The abuse of Afghan detainees

last updated 8 January 2015

Americans are still torturing Afghans, said Iran’s Jaam-e Jam in an editorial. Treatment of detainees at the main U.S. military prison in Afghanistan, Bagram Airbase—where three prisoners were beaten to death in 2002—was supposedly overhauled in 2009, after President Obama took office. But now it turns out there is another, “secret jail” at Bagram, where Afghans are still being mistreated. In a report released this week by the Open Society Foundations, funded by U.S. billionaire George Soros, 18 former detainees say they were abused at the “black site” this year. Detainees weren’t given adequate food or blankets, weren’t allowed to pray, and were forced to strip naked. “Their cells were so cold that their teeth chattered and they couldn’t sleep,” said the report’s author, Jonathan Horowitz, “while bright lights shone 24 hours.” President Hamid Karzai has already formed a task force to investigate the allegations.

What took him so long? asked Afghanistan’s Cheragh. The New York Times reported on the Bagram black site last November. Its article quoted former detainees who described being held for months in windowless concrete cells, enduring sleep deprivation and humiliations. Karzai could have appointed a commission to investigate a year ago. Better yet, he could have ordered the Afghan military unit that has been stationed at Bagram for two years to inspect the site. The fact that he didn’t proves that the Afghan troops are in Bagram only as window dressing, “to put an end to widespread criticism of U.S. troops’ violence toward prisoners,” and that they have no authority there. Worse, it shows that Karzai’s behavior toward the U.S. military is “opportunistic and based on immediate needs rather than humanitarian and national values.” He successfully ignored a single newspaper article about the black site, but the Open Society Foundations’ damning report has received so much international coverage, the president was forced to act.

But appointing a task force is hardly taking action, said Afghanistan’s Weesa. Besides, we’ve been here before. Dozens of delegations have been appointed in the past nine years, charged with “investigating the betrayals of our foreign friends.” Yet nothing has changed. American forces continue to massacre civilians. “They have killed our women, children, and elders, and raided our homes.” It’s hardly surprising that they are also running a secret prison “more horrible than Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib.” At this point, we have to ask ourselves: If the Americans are our friends, “why do they run secret prisons, intelligence agencies, and torture centers” on our territory? “This is what someone does only to his enemy.”