Over the weekend, both the New York Times and the Washington Post reported that Special Operations forces in Afghanistan are running a “black jail” where detainees denied access to the International Committee of the Red Cross have been abused and are held seperate from the main facility at Bagram prison in Afghanistan. This wouldn’t be the first time Special Operations has been accused of abusing detainees in their custody–allegations of abuse swirled around Camp Nama in Iraq during 2003 and 2004, when General Stanley McChrystal was in charge of the Joint Special Operations Command which ran the facility. Several members of the unit tasked with capturing or killing Abu Musab al-Zarqawi were disciplined for detainee abuse.
As Spencer Ackerman points out, some of the new allegations about Afghanistan overlap with McChrystal’s tenure as head of the JSOC. Ackerman also notes that it was McChrystal who emphasized “the perspectives of the Afghan people as “strategically decisive.” More than that, McChrystal specifically singled out detention as an issue, warning that “[a] failure to address incapacity in this area presents a serious risk to the mission.”
A few weeks ago I wrote a story about how human rights activists (some of whom were quoted by the Times and the Post) had latched on to the conclusions of McChrystal’s strategic assessment to argue for detention reform in Afghanistan. Counterinsurgency doctrine appeals in theory to human rights activists because the strategic goals of counterinsurgency are often similar to those of human rights activists. In my story, the Center for American Progress’ Brian Katulis was the voice of skepticism, warning that theory is often different from practice. Bagram’s “black jail” is a pretty good reminder of this, and its something to keep in mind as those who favor escalation in Afghanistan make their pitch on human rights grounds. That said, the war in Afghanistan doesn’t have to be fought this way.
One could also make the case that COIN is idealized in other ways not pertaining to human rights–the Kagans‘ weekend op-ed omitting any mention of the Sunni Awakening while arguing about the success of COIN in Iraq being one prominent example.
— A. Serwer
