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Torture in Abu Ghraib
The Bigger Picture
“A
year ago I [gave a speech]… saying that we had achieved an
important objective, accomplished a mission, which was the removal
of Saddam Hussein. As a result, there are no longer torture chambers
or mass graves or rape rooms in Iraq.”1
– US President George W. Bush, April 30, 2004
“It
is no secret at all, there are many Israeli experts on torture in
Iraq… Here in Israel, it is an ugly occupation, and Israel
doesn’t make any pretensions about it. But in Iraq, the United
States is murdering, humiliating, torturing and raping the Iraqis
under the rubric of freedom and democracy.”2
– Talab al-Sanai, Israeli-Arab Knesset Member
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The
“Republic of Fear” lives on in Abu Ghraib |
The
capture of Saddam Hussein in December 2003 was hailed by many
commentators as signaling the dawn of a new era of freedom and
democracy in Iraq. Newsweek International editor
Fareed Zakaria suggested that “Saddam Hussein’s capture is a
great and pivotal event. The ‘Republic of Fear’ is dead.”
Zakaria was alluding to Kanan Makiya’s book, The Republic of
Fear, which explained that the most powerful force maintaining
the despotic Baa’thist regime – more than brute strength – was
“an all-embracing atmosphere of fear” that pervaded every level
of Iraqi society.3 Six months on,
Zakaria’s aspiration have failed to materialize – Iraq has
turned into a hotbed of anti-US activity, and the practices of the
occupation forces against the Iraqis are increasingly reminiscent of
Saddam’s brutality. In many ways, the “Republic of Fear” lives
on.
The
world was offered a glimpse of US abuses manifested in their most
explicit form, when CBS television’s “60 Minutes II” program
screened graphic images of Iraqi prisoners being tortured and
sexually humiliated by American troops at the Abu Ghraib prison near
Baghdad. The photographs, which show US soldiers – men and women
– smiling, laughing or giving thumbs up signs alongside naked
Iraqi prisoners or attaching electrodes to the extremities of an
Iraqi detainee, exposed the sadistic and brutal methods employed by
American forces against Iraqi captives. Iraqi prisoners were
routinely stripped, made to pose with women’s underwear over their
heads, and kept naked in dark, empty cells.4
The
pictures also suggested that those who tortured Iraqi prisoners felt
they had nothing to hide from their military superiors. Indeed,
there are reports that senior officials in military intelligence
encouraged such treatment to create better conditions for
interrogation, and that many soldiers were ordered to “soften
up” detainees.5 More disturbing
is a Red Cross report which indicated that between 70% and 90% of
Iraqi detainees had been arrested by mistake.6
Despite
the Pentagon’s assertion that “there is no evidence of
systematic abuse” in US detention facilities, as General Richard
Myers put it, Amnesty International says it had received
“scores” of reports of ill-treatment of detainees, suggesting a
“pattern of torture” perpetrated by coalition troops.7
A confidential fifty-three-page report written by Major General
Antonio M. Taguba was completed in late February. Specifically,
Taguba found that between October and December of 2003 there were
numerous instances of “sadistic, blatant, and wanton criminal
abuses” at Abu Ghraib.8
Systematic
and illegal abuse of detainees, Taguba reported, was perpetrated by
soldiers of the 372nd Military Police Company, and also by members
of the American intelligence community. Taguba cites as evidence the
testimony of Sgt. Javal Davis and others, who related that military
intelligence was telling them to “loosen this guy up for us,” to
“make sure this guy has a bad night” and to “give him the
treatment.”9 Taguba describes
how military-intelligence officials even complimented one of the
charged MPs, Spc. Charles Graner Jr., on his handling of prisoners
with statements like, “Good job, they’re breaking down real
fast.”10
Taguba’s
report listed some of the abuses:
Breaking
chemical lights and pouring the phosphoric liquid on detainees;
pouring cold water on naked detainees; beating detainees with a
broom handle and a chair; threatening male detainees with rape;
allowing a military police guard to stitch the wound of a detainee
who was injured after being slammed against the wall in his cell;
sodomizing a detainee with a chemical light and perhaps a broom
stick, and using military working dogs to frighten and intimidate
detainees with threats of attack, and in one instance actually
biting a detainee.11
Rogue
Empire
US
officers reviewed Israeli tactics used in the brutal assault on
Jenin. |
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America’s
invasions of both Afghanistan and Iraq, its efforts to legitimize
unilateral pre-emptive action and its contempt for international
organizations and international law have illustrated the nature of
America’s leadership of the current world order and its
determination to set itself as a nation above the law. The US is now
widely perceived in the international community as a country which
proclaims moral and legal ideals, seeking to impose them on others
but failing to adhere to them itself. The Bush administration’s
refusal to make its troops subject to the jurisdiction of the new
International Criminal Court is further evidence of America its
double-standards.
