International Human Rights Politics
POLS 288 
T,Th 2-3:15                                              SPRING, 2008

                                                 State University College at Oneonta
                                           

 

Professor Paul Conway
Office: Fitz 410
e-mail: conwaypg
campus phone: 3923

 

“The standard of justice depends on the equality of power to compel.”     - Thucydides

“The task of human rights advocacy is to speak truth to power.”              - Jack Donnelly

"The purpose of international human rights standards is not to get us to heaven,
but to save us from hell."                                                                          - David Forsythe

"All that is needed for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing"   - Edmund Burke

 “Human rights has become the major article of faith of a secular culture that fears it believes in nothing else.”                                                                                                     - Michael Ignatief

Information about This Course

Attendance is required. There are ten class meetings scheduled for this one credit mini-course. If you have to miss a class please let me know beforehand. As with other courses, students should document excused absences and arrange to make up work for classes that were missed.

Prof Conway's Office Hours: Tuesdays and Thursdays 11:20-12 and 3:30-4:30; Wednesdays 11-12.
I will be available in my office at many times in addition to the hours listed above; if you call in advance we can arrange to meet when it is convenient to both of us.

Course Description:
POLS 288   Human Rights and International Law                         1 s.h. (LA)
Focuses on diplomatic efforts to secure acceptance of the idea of human rights and to legitimize foreign policies in terms of human rights.  Examines several United Nations covenants on human rights, along with contemporary case studies that contrast “realistic” and “idealistic” rights-oriented policies.                                                                                                          Prerequisite: SoS or 3 s.h. POLS. 

Objectives: The purpose of this course is to introduce students to the political concept of human rights and the complex domestic and international activities that promote concern and respect for the legal rights of people throughout the world. The study of human rights is an expanding field in the disciplines of political science and international law.
Reading: One book is required: Debra DeLaet: The Global Struggle for Human Rights: Universal Principles in World Politics (Belmont, CA: Thompson/Wadsworth, 2006).
There will also be several handouts of reprinted articles distributed in class. Students may also utilize one or two annual human rights yearbooks online: Human Rights Watch
http://www.hrw.org  or Amnesty International, http://www.amnesty.org

Grades: Grades will be determined on the basis of one (best of two) quiz grades, one optional short paper (maximum 3-4 pages), and one test. The optional short paper can count for 40% of the overall grade. If the highest of the quiz grades is higher than the test grade it will count for 20% of the overall grade, if not, it will not be counted.  

Some questions that should be considered by students of human rights politics

What are "human rights" and which rights, if any, should be considered universal and inviolable? What is so special about (the rights of)"human beings" as opposed to other living creatures? Why are definitions of life and death important questions to those who are engaged in human rights politics? Is it possible to be objective about human rights? Can we analyze and deal with  politicized human rights issues in a reasonable way? How? What should the role of governments be in relation to individual or group rights - passive, active or what?  Why do Americans tend to emphasize civil and political rights whereas people in many other countries tend to emphasize social and economic (human) rights? Are human rights relative to the cultures in which people live? How do individual and group rights differ?  Should the U.S. government (or other governments) give aid, sell weapons, or engage in normal diplomatic relations with government officials from states (countries) where there are egregious abuses or deprivations of human rights? What is a realist perspective on such questions and why do power relationships usually determine the outcome of human rights politics?  What actions do the United Nations agencies and other organizations take to promote and protect human rights? What international laws and agreements are utilized by diplomats concerned with human rights issues and how, if ever, are such legal agreements implemented? How do international non-governmental organizations (NGO's) play an important role in human rights politics?

More questions: How have human rights politics developed over the last 50 years? What does the term “human rights” mean nowadays? Why has the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights been so important in shaping the concept and the politics? Why do some scholars suggest that human rights is now entering a midlife crisis? Does the strategy of shaming governments and officials responsible for egregious abuses still work when systems of authority break down because of lawlessness and civil warfare? What new institutions have emerged to focus attention on human rights issues? Is the US a leader or a delinquent in the governmental politics of human rights? Is there still reason to be enthusiastic about human rights or has the movement begun to fizzle? Assuming most of us support some concept of human rights – what reasons do we have to be optimistic?!

