Stop Funding Torture in Iraq

We call on our Congress to speak out and organize public hearings on the systemic human rights violations occurring with American funding and advisers in Iraq. While there continues to be considerable media and congressional attention to torture in Guantanamo, there is comparatively little attention to the mounting evidence of human rights violations, including torture and targeted killings of civilians, in Iraq since the 2004 Abu Ghraib revelations, and virtually none at all devoted to Afghanistan.

We recall the powerful and effective public outcry against the Phoenix program during the Vietnam War and the death squads during the Central American wars. Yet the top counterinsurgency adviser to General Petraeus has called for a %u201Cglobal Phoenix program%u201D, and the response in this country appears to be silent ignorance. [i] The American diplomat charged with violating human rights in Central America became our ambassador to Baghdad where militias, death squads, and secret prisons were widespread. But few questions about human rights in Iraq were directed at Ambassador John Negroponte in Congressional hearings.

We believe that few Americans support spending our tax dollars on torture, which violates our moral, religious and legal traditions.
Most Americans expect an American-Iraqi policy leading to political reconciliation, not ethnic cleansing, detention camps, and sectarian militias hidden within the police and security forces which our tax dollars subsidize.

We believe most Americans would favor Congressional hearings as to whether our policies in Iraq violate the 1997 Leahy Amendment prohibiting material assistance to human rights violators.
Evidence of human rights violations sometimes is difficult to amass for purposes of litigation, if only because international observers and defense lawyers have so little access to detainees or secret prisons, and the critical reports of the international Red Cross are classified. But the evidence is more than enough to warrant our concern and justify a congressional inquiry. This is a brief summary:
There are some 50,000 Iraqis currently detained in facilities operated either by the US [MNC] or the Iraqi regime we fund, equip and support. Human Rights Watch is calling on the UN Security Council to address the holding of some 25,000 detainees by the US %u201Cfor indefinite periods, without judicial review, and under military processes that do not meet international standards.%u201D [ii] Detainees in Iraqi facilities appear to face even worse conditions. The whole process is described by an eyewitness human rights observer as %u201Cinquisitorial%u201D with broad scope for relying on forced confessions.[iii] Human rights observers are loath to press for transfer of detainees to Iraqi prisons which are %u201Cat least as bad as under Saddam.%u201D[iv] Rape is reported as widespread in these facilities.

Similarly, tens of thousands of detainees are held without charge and without access to lawyers in Afghanistan. According to a 2004 ICRC report, US intelligence officers admitted that 70-90 percent of detainees were rounded up without evidence or by mistake. Secret trials there proceed based on allegations forwarded by the Pentagon %u201Cthat would never have been admissible in a US court or even a military commission in Guantanamo.%u201D[v] An Afghan Supreme Court judge says that %u201Call of these trials have been prepared by our friends from the United States.%u201D

Pentagon units in Afghanistan are operating like South American death squads, according to the United Nations Human Rights Council, according to The Daily Telegraph [May 16, 2008.]

A BBC report stated that %u201Cit%u2019s all happening under the eyes of American commanders, who seem unwilling or unable to intervene.%u201D[vi]

The New York Times has described secret prisons and torture chambers in Baghdad which report directly to the Interior Ministry; [vii]

The Times also exposed %u201Cblack sites%u201D like Camp Nama, where the secret US task force 626 beat, kicked, blindfolded and forced Iraqi inmates to crouch in 6-by-8 foot cubicles in a prison called %u201CHotel California%u201D, where the official motto was %u201CNo Blood, No Foul%u201D. [viii]

Gen. James Steele, a veteran of Central American counterinsurgency operations, was attached to the US Civil Police Assistance Training Team when sectarian Iraqi militias began their rampages under official cover. Steele was quoted as %u201Cnot regretting their creation.%u201D[ix]

The Baker-Hamilton Study Group reported in 2007 that the Iraqi police %u201Croutinely engage in sectarian violence, including the unnecessary detention, torture and targeted execution of Sunni Arab civilians.%u201D The report also quoted an American official as saying that Baghdad is run %u201Clike a Shiite dictatorship.%u201D [x]

A Congressionally-created commission of military experts concluded in September 2007 that the Iraqi Ministry of Interior %u201Cis a ministry in name only%u2026widely regarded as being dysfunctional and sectarian.%u201D The Jones Commission also found that the Iraqi National Police Service is %u201Cnot a viable organization%u2026despite efforts to reform [the police], the organization remains a highly-sectarian element of the Iraqi security forces and %u2026 is almost exclusively Shi%u2019a.%u201D[xi]

