{"id":14127,"date":"2012-02-15T12:04:01","date_gmt":"2012-02-15T20:04:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=14127"},"modified":"2012-02-16T20:36:58","modified_gmt":"2012-02-17T04:36:58","slug":"swapping-barbarism-in-afghanistans-prisons","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2012\/02\/15\/swapping-barbarism-in-afghanistans-prisons\/","title":{"rendered":"Swapping Barbarism in Afghanistan’s Prisons"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Washington Post<\/em> reports<\/a> that “NATO has resumed handing over Taliban detainees to the custody of Afghanistan\u2019s government, following a break of nearly four months after\u00a0the coalition halted the practice<\/a>\u00a0on the grounds that prisoners faced torture by Afghan interrogators.” So, the American torturers are swapping with the Afghan torturers.<\/p>\n

This swap began in part after\u00a0an Afghan investigative commission\u00a0accused the American military of abusing detainees in the Bagram prison<\/a>\u00a0facilities and reiterated\u00a0President Hamid Karzai\u2019s demand\u00a0that the U.S. turn the detainees over to Afghan custody.\u00a0Karzai\u2019s made a statement citing reports of\u00a0human rights abuse at the facility and\u00a0said U.S. control of the prison and indefinite detention of Afghan citizens violated the Afghan Constitution as well as international covenants.\u00a0And he was right: Most of the\u00a03,000 or so detainees in Bagram<\/a>\u00a0have been physically abused<\/a>, have not been charged, have seen no evidence against them, and do not have the right to be represented by a lawyer. Attorney for Human Rights First Daphne Eviatar said in a\u00a0recent CBS interview<\/a>\u00a0that “It\u2019s worse than Guantanamo, because there are fewer rights.”<\/p>\n

And then there are the Afghan prisons. Back in October, the\u00a0United Nations released a report<\/a>\u00a0which found that detainees in Afghan-controlled prisons are hung from the ceilings by their wrists, severely beaten with cables and wooden sticks, have their toenails torn off, are treated with electric shock, and even have their genitals twisted until they lose consciousness.\u00a0The study<\/a>, which covered 47 facilities sites in 22 provinces, found \u201ca compelling pattern and practice of systematic torture and ill-treatment\u201d during interrogation by U.S.-supported Afghan authorities. And they weren\u2019t all alone: both U.S. and NATO military trainers and counterparts have\u00a0been working closely with these authorities, consistently supervising the detention facilities and funding their operations.<\/p>\n

The Post<\/em> story indicates that the “Afghan government has replaced the directors of several of the facilities in recent months” in response to allegations of abuse. In reality, Karzai has been\u00a0transferring control of Afghan prisons from the Justice Ministry to the Interior Ministry. Not a good sign. The Interior Ministry operates the Afghan National Police, a gang of thugs implicated in a long and ugly list of torture and other ill treatment. “Criminal justice in Afghanistan will not be improved by giving the police free rein of the prisons,” said\u00a0Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch<\/a>. “Greater police involvement in jails is likely to lead to more torture, not less.”<\/p>\n

It’s a nice metaphor for the entire war project in Afghanistan, actually: shifting (back and forth) from U.S. barbarity to the barbarity of the puppet government supported by the U.S. Your choice, Afghans.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Washington Post reports that “NATO has resumed handing over Taliban detainees to the custody of Afghanistan\u2019s government, following a break of nearly four months after\u00a0the coalition halted the practice\u00a0on the grounds that prisoners faced torture by Afghan interrogators.” So, the American torturers are swapping with the Afghan torturers. This swap began in part after\u00a0an […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":86,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-14127","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14127","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/86"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14127"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14127\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14138,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14127\/revisions\/14138"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14127"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14127"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14127"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=14127"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}