OUTLINE OF TOPICS AND READINGS

March 4 Historical and philosophical dimensions to the concept.  The United Nations Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) The emergence of Amnesty International (AI) and other non-governmental organizations (NGO's) during the cold war.  Contemporary issues include torture, persecution of minorities, FGM, exploitation of sweatshop labor, and the enslavement of women and children. Controversies about Rights:  Are women’s rights and religious rights separate human rights issues? Individual/civil rights v. economic and group rights; "universality" of human rights vs. cultural relativism.                             DeLaet 1-24                  

6 Continuation of the philosophical and political perspectives: The UN system, human rights and humanitarian law. The development of international standards: The UN Universal Declaration and subsequent covenants: What are the functions of international law?                                                                                                        DeLaet 25-77   

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Torture in historical perspective - Human nature, or what? The Knights Templar documents
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=15492126
What is "torture" and why do people do it?
Research on authoritarian personality (Adorno, et al), obedience (Milgram), role expectations (Zimbardo)
http://hrw.org/english/docs/2006/10/26/usdom14465.htm
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A23373-2004Jun7.html

The history of one technique - Waterboarding:http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=15886834
See also “The Water Cure” by Paul Kramer in The New Yorker, Feb 25, 2008 and “
On Language: Waterboarding” by William Safire, in the New York Times Magazine; Mar 9, 2008
also, internal CIA controversy and confusion on techniques http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/012908N.shtml
 

The Abu Ghraib photos: cautionary warning - they are graphic: http://www.thememoryhole.org/war/iraqis_tortured/
The whistle blowers - what happens to them? Sp. Joseph Darby, General Taguba, Col Morris D. Davis, former Chief Prosecutor
at Guantanamo NYTimes 2/28/08
Guantanamo abuses? - radio essay http://www.thislife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?episode=331
The documents: - Geneva Protocol; ICCPR Protocol; - Convention Against the Practice of Torture (CAT); Taguba Report
QUESTIONS about torture -
Defining torture for political purposes How is, and how should, torture be defined?
Have US government officials promoted or condoned torture?
Does torture generate useful information?
- What are the political consequences given the widespread perception that the US has promoted torture of captives?
What happens if individuals go outside the chain of command to report perceived abuses?
Does domestic or international law matter in deciding on such practices or policies?

Excerpts from related international declarations and laws/treaties:

The United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948)

Article 5. No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.

The Geneva Protocol on the treatment of prisoners of war (1929 and 1949)
. . . the following acts are and shall remain prohibited at any time and in any place whatsoever with respect to the above-mentioned persons:
(a) Violence to life and person, in particular murder of all kinds, mutilation, cruel treatment and torture;

(b) Taking of hostages;

(c) Outrages upon personal dignity, in particular, humiliating and degrading treatment;

The UN Protocol on Political and Civil Liberties (1976)
Article 7

No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. In particular, no one shall be subjected without his free consent to medical or scientific experimentation.

The International Convention Against Torture (1984/87)
PART I Article 1

1. For the purposes of this Convention, the term "torture" means any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity. It does not include pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in or incidental to lawful sanctions.

Different views on the question of US policies (re Guantanamo)
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=15839964

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=15843094
Perspective of a Marine lawyer http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=15783244

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11 ** Social science research: "Torture" What is it? Where and why does it happen? Research dealing with concepts such as "authoritarian personality," "Obedience to Authority" Philosophical questions and insights.                                               DeLaet 78-118

13  Collective Rights and self determination                                                                                 DeLaet 78-118 
Wilson's legacy, indigenous minorities, refugees, immigration and emigration
Lessons from the 1990's wars in the former Yugoslavia (the "X-U"), Chechnya, and questions of genocide

18  **  Rights and Economic/Social Rights                                                                                                        DeLaet 119-134
Globalization: Unregulated markets and human rights: Transnational/multinational corporations. How are the World Bank, the IMF, and the World Trade Organization (WTO) related to human rights issues?  Do environmental issues relate to human rights? (Possible examples: Bhopal http://www.bhopal.org/whathappened.html and Chernoble, the Amazon basin, exploitation in central and west Africa)   Genetically Engineered food crops: Do they threaten peasants and indigenous people?         
(See the environmental research group called RACHEL.ORG newsletter # 743, 1-31-02 for one perspective on the implications of GE crops.)
http://www.ornl.gov/sci/techresources/Human_Genome/elsi/gmfood.shtml
http://www.centerforfoodsafety.org/policy_com.cfm
http://www.rachel.org. ( http://www.rachel.org/library/getfile.cfm?ID=116 ),  or http://www.sehn.org/ndcc.html  The Rachel homepage has recently been changed so you should type in "genetically modified foods" or "crops" under search.

