generalspeaking

Afghanistan Tortures?

It's kind of ridiculous, really. To expect otherwise, that is. Of a society that is still mired in the stone-age in many respects. A tribal society, infused with a militant-directed religion which fundamentalism has transformed into a deadly combination. A society that has, over the course of history, known one invasion of foreign troops after another, where war, if not foisted on the country by foreign troops, is expressed in sectarian or tribal conflict.

A truly backward society, where education of the young has never been a priority, where women are subjugated and held to be inferior to men and thus seen as private property. Where no central government has ever existed that administered that vast country in a equal and civil manner, ensuring security prevailed and lawlessness was duly punished. It is a country where there are different entitlements distinguishing the urban and rural areas.

It is a country that has traditionally been run by tribal leaders, power elites, always on a war footing with their counterparts. And aware that they are surrounded across national borders by hostile tribes and agents of another government that bears their country ill will. With this kind of cultural/heritage background how can it come as a surprise that atrocities occur? War lords now sitting in Afghanistan's parliament were once responsible for wholesale slaughter.

But now, ten years after a UN-sponsored invasion of Afghanistan where NATO has led ISAF troops to rescue the country from its malignant Taliban oppressors and to oust and capture their honoured guests; al-Qaeda, it has been discovered, dismayingly, that the National Directorate of Security and the Afghan National Police engaged in torture of prison inmates. Amazing, how could they?

Systematic procedures for torture were confirmed at five NDS facilities, and far more expected to be discovered. "Multiple, credible allegations" of torture, and the investigations are still under way. Half of those interviewed, according to the UN investigation, claim to have experienced interrogation techniques commensurate with torture; inmates claiming to have been subjected to torture or inhumane treatment.

Quite dreadful. Some prisoners claim they had been held beyond the maximum allowable period. It's possible that their interrogators disliked the tribal affiliations of those they held; it's possible that they abhorred the fact that these were people found on suicide missions, in possession of IEDs. Half of those interviewed were suspected insurgents, 20% arrested while carrying explosives; 11% were failed suicide bombers.

Tribal members of a primitive society just being weaned off constant tribal warfare, being governed by war lords enriched by the poppy/opioid trade, skimming off funding made available by the international community to assist in the building of civic infrastructure in a glut of institutionalized corruption, can hardly be expected to be delicately aware of the human rights entitlements of their prisoners.

But of course the United Nations has an obligation to steer these recalcitrant 20th Century aspirants in the right, civilized direction.

Labels: Afghanistan, Conflict, Corruption, NATO, United Nations

posted by Pieface @ Tuesday, October 11, 2011