Nation building by dummies
by digby
The dummies, by the way, are us:
“During my first night there the [Afghan National Police] village commander and 15 other [policemen] beat me with cables,” one detainee, arrested in Kandahar in May 2014 because of his brother’s suspect ties to insurgents, told the U.N. “They pulled and squeezed my testicles until my urine had blood. They kicked me in the stomach. Then they gave me pen and paper and ordered me to testify against my brother. About 10 days later I was given electric shocks on my feet three times, using power from a wall socket.”
The report’s descriptions were confirmed by a resident of Kandahar province who asked to be identified as Abdul Mosawer for his personal safety.
Mosawer was recently released after spending four years in prison; Afghan forces had accused him of having ties to the Taliban — a charge he denies. Suspected insurgents or others accused of political crimes bear the brunt of the abuse, he told Stars and Stripes, because security forces want to elicit information.
For the first three weeks of his detention, Mosawer said he endured beatings, starvation, sleep deprivation and extreme temperatures.
“After they found nothing, they stopped,” he said.
That’s from a UN Report of torture in Afghanistan. I can’t help but wonder if the US might be in a better position to condemn such acts if we didn’t do the same things ourselves. In fact, we probably coached them:
In the years since 2001 when the United States and its allies toppled the Taliban in reaction to the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Afghanistan has been the site of some of the most controversial American detention facilities. A report released last year by the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee detailed myriad abuses at four CIA-run centers in the country. The revelations led Afghan President Ashraf Ghani to call the American practices “shocking” and “inhumane.”
The United States closed its last detention centers in Afghanistan in December, three weeks before the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force declared an end to its combat mission in the country.
Prior to that, the U.N. documented several reports of abuse tied to international forces. Seven detainees said they were mistreated, and the U.N. reported two credible accounts of torture, one in a U.S. facility in Maydan Wardak in September 2013 and the other in a U.S. Special Forces facility at Baghlan in April 2013, during which detainees said they were repeatedly beaten.
Coalition officials told the U.N. that the reports were investigated but could not be substantiated.
Of course not.
The torture debate is over. Western civilization takes one giant step backwards.
.