20            Sexual orientation and gender equality                            DeLaet 135-158

April 1 ***

Lessons from the decade of the 90's and the first years of the "war on terror"? (refer to DeLaet, pp. 159-222)

Punitive vs. Restorative Justice Pros and cons based upon research and political realities: How can societies make a peaceful transition from tyrannical to democratic systems? South Africa after apartheid ("Truth and Reconciliation Commissions"); Chile after Pinochet (extradition and/or prosecution?) 

3 Human Rights as a variable in foreign policy making: Comparing the US to some European states and China. Exceptionalism as part of American political culture. US policies vis-a-vis Latin American and southern African countries. US foreign policies relating to China and other countries: What standards should determine the policies?  What factors determine the overall relationship between two countries? When is human rights a foreign policy priority? Why? Under what conditions? And why not? Are American foreign policies overly realistic or idealistic? What role can the UN play in human rights politics?                                                                                                    

8  Test

                                                           
**  Quizzes scheduled for March 11 and 18.

*** Sign up for optional assignment before March 20
(See details for optional assignment online, below)
Optional assignment must be turned in on April 1. The optional assignment for this course allows you to compare and explain human rights conditions and political policies in two or more countries, using the latest available AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL REPORT and the HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH WORLD REPORT  available, in part, on the internet.
 

POLS 288 Optional Assignment                                                        Spring, 2008
International Human Rights Politics                                             Prof Paul Conway

“A Cursory Analysis of Human Rights Conditions in two Selected Countries”                                                                           


Purposes
: (a.) To allow you to compare data on human rights conditions in two countries, one of which should be the USA; b. to familiarize you with relatively useful and reliable sources on human rights conditions in countries throughout the world; (c.) To encourage you to carefully consider several human rights issues and develop some hypotheses about similarities and differences in those countries.

Task: To investigate and describe some political and human rights conditions in two countries and hypothesize about differences, similarities and reasons for those conditions.

Instructions:
a. Select a country to compare or contrast to the USA. (Countries are most comparable when they are similar in relation to variables such as size, economic conditions, ideologies, political arrangements, etc.)

b. Identify two specific rights: one an individual/political/civil right and one social/economic right that is of interest to you. Indicate specifically where these particular rights are stated in the UN-UDHR or the Covenants and whether they are supposedly guaranteed in each country's Constitution.

c. Use governmental and NGO sources of data (such as, e.g., CIA Annual World Factbook
http://www.odci .gov/cia/publication/factbook; State Department reports http://www.state.gov - http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/index.htm
CIA World Factbook
World Bank Annual Reports,
Amnesty International Annual Report (http://www.amnestyusa.org/annualreport/index.html)
Human Rights Watch Annual Report   http://hrw.org/countries.html

Human Rights Watch http://www.hrw.org
Elections worldwide http://www.electionworld.org/india.htm
 

Look up the data on human rights conditions in the two countries and excerpt data referring to the documentation of (possible) human rights abuses that you consider to be highly significant. Consider and indicate whether the sources you use differ in content or emphasis in any significant way.

d.  Determine what the Constitution in those countries states and how the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights relates to the national constitutions. (Try “National …, World … and International Constitutions on search vehicles such as Google.) (International) Constitution finder http://confinder.richmond.edu/ Can either of those governments be charged with violating their own constitution? You should also indicate if the governments are widely perceived as corrupt by looking at Transparency International’s annual rankings: www.transparency.org/documents/cpi/

e. Generalize or state some hypothesis about the economic conditions in those countries and their major trade relationships with other countries. One can sometimes hypothesize that countries with the strongest economic ties will be most influential in political efforts to address human rights issues (Major import, export, and foreign aid relationships are generally identified for all countries in Europa Yearbook, available only in the reference section of Milne Library.)

f.  In a brief, descriptive essay indicate how conditions in the two countries compare.  Comment on how the countries compare with at least some reference to national, ethnic, racial, or religious minorities or other groups subject to persecution in those countries. For this you might consult the background data available on the CIA Annual World Factbook. Conclude with your own thoughts, impressions, and hypotheses (educated guesses) to explain some conditions described in your comparison. State any hypotheses or inferences about your findings that seem justified by the data you present in your essay.

Maximum length for this optional assignment is 4 typewritten pages.