The White House has acknowledged %u201Cevidence of sectarian bias in the appointment of senior military and police commanders [and] target lists that bypassed operational commanders and directed lower-level intelligence officers to make arrests, primarily of Sunnis.%u201D[xii]

Top advisers to Gen. Petraeus not only favor a %u201Cglobal Phoenix program%u201D but favor threats to commit %u201Cmass violence%u201D against Sunnis while arming and manipulating both sides of the sectarian conflict.[xiii]
American taxpayers have spent $22 billion on training the Iraqi security forces since 2003.[xiv] In 2007, there were 90 US advisers assigned to the Iraqi Interior Ministry. Much of the training of police and prison personnel has been outsourced to private contractors, beginning with Vinnell, MPRI and SAIC in 2004. Since 2004, DynCorp has obtained contracts for a potential $1.8 billion for police training.[xv]

We are proposing a different model than the Pentagon%u2019s, which asserts that we cannot %u201Cstand down%u201D until the Iraqis %u201Cstand up%u201D. This is a recipe for a long-term counterinsurgency that breeds new enemies faster than they can be detained, and brings shame to our troops and country. It is time to recognize that our laboratory in Iraq has produced multiple Frankenstein%u2019s, not a flowering pluralism.
The majority of Iraqis favor the rapid withdrawal of American troops, according to all polling. The majority of the Iraqi parliament has petitioned for a rapid withdrawal as well.[xvi] This popular Iraqi consensus cannot be expressed effectively under the current occupation. Police state mechanisms like detention without due process or the cloaking of militias in police uniforms suffocate the development of any nonviolent, civic or political opposition to the American occupation, thus forcing many Iraqis into choosing between forced obedience or violent resistance. By comparison, recently in Pakistan lawyers and civic society organizations were able to express effective mass dissent in the streets against the military dictatorship with greater vigor than Iraqis are able to express under the US occupation or Iraq%u2019s judicial or policing institutions. In Iraq, the upcoming provincial elections may exclude opponents of the occupation from participating in any meaningful way.
Meanwhile, Iraq may be dying.

It is time to bring the pressure of the human rights movement, and the clear light of public opinion, to bear against the US-assisted, US-funded, US-armed, and US-trained police, prison and security forces in Iraq and other battlegrounds of the war on terror, before we are completely discredited for fighting terror only with terror of our own.

We believe that the American occupation, including the client regime we have fostered and funded, is a human rights violation in itself, and we wish to begin a public debate with those who purport to see a democratic light at the end of the tunnel where we see only a dungeon with neither exits nor appeals. Even the US Army%u2019s new manual foresees more %u201Cdirty%u201D wars stretching into the future which will create humanitarian crises by their very nature.[xvii] impossible to justify this war-fighting doctrine, which assumes death, destruction and humanitarian crises beyond the casualties of combat itself, as consistent with human rights standards.
Building a 40-acre, $60 million detention facility in Afghanistan, allegedly to provide better conditions for detainees, ignores the question of why our troops are sinking into a deeper quagmire in Afghanistan in the first place. There is no way to safeguard human rights or due process under an unpopular military occupation.

We propose that Congress undertake serious oversight into the extent to which our taxes are funding human rights violations and torture, and provide an alternative roadmap to the restoration of our democratic values.

1. Congress should investigate whether US policies violate Article 3 of the Geneva Convention as it applies to internal armed conflicts. The US rationale for suppressing human rights for %u201Cimperative reasons of security%u201D applies, if at all, to conditions of belligerent occupation, which ended in 2004. US policies of internment without judicial review also may violate the US Code of Military Justice, the Convention Against Torture, and international covenants against cruel, human and degrading treatment of detainees even in cases of so-called %u201Cstate emergencies%u201D.

2. Congress should require the effective regulation of private contractors in Iraq, including strict adherence to international human rights standards, or act to defund all such rogue mercenary armies.

3. Congress should insist on an exit strategy from the Afghanistan war instead of approving the Pentagon%u2019s monstrous new detention facility north of Kabul.

4. Congress should determine whether the 1997 Leahy Amendment, which prohibits assistance to sectarian and repressive human rights violators, applies to our policies in Iraq and Afghanistan.

5.  Congress should oppose the proposed $60 million detention facility in Afghanistan which implies a long-term Western military occupation in violation of basic human rights, judicial due process and national sovereignty

We fear that the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, even if they begin officially winding down, will devolve into low-visibility, low-intensity counterinsurgency wars replete with arbitrary detention, torture, civilian atrocities, vendettas and sectarian rule.