In
Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, more than 700 detainees from 44 countries have
been subjected to physical abuse, sensory deprivation and constant
exposure to bright light. The captives have been kept beyond the
reach of international justice for over two years. Despite the fact
that the Third Geneva Convention requires that any dispute about a
prisoner’s status be decided by a “competent tribunal,” the
Bush administration unilaterally decided that all Guantanamo
prisoners were “unlawful combatants.”12
Prior
to the Guantanamo Bay incident, US troops alongside Afghan warlord
Abdul Rashid Dostum’s forces took part in the killing of several
hundred, possibly thousands, of Taliban POWs being transported in
container lorries near Mazar-e-Sharif in Afghanistan. Some reports
indicate that as many as 8,000 surrendering Taliban soldiers were
never seen again and that US Special Forces instructed Dostum’s
men to “get rid of the bodies before satellite pictures can be
taken.”13
The
conditions in Iraqi jails, where over 18,000 prisoners are being
held, are replicated in a network of US-run concentration camps
around the world, in places like Diego Garcia and Bagram Air Base in
Afghanistan.14
Hundreds of “terrorism suspects” have been held at
overseas CIA interrogation centers which are completely off-limits
to reporters, lawyers and outside agencies. Others have been
transferred to US allies with dubious human rights records in the
Middle East for further interrogation.15
According to the US State Department itself, many of those
governments routinely torture detainees.
Most
US administration officials and congressmen criticized the prisoner
abuses on the grounds that they tarnished the “image” of the
United States internationally, and that such treatment might
endanger US troops by setting a precedent that would encourage
insurgents to treat American detainees similarly. The officials were
mainly concerned with the consequent media fallout, rather than with
how such abuses affected the Iraqi people. Had those pictures been
concealed from the international media and their existence denied,
it is highly unlikely the abuses would have been stopped.
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Maj
Gen Antonio Taguba’s report revealed shocking abuses |
Similar
contempt for the media was reflected in US General John Abizaid’s
criticism of Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiyya for reporting that US
marines were targeting civilians in Fallujah.16
United States’ officials were more angered by the media’s
display of dead Iraqis than with the actual killing of 600 civilians
in less than three weeks.
It
is striking that the US administration expects Muslims to be killed
and tortured in silence, while images and video footage of September
11 must remain omnipresent in the media.
The
punishments that were meted out to the perpetrators of prisoner
abuses were administered by the US, rather than by an independent
Iraqi court or an international tribunal. This sends a message to
the Iraqis and the rest of the Arab and Muslim world: The
US will continue to act as judge, jury and executioner, and in its
role as the global law-maker and sheriff, it will set the rules and
act alone.
When
US diplomacy failed to secure a UN Security Council resolution that
would legitimize military action against Iraq, the US formed a
“coalition” and went to war anyway. More importantly, the war on
Iraq was based on false pretenses: There were no weapons of mass
destruction, and no Saddam-al-Qaeda links were ever confirmed. In
light of the prisoner abuse scandal, even the “moral” objectives
of freedom and democracy that the US claimed it wanted to bring to
Iraq proved to be illusory.
The
United States
& Israel – Partners in Crime
For
many US officials, the mere suggestion of a common US-Israeli design
for the Middle East or any reference to collaboration between both
states on Iraq is usually met with outright disdain and rejection.
Some would even respond that the Arabs are prone to thinking in
terms of conspiracy theories, blaming everything on a fictitious
“Western-Zionist” crusade. But the reality is very different
from what many US officials wish to admit.
