pitiless – for 
Rice to claim that their treatment does not cause 
"significant physical or psychological harm;" but 
that's the way things are in psycholand.

Detention without charge, denial of access to a 
lawyer and refusal of trial have become normal in 
the US justice system as practiced by the US 
military. They arrested a Reuters' photographer, 
Ibrahim Jassam Mohammed, in September, and the 
Iraqi Central Criminal Court ruled on 30 November 
that there was no evidence against him and that 
he should be released from US military custody. 
In a staggering display of contempt for 
democracy, decency and the constitutions of Iraq 
and America the military refused to comply. He's 
still in jail; without justice, without hope. So 
much for democracy, US-style, in Iraq.

And contempt for democracy doesn't stop with 
sadism in prisons. Afghanistan, like Iraq, is 
supposed to have an independent government. This 
means that foreign activity in these countries 
should be subject to domestic laws and that there 
should be total cooperation between foreign armed 
forces and those of the country on which they are 
inflicted. When military operations are mounted, 
the authorities of the 'host' countries, 
appointed by democratically-elected governments, 
should be informed. Does this happen? Almost 
never. In a recent display of ignorance and 
criminal arrogance, US special forces attacked a 
police station in the town of Qalat in south 
eastern Afghanistan on December 10, imagining it 
to be a "militant hideout." The policemen thought 
the special forces were militants and opened fire.

The police were in their own country ; they were 
in a police post whose location should be known 
to foreign troops operating in their country ; 
they were not told that there would be any 
foreign operations in their area. So of course 
they opened fire. And what did the gallant 
special forces do? Did they "close with and kill 
the enemy, in any terrain, in any weather, by day 
or by night"? (This used to be the way we were 
taught but it seems to have gone out of fashion a 
bit.) Don't be silly: they called in airstrikes 
that killed the police commander, five of his 
men, and, inevitably, a civilian whose house they 
destroyed. Oh; and wounded "at least 13 others."

119 Afghan civilians (including policemen) were 
killed by US airstrikes in January to July 2008, 
The figure for the whole year will be much 
higher. The effect on Afghans cannot be measured 
accurately, but it is unlikely that their regard 
for foreign troops will be high. In fact it is 
inevitable that there will be much hatred 
engendered by these cowboy catastrophes, 
concerning which the first option is to lie if it 
is considered the truth is unlikely to surface.

Take the case of the killing of 90 people by US 
airstrikes in August in the Afghan village of 
Azizabad. The immediate reaction by the US 
military was to flatly deny that any civilians 
had been killed. An inquiry by the UN which 
confirmed the scores of civilian deaths was 
scorned by the military. Unfortunately for them, 
a local doctor had taken photographs showing 40 
bodies, mostly children and young women. Many of them had been his patients.

After the slaughter, the Afghan Women's 
Association recorded a 25 year-old woman as 
saying that when she regained consciousness "I 
was in hospital, and they told me that all of my 
family were dead and already buried. Was my 
two-year-old child a terrorist? Then am I not 
also a terrorist? Why did they let me live?" And 
"Ghulam Azrat, 50, director of the middle school 
in Azizabad, said he collected 60 bodies after 
the bombing. "We put the bodies in the main 
mosque. Most of these dead bodies were children 
and women. It took all morning to collect them" [he told Associated Press]."

But even then, even after they had been forced to 
hold an inquiry that eventually had to admit that 
civilians were killed, the US military stated "US 
and Afghan forces did not commit any violations 
of the law of war or rules of engagement." This 
was because there were supposedly "22 
anti-coalition militants" killed. In fact, of the 
fifteen males killed, only seven were under 40; the others were ancients.

One survivor said he heard shooting and was just 
coming out of his house when he saw his 
neighbor's sons running across. "They were killed 
right here; they were 10 and 7 years old." In the 
compound next to his, he said, four whole 
families, including those of his two brothers, 
were killed. "They bombard us, they hate us, they 
kill us," he said. "God will punish them."

Well, God might punish them, eventually. But they 
seem safe enough from justice while on earth. The 
sadistic torturers; the incompetent arrogant oafs 
who killed the policemen ; the gung-ho gangsters 
who murdered the children in Azizabad; the liars 
who tried to cover up – all will go unpunished.

Will there be change under Obama? Will he order a 
case review of the 15,000 people held without 
charge or trial, without legal advice, in hellish 
conditions, without hope, by US forces in Iraq 
and Afghanistan? Will he be able to release from 
captivity the unknown number of people kept in 
foreign jails by arrangement with US intelligence 
operatives? Will he make it his business to 
ensure that the demented out-of-control special 
forces be reined in? Will he order inquiries into 
torture? Will he, above all, insist on the truth being told? Watch this space.

Brian Cloughley's book about the Pakistan army, 
War, Coups and Terror, has just been published by 
Pen & Sword Books (UK) and will be published in 
the US in May by Skyhorse (New York)




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