The opportunity is in your hands to challenge taxes for human rights abuses and torture. %u201CTorture%u201D is a word even the torturers dare not speak, because American and global opinion is deeply opposed to such policies. Instead of the Bill of Rights, the Thesaurus is borrowed, and phrases like %u201Charsh interrogation techniques%u201D become our mainstream vocabulary. Or, since it cannot be embraced, torture is outsourced to a shadowy gulag with American advisers, where victims are renditioned and disappeared.
As another close subordinate to Gen. Petraeus, Col. Theodore Westhusing, wrote in a note before taking his own life in 2005, %u201CI cannot support a mission that leads to corruption, human rights abuses, and liars.%u201D[xviii]

We ask the Congress to concur with Col. Westhusing, before collective guilt becomes the fate of us all.

Sincerely,

MICHAEL RATNER,
President, Center for Constitutional Rights

ARIEL DORFMAN,
Author, Human Rights Advocate

TOM HAYDEN,
Author

REV. DR. GEORGE HUNSINGER,
Princeton Theological Seminary

REV. PETER LAARMAN,
Executive Director, Progressive Christians Uniting

REV.DR. SUSAN BROOKES THISTLETHWAITE,
President and professor of theology, Chicago Theology Seminary

GARY DORRIEN,
Professor, Union Theological Seminary, Columbia University
RABBI STEVEN JACOBS

RABBI NEIL COMESS-DANIELS,
Beth Shir Shalom

RABBI ARTHUR WASKOW,

RABBI LEONARD BEERMAN,
Founding Rabbi, Leo Baeck Temple

AARON KRAGER,
FaithfullyLiberal.com

DAVE ROBINSON,
Executive Director, Pax Christi USA

MARIE DENNIS,
Co-President, Pax Christi International

ALEXIA KELLEY,
Catholics in Alliance

REV. JAMES CONN,
Director of New Ministries, United Methodist Church
MARJORIE COHN,
National Lawyers Guild President, for NLG Executive Committee

TERRA LAWSON-REMER,
Law and Society Institute, New York University

JENNIE GREEN,
International Women's Human Rights Law Clinic, CUNY

_________

Footnotes:

[i] David Kilkullen, Small Wars Journal, 2004. According to the authoritative Thomas Ricks in the Washington Post, Kilcullen was %u201Cchief adviser on counterinsurgency operations%u201D to Gen. Petraeus [Feb. 5, 2007] Kilkullen wrote that the Phoenix program was %u201Cunfairly maligned%u201D and %u201Chighly effective.%u201D He later reissued the article, striking the Phoenix name and substituting %u201Ccivilian aid and development program.%u201D Kilkullen endorses %u201Carmed social science, using anthropologists to design strategies to %u201Cexploit the physical and mental vulnerabilities of detainees.%u201D [ New Yorker, Dec. 18, 2006]
[ii] HRW statement, April 28, 2008. %u201CThe government of Iraq holds at least 24,000 prisoners, thousands of whom have not been convicted of any crime or even had a trial. The United States is holding 26,000 prisoners.%u201D New York Times, Dec. 28, 2007.
[iii] Confidential interview, April 2008.
[iv] Nir Rosen The Nation, April 21, 2008
[v] Human rights investigator interviewed by the NYT, April X 2008. %u201CAfghans Hold Secret Trials for Men U.S. Detained%u201D, by David Rhode and Tim Golden.
[vi] BBC, Nov. 7, 2006
[vii] NYT, Nov. 17, 2005
[viii] NYT, Mar. 19, 2006
[ix] LA Times, May 22, 2006
[x] Baker-Hamilton Report, p. 9, 20
[xi] Report of the Independent Commission on the Security Forces of Iraq%u201D, Sept. 7, 2007, pp. 92, 112
[xii] White House %u201CInitial Benchmark Assessment Report%u201D, July 12, 2007, p. 17
[xiii] Steven Biddle, another former Petraeus advisor, in Foreign Affairs, Mar.-April, July-Aug. 2006.
[xiv] NYT, April 6, 2008
[xv] Congressional oversight report, 2007, pp. 86.
[xvi] See public opinion summaries at Commonwealth Institute Project on Defense Alternatives, Carl Conetta, Cambridge, Mass. For the parliamentary petition, see Nancy Youssef, %u201CCalling US Troops %u2018Occupation Forces%u2019, Iraqis seek timetable for Exit%u201D, Knight-Ridder, Sept. 13, 2005
[xvii] NYT, Feb. 8, 2008. %u201CThe operational environment will remain a dirty, frightening, physically and emotionally draining one in which death and destruction result from environmental conditions creating humanitarian crisis as well as conflict itself.%u201D [Army Field Manual]
[xviii] Texas Observer, Mar. 9, 2007.