Abuse at Bagram

In the war of ideas, this surely cannot help:

Former guards and detainees whom McClatchy interviewed said Bagram was a center of systematic brutality for at least 20 months, starting in late 2001. Yet the soldiers responsible have escaped serious punishment.

The public outcry in the United States and abroad has focused on detainee abuse at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, but sadistic violence first appeared at Bagram, north of Kabul, and at a similar U.S. internment camp at Kandahar Airfield in southern Afghanistan.

To a certain degree, I’m willing to entertain that the heat of battle—the adrenaline buzz from combat—can lead to some punching, kicking, slapping, and rough treatment of detainees. Hell, you see that at the end of police chase videos. But when police officers step over the line, the vast majority of the time they are punished for it (exceptions, such as the Rodney King beating, have led to wisespread public outcry and protests). There is little evidence, however, that the soldiers involved in prison-based abuse, where the adrenaline excuse is much harder to use, have faced serious consequences—most have resorted to demotions and letters of reprisals. Here is what worries me the most, however:

“Whether they got in trouble or not, everybody struck a detainee at some point,” said Brian Cammack, a former specialist with the 377th Military Police Company, an Army Reserve unit from Cincinnati. He was sentenced to three months in military confinement and a dishonorable discharge for hitting Habibullah.

Spc. Jeremy Callaway, who admitted to striking about 12 detainees at Bagram, told military investigators in sworn testimony that he was uncomfortable following orders to “mentally and physically break the detainees.” He didn’t go into detail.

“I guess you can call it torture,” said Callaway, who served in the 377th from August 2002 to January 2003.

Habibullah is one of the detainees who was beaten to death at Bagram. That he was apparently under orders to beat Habibullah probably factored into his light sentencing, since a similar situation at a police station in the U.S.—or hell, at a POW camp in WWII—would lead to long prison sentences, dishonorable discharges, and if there was a connection between that soldier’s beating and Habibullah’s death, the death penalty.

All of which misses the larger point. Specialists are at the bottom rung of the ladder. They are not making these decisions. Their commanders, going up the chain, are responsible for this. And not a single one of those have been held accountable for these abuses. Much like the issues surrounding other gratuitous killings in Afghanistan, the unwillingness to hold mid- and high-level officers accountable for the actions of the men and women they command—a principle that once was inherent to the idea of a chain of command—while probably driven by a legitimate worry over officer retention, will breed dreadful consequences.