Both
Israel and the US have always viewed Iraq, with its pivotal
strategic position, its highly educated population and enormous
natural wealth, as a threat to US-Israeli dominance in the Middle
East. Israel’s destruction of Iraq’s Osiraq nuclear reactor in
1982, America’s destruction of Iraq’s civilian infrastructure in
the 1991 Gulf War, its use of depleted uranium, and the devastating
impact of US-instigated sanctions are all part and parcel of a
systematic US-Israeli plan to devastate the Iraqi state and society.
Hence,
it comes as no surprise that many torture techniques used by the
Americans in Abu Ghraib were adopted from the Israelis. Tens of
thousands of Palestinian, Lebanese and other Arab detainees see
striking similarities between the Israeli treatment of Arab
prisoners and America’s treatment of Iraqi detainees. Consistent
reports from human rights groups and testimonies by Arab detainees
detail Israel’s use of hooding, sleep deprivation, violent
shaking, forced stripping, cold baths in winter and actual or
threatened sexual abuse.17
Interestingly,
many individuals working for US military contractors CACI and Titan
were cited in the Taguba report. Those individuals included Steven
Stephanowicz and John Israel. The CEO of CACI, J.P. “Jack”
London was awarded the Albert Einstein Technology Award by the
Jerusalem Fund for Aish Hatorah, which was presented to him by
Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz in January. On that occasion,
CACI proudly announced that as a provider of information technology
to help fight the war on “terrorism,” it was helping to
transform the Middle East “into a peaceful, stable, region.”18
Swoops
by troops posing as Arabs were among the Israeli tactics US
forces were studying. |
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London
visited Israel earlier this year with a delegation for a homeland
security conference. Also, one of the American interrogators in Abu
Ghraib, Joe Ryan, stated: “I went through the Department of
Defense (DOD) Strategic Debriefer Course, Israeli Interrogation
Course, and the SCAN course.” 19
US-Israeli
cooperation is not a new phenomenon; it has long been tied into the
strategic and military planning for the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
Before the war, Israeli security sources said that US officers
visited a mock-up of an Arab town used for Israeli training, and
that US and Israeli troops held joint exercises in the Negev Desert.
United States’ officers also reportedly reviewed Israeli tactics
used in the brutal assault on the Palestinian refugee camp of Jenin
over a year ago, in which 23 Israeli soldiers and allegedly hundreds
of Palestinians were killed.
Earlier
reports also suggested that Israeli squads were present in Western
Iraq before the invasion, to neutralize any potential Iraqi missile
threat to Israel. In addition, Israeli commandos and intelligence
units were working closely with their American counterparts at the
Special Forces training base at Fort Bragg, North Carolina.20
It’s
no secret that US forces in Iraq were receiving lessons in
occupation and counterinsurgency from the Israeli military. Seymour
Hersh confirmed earlier in The New Yorker that the Pentagon
sought “active and secret help in the war against the Iraqi
insurgency from Israel, America’s closest ally in the Middle
East… Israeli commandos are expected to serve as ad-hoc
advisers—again, in secret—when full-field operations begin.”21
The
Israelis also supplied the US army with aerial surveillance
equipment, decoy drones and D-9 armored bulldozers. Israeli security
sources say mass assaults by covert squads of soldiers and swoops by
troops posing as Arabs were among the tactics US forces were
studying for use in Iraq. United States’ aircraft and artillery
have blasted buildings suspected of being used by insurgents, and
there have been instances of family members of suspected insurgents
being taken hostage in order to pressure the insurgents into
surrendering themselves.22
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Falluja
- football field serves as a grave for victims of the US assault |
For
many months, whole villages in Iraq have been surrounded by razor
wire, their residents forced to pass through checkpoints manned by
US soldiers.23 US military
officials have also reviewed the common Israeli tactic of conducting
house-to-house searches for armed fighters by knocking down interior
walls with portable battering rams.24
A Red Cross report describing the conduct of US troops in Iraq
suggests striking similarities with Israeli behavior in the West
Bank and Gaza:
Arresting
authorities entered houses after dark, breaking down doors, waking
up residents roughly, yelling orders, forcing family members into
one room under military guard while searching the rest of the house
and further breaking doors, cabinets and other property. Sometimes
they arrested all adult males present in a house, including elderly,
handicapped or sick people… Treatment often included pushing
people around, insulting, taking aim with rifles, punching and
kicking and striking with rifles.25
Conclusions
The
systematic abuse of the Iraqi civilian population will definitely
have major repercussions on the ongoing conflict in the Middle East.
