Bagram Prison Threatens Success in Afghanistan
The U.S. military finally seems to have learned that dropping bombs on civilians isn't the way to win the hearts and minds of Afghans. But neither is grabbing people out of their houses and throwing them in jail indefinitely with no rights.
For seven years, U.S. detention policy has undermined our military and political interests in Afghanistan, and it continues to do so to this day.
The U.S. is currently in the process of rolling out a new counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan. It prioritizes protecting civilians and winning back the support of Afghans confronted with a resurgent Taliban. General Stanley McChrystal's July tactical directive describes the war in Afghanistan as "different from conventional combat" and instructs soldiers to "avoid the trap of winning tactical victories -- but suffering strategic defeats-by causing civilian casualties or excessive damage and thus alienating the people."
But many Afghans rank U.S. detention policy as their biggest complaint against foreign forces -- second only to civilian casualties. President Karzai and other leading candidates in the recent election blasted U.S. detention policy during their campaigns. And the Taliban uses the Bagram detention center -- the U.S.'s central prison -- as a rallying cry to recruit Afghans.
Countless Afghans welcomed American soldiers with open arms in 2001. Many, especially ethnic Pashtuns, now see the U.S. soldier as a boogie man. "We have but one fear of Allah, but we are also scared of the U.S. When they pass through we think they will grab us and take us away," one man told me. Another man from the violent Kurangal Valley explained, "When I'm home I'm afraid they will come and arrest me. As soon as I see Americans I have fear and run away... But if I run they will think I'm doing something wrong and shoot me." These are the people the U.S. is supposed to be courting.
Bagram, which human rights and civil liberties groups have called President Obama's Guantanamo Bay, has largely moved past its darkest days of torture -- although physical abuse upon capture remains a serious problem. The growing anger of Afghans comes largely from people being detained and then trapped in an arbitrary, unfair system that fails to accurately distinguish between ordinary people and dangerous enemies. Detainees aren't told why they are held, and lack access to a lawyer. A U.S. District Court judge in April called the Bagram detention regime "less sophisticated and more error-prone" than Guantanamo.
In a series of interviews, Afghans have frequently described how U.S. forces raid family compounds in the middle of the night, blast down doors, and destroy property. Young and old men are hooded and handcuffed, and flown off in helicopters. A former detainee told me, "Some of my children still wake up at night shouting and screaming because of the raid." Another man mentioned that his brother was captured in March and "it was about two months after his detainment that the ICRC finally informed us that he was at Bagram. We didn't know where he was before this."
The Obama administration is becoming more aware of these problems. In June, U.S. Major General Douglas M. Stone traveled to Afghanistan to review U.S. detention policy. While his report is not yet public, among the snippets that have made it into the media is his recommendation to release 400 of 600 detainees and significantly reduce the U.S.'s detention role over the next 12 to 18 months.
Stone seems to understand the volatile relationship between McChrystal's new war strategy and U.S. detention policy. He also knows how bungled U.S. detention policy has been to date, telling National Public Radio, "Now you've got a bunch of moderates who really shouldn't be in [detention] in the first place. And I can hold them forever but eventually they're going to say, 'Why are you holding me? What's the fairness in this?' And eventually they'll say something about America we don't want to hear. They'll say, 'You're not here to better the population. You're here to conquer us and you're taking me hostage.'"
Some Afghans already think this way. One month before Stone's NPR interview, I spoke with a former Bagram detainee who said: "I think the Americans have come to occupy our country and to take our land from us. This isn't what I thought about Americans seven years ago. I thought the U.S. had come to build our country.... Why are people being arrested for no reason? This is why my opinions have changed about the Americans."
The Stone report may be a breath of fresh air. But with the report and other planned reforms still under wraps, it remains to be seen if all the right and necessary recommendations to generate change are being made. More importantly, all eyes will be on the administration and Congress to see how they respond.
Robert Naiman: Recruit a Republican Against the War in Afghanistan
Might George Will's op-ed encourage more Republicans in Congress to speak up in favor of withdrawing U.S. troops from Afghanistan -- or in opposition to the increase that is now being planned?
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The new General's plan is the same garbage we have been using to loose this and the Iraqi war..."hea
Obamas' plan? Hire more mercenaries!
http://www
GET OUT OF THE DESERT ALREADY!
You cannot beat them, you will never win this war.
Maybe someone should tell us all why we are REALLY there...
It's definately not for the "Freedom Fries"
"Success" in Afghanistan is possible? Define please. What's the mission objective? When will we know it has been achieved? What's the exit strategy and time-line?
Disarming and disbanding the taliban equals success.
Afghans are angry with us because 1) we indiscriminently kill and 2) we indiscriminently imprison. Stop the bad behavior and the problem heals itself over time. But, neo-cons are not inclined to stop any bad behavior their corporate overlords profit from. There is much profit in war, and little incentive to play by the rules as miscreants at the top are so rarely ever punished, and playing by the rules is nowhere near as profitable as wreaking havoc, creating chaos, and plundering, all of which we are expert at.
The Afghan people also like their poppy business, which the Taliban opposes. We started destroying their fields and now we're despised as well. Applying Mary Worth approaches to life doesn't sell well in the environment of poverty and violence Afghans deal with daily.
