I just discovered
New American Media. They have a story up called
Afghanistan -- Hub for Secret U.S. Torture Centers:
[T]he U.S. military has created an extensive network of detention centers dedicated to holding hundreds of captured Afghans, mostly suspected Taliban backers. The United Nations is barred from these jails, as are human rights activists, journalists, and even the Afghan government. And in the absence of outside scrutiny, it seems, terrible things are happening to Afghan citizens -- men who've emerged from these jails say they've experienced the sort of horrors now synonymous with Abu Ghraib.
The information about these prisons is coming from the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission. They are interviewing "scores of men captured by U.S. forces" after their release:
"In 2005 [the U.S. military] admitted they have 20 jails all over Afghanistan and 500 detainees," said Bidar during an interview. "It was a good achievement for us to get them to admit this. Unfortunately, we were not allowed to go see these prisons. Finally, we decided to do interviews with detainees released from jails. They told us how they were tortured."
There's a story about Allah Noor, "a middle aged merchant with a small produce stand":
Some of the U.S. personnel began asking him questions through the translators while others "started to beat me very badly. Then they forced me to sit in a position that was impossible."
He stood up to demonstrate, bending over at the knees like a baseball catcher, then thrusting his torso forward in an obviously uncomfortable position. The beating went on for three hours. Then, Noor said, they "gave me only trousers and put me in a big dark room. It was the beginning of winter. The room was very cold and there were holes in the roof. The snow was falling on me. I had only one thin blanket. I was under the snow for days."
The next day, in a scene straight out of the Abu Ghraib playbook, the soldiers attacked him with a snarling German shepherd. For days he wasn't given any food, allowed to use to toilet or allowed to pray. Eventually, they hooded Noor again and hauled him to Bagram military base via chopper.
There he was thrown, hooded and shackled at the ankles, into another room. "I realized there were other people in there because they were moaning. Then they started to beat us with punches and kicks." Again, the jailors loosed a dog on Noor. When he was pulled out of this room, the soldiers made him run to an interrogation chamber while hooded, chained and cuffed. As Noor recounted his ordeal, tears pooled at the corners of his large green eyes.
The abuses went on for about five months, until, with little explanation, Noor was set free...
According to another ex-prisoner, it is not only Afghani's who are imprisoned in Afghanistan:
Among the prisoners, Gul said, were Iraqis, Iranians, Saudis, Yemenis, and Pakistanis -- all of whom said they had been abducted outside of the country, probably by the CIA.
I guess I knew this had to be going on, but I confess that with the mainstream media's basic amnesia that Afghanistan even exists, I'd allowed my mental map of the area turn back into a foggy gray. These accounts give me a more vivid understanding of what's going on over there.
I gotta ask a question, though, but I need to set it up.
1) After the Abu Ghraib story broke, we talked about the psychology of torture. We talked about the Stanford Prison Experiment, and how people in charge of prisoners sometimes just become sadistic for the hell of it. It's some sick psychology of domination.
2) But I always think that the Bush adminstration, as fascist as they are, at least is operating according to some plan. For example, I think that maybe they got us into Iraq even though they realized it might be a clusterfuck, because in a ten- or twenty-year time-frame, it's oil resources are going to be worth a long war.
So here's my question: if the Bush administration really has a plan, if they really are guiding things, then why the hell do they let things in Abu Graihb, Guantanamo Bay, and Afghani prisons get so sadistic and horrible? What purpose does it serve?
I guess there are four options:
1) That the torturers are in control and really trying to getin information. That, despite what we hear repeatedly, torture can actually be effective. I believe this to some extent, as does William Blum. And it's kind of the conclusion you get watching the movie about the French response to an uprising in Algeria. In the supposedly historically accurate movie about it called The Battle of Algiers, the French general in charge said that if the French people wanted to succeed in Algeria, they had to stomach torture. One doesn't know ahead of time who is actually just a vegetable merchant and who is a "baddie", so you have to round up the whole lot. If some of them aren't valuable, who cares? Beat 'em up for five months and then kill them or let them go, it makes little difference.
[N.B. Even if torture is effective, it doesn't mean I support it!]
2) The Bushies are happy to have sadistic practices going on in their prisons because it helps them demonize the enemy. It's not about getting information so much as gang mentality: you get to be a part of the gang by beating up the other people. In a sick way, it's getting people to identify with their jobs and identify themselves in opposition to the "enemy" on a very visceral level.
3) The Bush administration and the military / CIA aren't nearly as smart as I'm giving them credit for. They're in over their heads and don't know what is going on. Afghani prisons are basically lawless distant "noplaces" which descend into hell because of the conditions in which everyone finds themselves. All BushCo did was open a gate to Hell On Earth, and now it is simply out of control.
4) Similar to above except that, in BushCo's view, it doesn't matter if prisons go savage, because they are in control of the things they care about.