Already the anti-US insurgency being led by both Sunni and Shiite
militias is gaining widespread legitimacy among the Iraqi masses,
many of whom have experienced first hand the gruesome reality of US
occupation and the moral bankruptcy of US officials and leaders.
It
would be wrong to assume that US practices at Abu Ghraib or at any
other detention facilities are only intended to further
intelligence-gathering efforts. The widespread use of force or
humiliation techniques against captives is usually counterproductive
– most captives do not know much and usually end up telling
interrogators what they want to hear to end the torture.
Significantly, neither the United States nor Israel has been made
safer by investing in torture. Rather, widespread abuses against
detainees have fueled resentment among the people of occupied
Palestine and Iraq
The
abuses at Abu Ghraib will not be looked at as isolated incidents
committed by a minority, but rather as part of a systematic,
consistent and, indeed, global onslaught lead by the US
aimed at the humiliation and demoralization of Muslims since
September 11. Guantanamo
Bay
and Abu Ghraib will be perceived as a microcosm of the larger
pattern of Muslim dignity being trampled by the West, manifested in
the occupation of Muslim lands, the appropriation of their
resources, and the appointment of “friendly tyrants” to govern
Muslim affairs. In that sense, Abu Ghraib is not a beginning and
will certainly not be the end. Kareem
M. Kamel is an Egyptian freelance writer based in Cairo,
Egypt. He has an MA in International Relations and is specialized in
security studies, decision- making, nuclear politics, Middle East
politics and the politics of Islam. He is currently assistant to the
Political Science Department at the American University in Cairo.
[1]
Lisa Hajjar, “Torture
and the Future,” Middle East Report Online May 2004
[2]
Khalid Amayreh, “Israeli Lessons for the US in Iraq,” Al-Jazeera
(English) May 6th, 2004
[3]
Fareed Zakaria, “The
‘Republic of Fear’ is Dead,” MSNBC/Newsweek
December 22nd, 2003
[4]
Ibid.
[5]
“Iraq: US Prisoner Abuse Sparks Concerns Over War Crimes,”
Human Rights Watch April 30th, 2004
[6]
Alexander G. Higgins, “Report:
70%-90% Held in Error in Iraq,” Arizona Daily Star
May 11th, 2004
[7]
Melinda Liu, “Culture
of Impunity?” MSNBC/Newsweek May 5th,
2004
[8]
Seymour M. Hersh, “Torture
at Abu Ghraib,” The New Yorker May 1st , 2004
[9]
John Barry, et al. “Abu
Ghraib and Beyond,” Newsweek May 17th,
2004
[10]
Seymour M. Hersh, “Torture
at Abu Ghraib,” The New Yorker May 1st , 2004
[11]
Ibid.
[12]
Anthony Lewis, “A President Beyond the Law Sets a Bad Example,”
International Herald Tribune May 8th, 2004
[13]
George Monbiot, “One
Rule For Them,” Common Dreams March 25th, 2003
[14]
Richard Phillips, “Details
of Torture of Iraqi Prisoners,” Khilafah.com April
30th, 2004
[15]
Eyal Press, “In Torture We Trust?” Nation March 31st,
2003
[16]
Melinda Liu, “War
of Perceptions,” MSNBC/Newsweek April 29th,
2004
[17]
Khalid Amayreh, “Israeli Lessons for the US in Iraq,” Al-Jazeera
(English) May 6th, 2004
[18]
Michael Saba, “Is
Torture the American Way?” Khilafah.com May 9th,
2004
[19]
Ibid.
[20]
Seymour M. Hersh, “Moving Targets,” The New Yorker
December 8th, 2003
[21]
Ibid.
[22]
“Israel
Quietly Helps US in Iraq, Aides Say,” Khilafah.com
December 12th, 2003.
[23]
Tony Karon, “Learning the Art of Occupation from Israel,” Time.com
December 9th, 2003
[24]
Esther Schrader, et al, “US Seeks Advice from Israel on Iraq,” LA
Times November 22nd, 2003
[25]
Alexander G. Higgins, “Report:
70%-90% Held in Error in Iraq,” Arizona Daily Star
May 11th, 2004.
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