'Just World News' with Helena Cobban

Mass detentions and 'democracy', Iraq

AFP reported yesterday that,

US and Iraqi forces are holding a record 17,000 men and women -- most without being formally charged -- and those in Iraqi-controlled jails live often in deplorable conditions.

About two-thirds are locked up as "security detainees" without any formal charges in US-run facilities, Lieutenant Colonel Guy Rudisill, the US military spokesman for Iraqi detention operations, told AFP.

The rest are incarcerated in Iraqi-run jails in conditions that fall well below any international standard and are in dire need of reform, said Bakhtiar Amin, Iraq's outgoing human rights minister.

(By the way, we shouldn't assume from the first para above that those being held by the US forces are being held in acceptable conditions...)

The report quotes Amin as saying that, "There are currently 6,504 inmates in Iraq's 18 prisons, 2,573 of whom have already been sentenced," and explaining that that number includes both "common criminals" and "terrorists."

Amin also said that the British troops are detaining 27 people. (An interesting low figure, that; most likely linked to the British forces' markedly different approach to the whole politics of trying to run the occupation. Also, maybe showing they learned some useful lessons from Northern Ireland? See below.)

My reading of the report is (from Rudesill) that none of those detained by the Americans have actually been convicted of any crime, but are still only suspects. (In international law, that is the most common meaning of the term "detainee", as opposed to "convict" or "prisoner.)

That means that from the 17,000 people being held by US, UK, and Iraqi forces, only the mentioned 2,573 have been sentenced. That means that 14,400 Iraqis are being forcibly held with trial.

This is absolutely no way to build a democracy.

Our local paper here in Charlottesville, Virginia, today reported on a conference in town attended by John Alderdice, until recently the speaker of the Northern Ireland Assembly and described as a key negotiator of the Good Friday Agreement, which provided the political framework for peace in Northern Ireland. Alderdice was quoted as saying:
“When we in Northern Ireland introduced executive detention, detention without a trial, the result of that was not to bring terrorism to an end but it acted as a recruiting sergeant because people felt this was unfair, this was not the way to deal with things... And people who hadn’t previously supported the IRA started to support them.”

Mass detention without trial is a key tactic that has been used throughout the past two centuries by colonial regimes seeking to "break the back" of indigenous resistance movements. I believe that the number of Palestinian detainees being held by Israel today is somewhere around 7,000.

The AFP story from Baghdad notes that the present figure of 14,400 Iraqis detained without trial is a record high for the whole period of the US/UK occupation. Prior to last April's revelation of the Abu GHraib scandal the high of total detainees (sentenced and unsentenced) had been 8,000. After the Abu Ghraib revelations, an effort was made to scale back the number of detainees. Last November, before the US assault on Fallujah, the number was "about 5,000".

Since November, it has just about tripled!

The report also notes laconically that after the Abu Ghraib scandal, "US military officers admitted that many detainees were being held on weak evidence that would not stand up in a regular court of law."

On March 30, when the number held by the US forces in Iraq was reported as 10,200, the New York-based NGO Human Rights First issued a sobering report on US detention operations there and in Afghanistan.

HRF program director Deborah Pearlstein said in the press conference that launched the report, "One of the concerning developments we're seeing as U.S. detention operations in these places mature is a trend toward greater secrecy, not less."

The report itself judged that U.S. detention operations "appear[ed] to be picking up permanence and pace.”

Regarding the treatment of detainees at the hands of the Interim Iraqi Government, a Human Rights Watch report issued in late January found that, " Iraqi security forces are committing systematic torture and other abuses against people in detention.

A summary provided in an accompanying media release spelled out that,

Methods of torture cited by detainees include routine beatings to the body using cables, hosepipes and other implements. Detainees report kicking, slapping and punching; prolonged suspension from the wrists with the hands tied behind the back; electric shocks to sensitive parts of the body, including the earlobes and genitals; and being kept blindfolded and/or handcuffed continuously for several days. In several cases, the detainees suffered what may be permanent physical disability. Detainees also reported being deprived by Iraqi security forces of food and water, and being crammed into small cells with standing room only. Numerous detainees described how Iraqi police sought bribes in return for release, access to family members or food and water.

Like master, like puppet, eh? The whole story sounds eerily like "Vietnamization", or like what the Israelis encouraged the SLA torturers to do on their behalf in Khiam.

For Iraqis and everyone else concerned about the country, of course, some of these abuses are very familiar indeed from those perpetrated under Saddam's regime, which did all those things as well as things that were very much worse indeed. (For a quick catalogue, go here, and check down the list of 'annual reports' links there, going back to 1989.)

Is there some hope that as leaders more legitimate than Iyad Allawi take over the reins of government in Iraq, the way the new "transitional" government treats is citizenry will become less barbaric?

Let's hope so. The former Human Rights Minister Bakhtiar Amin, who I think is Kurdish, seems like a brave, principled soul, in which case it would be excellent if he were kept on.

One can always hope that leaders elected by populations that have themselves been massively mistreated in the past may emerge from that experience with a stronger appreciation of the value of upholding high human-rights norms.

Unfortunately, that doesn't always happen. Quite frequently, leaders of traumatized populations-- individuals who may well themselves have been tortured in the past-- end up simply re-enacting the violence they previously suffered against people who later come under their own power. (A sad version of the boss bullies employee, employee goes home and beats wife syndrome.)

But we can always hope for the best... We can also work hard with our friends in Iraq (and elsewhere) to try to implement high human rights standards including through putting in place thorough systems of safeguards to guard against transgressions by individuals in power who may indeed feel a need to take some form of "revenge" on those who come into their hands.

But what chance is there of such a rights-respecting system emerging in Iraq while the ever-present American "Big brother" is still around, and still massively abusing the rights of the Iraqi people including of more than 10,000 Iraqi detainees held without trial?

Absolutely minimal, I would say.