Disarming and disbanding the Taliban is a multi-national operation against a militant religious order. Good luck with that. We can't even control the raving loons showing up at town hall meetings with weapons, let alone a nation brimming with warlords and religious fervor. And we can't go it alone.
If we want to help Afghanistan, we need to start understanding Afghanistan. They've already got weapons, jailers and specialists in torture; they don't need ours. They need wise, practical - and expensive - leadership over decades of time to achieve any measure of success.
To build a nation you must first win the hearts and minds of the people. To date, that is our great failure overseas.
Good news, there are more blogs on the wars. Long over due. We must be reminded of the disasters that the media and people have forgotten. Once reminded, we will demand action. Russia wants to take over, let them. It is their back yard. They can protect the oil pipelines. No more excuses, no more changed names for troops, no more changed timelines. Get the USA out, now.
What this article fails to mention is that the enemy doesn't wear a uniform. How are we supposed to tell, when bad guys blend in so well wearing ethnic clothing? I'm sure our military is having a hard time trying to figure out who's going to pull the gun on them. This is why we are seeing prisoners whose guilt is questionable, we don't know who to apprehend!
That is a good description of a foreign occupation force that has made themselves the enemy of the general population.
They don't care about such things here, most of these people never served their country and don't even know someone who did personally. They like to think that battlefield decisions are just like the decisions they make in their offices...
The United States famously considers itself so superior to the rest of the world that there's no need for its citizens to learn a foreign language or know anything about other cultures -- you all should want to be like us, so why do we need to know about you? We're famously tone-deaf when it comes to dealing with foreign cultures that we see as inferior (and thus we see their people as inferior). There have been so many cases of this, and Baghram is just one more. When will we learn?
You were there when? You may not know anything about any foreign cultures, and thinks they are inferior, but please don't project that into all of us. American servicemen and women have to take mandatory courses on cultural/religious aspects of every country they deploy to, before they are deployed.
I wasn't talking about individual soldiers, I'm referring to the strategists who send them into foreign cultures and design their mission so that it cannot succeed. I'm sure if it was all left up to the soldiers they'd do a dandy job. Except that, well...see
Get the military out. Send the Peace Corps in. Mission accomplished, for far less money
It's time to declare victory and depart the field.
Look, if throwing people in jail is what America does best, both at home and abroad, maybe we should just give up on manufacturing & other industries and become jailers to the world.
You know, focus on your core strengths?
Sadly, we are. What a sorry nation we has become, thanks to neo-cons and their ilk. Even the Iraqis would rather deal with internecine violence than deal with us. And the Afghans? They just want us out as fast as possible.
When invited to someone's house as a guest, it's not helpful to arrest the host's children and destroy parts of his home while seeking to "protect" him. Eventually, you're not welcome any more.
Our military is pathetic. It took us 7 years, 11 months and 20 days to drastically modify our strategy away from what did not work by the Russians, Brits and all the way back to Alexander the great? Shameful mr president. You ran on this "good" war, you now own it. Since you took office almost 200 Americans have been killed. Well done.
The leadership of the U.S. Military does not of the nuance and language skills to be successful in what needs to be done in Afghanistan. The situation was totally neglected for eight years. It is too late. Given our once great wealth which is now dissipated, we are probably the worst led country in world history. Just pathetic. A nation of dunces at every level. The last ten years is unbelievable. When will the American people wake up? When?
I love to hear people talk about military strategies, what exactly where the failed strategies of the Russians, British and Alexander the great? What did they have in common strategically? What was the Soviet Objective? What was the British Objective? and what is the current American objective and how is it different today than what it before?
The sooner we bring our troops home the better it will be for everyone concerned.
I can think of several mercenary outfits and contractors for whom this is not the case.
Too bad. They can become traffic cops here at home.
They can put down their weapons and become contributors to society, instead of paraiahs.
It seems to be a truism that what private tyrannies do, public, community-based, democratized groups can do significantly better. The private contractors running many of the embassy, prison, and other security details are far more incompetent and inefficient than our brave fighting women and men. I advocate stopping this private tyranny nonsense, and support our troops by bringing them home, or at the very least stop subsidizing these war profiteer losers and start paying our brave fighting women and men more.
Don't forget that whatever these civilian tyrannies receive comes directly from taxpayers funds. You're subsidizing these criminal war profiteers with your money, through state-sponsored coercion and domination in the form of unjustifiable taxation.
"allah bless america, land that i love..." A touch of irony...
Very good commentary.
Recently it was revealed that Blackwater ran some of the drones being used by the US in the Middle East.
Considering the Blackwater mentality, and complete lack of accountability thanks to the sweetheart deals given to them by Bush Jr, and left unchanged by Persident Obama, doesn't it make you wonder if both the air strikes injuring civilians and gulag detention of Afghan civilians isn't related to the incredibly irresponsibile continuation of using Blackwater services in any form in the Middle East?
Seconded. This is insane, psople. We are shipping paid mercenaries - highly paid mercenaries who are numbering in the hundreds of thousands - all over the world to do the dirty work our politicians, slaves to their corporate masters, ask of them. It is reprehensible "our" government continues to employ them.
If we paid our soldiers like we pay our mercenaries, we'd have no shortage of soldiers. But then, they'd be bound by rules of conduct these mercenary corporations disavow...
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