Note: The due date for this assignment is April 1, 2008.

Be sure to cite all documentary or secondary sources that you use, including web addresses

Sign-up for the country and the “rights” issues that you choose to examine: There will be a list of countries/rights already selected available in class or on the door of Fitzelle 410

 

 

 

Additional references
http://www.ai.org
http://hrw.org
International Human Rights Treaties http://www.unhchr.ch/html/intlinst.htm
Freedom House ratings of countries on basis of civil and political rights/abuses:
http://www.freedomhouse.org/research/freeworld/2003/tables.htm
http://www.freedomhouse.org/research/freeworld/2003/averages.pdf
Transparency International rankings of countries on basis of elite perceptions of political corruption
http://www.transparency.org/cpi/2003/cpi2003.en.html
Equality Now website http://www.equalitynow.org/english/index.html
Terri Gross 9/15 NPR interview with Seymour Hersh
http://www.npr.org/dmg/dmg.php?prgCode=FA&showDate=14-Sep-2004&segNum=1&mediaPref=RM
Yves Beigbeder Judging War Criminals: The Politics of International Justice (NY: St Martins, 1999)
Seyom Brown Human Rights in World Politics (Addison Wesley Longman, 2000)
Mark Danner "Abu Ghraib: The Hidden Story" The New York Review of Books, October 7, 2004.
David P.Forsythe, The Internationalization of Human Rights, (Lexington: D.C. Heath, 1991)
____________ , Human Rights in International Relations UK: Cambridge, 2001
William Finnegan, "The Invisible War" (Slavery in Sudan) The New Yorker, January 25, 1999; pp.50-73.
Joseph Lelyveld, "Whether we like it or not, detainees will be subjected to lies, threats, and highly coercive force. Can we draw lines and set rules about techniques and approaches? Do we want to? (Interrogating Ourselves) New York Times Magazine, June 12, 2005. p 36.
Michael Ignatieff, "Human Rights: The Midlife Crisis," New York Review of Books, May 20,1999; 58-62.
_____________, "Unarmed Warriors" (Red Cross politics) The New Yorker, March 24, 1997;  54-71.
Ann Kent, China, the United Nations, and Human Rights: The Limits of Compliance, (Philadelphia: Penn Univ, 1999)
Anthony Lewis, "Making Torture Legal" New York Review of Books  July 15, 2004. p. 4.
Avaishai Magalit, The Ethics of Memory (Cambridge: Harvard, 2003)
Martha Minow, Between Vengeance and Forgiveness: Facing History After Genocide and Mass Violence, (Boston: Beacon, 1998/2000 pbk)
Samantha Power "Dying in Darfur" The New Yorker  August 30, 2004, p56.
_____________ , A Problem From Hell: America and the Age of Genocide  (HarperCollins Perennial pbk, 2002).
David Rieff, "The Precarious Triumph of Human Rights," New York Times Magazine, August 8, 1999; 36. 
See DeLaet h.r.text homepage (below); also (for review purposes, presentation by Conway: http://www.uuso.org/sermons/s010715.htm 
http://www.wadsworth.com/cgi-wadsworth/course_products_wp.pl?fid=M20b&flag=student&product_isbn_issn=9780534635725&discipline_number=20

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QUESTIONS about torture -
Defining torture for political purposes How is, and how should, torture be defined?
Have US government officials promoted or condoned torture?
Does torture generate useful information?
- What are the political consequences given the widespread perception that the US has promoted torture of captives?
What happens if individuals go outside the chain of command to report perceived abuses?
Does domestic or international law matter in deciding on such practices or policies?

Geneva conventions and rules of warfare
http://www.crimesofwar.org/special/Iraq/brief-pow.html
terrygross interview with nat’l guard interrogator
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4953949

Guardian(UK)report on US interrogation practices: http://www.guardian.co.uk/guantanamo/story/0,13743,1646014,00.html

The history of one technique - Waterboarding:http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=15886834
Bush administration relents in opposition to McCain reform 12/16/05
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5056512 Then a Presidential signing statement qualifies acceptance

The issue of torture as US policy – International and national definitions and redefinitions
Guantanamo abuses - radio essay http://www.thislife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?episode=331
The Abu Ghraib photos: cautionary warning - they are graphic: http://www.thememoryhole.org/war/iraqis_tortured/
Gourevitch and Morris, Exposure New Yorker Magazine, March 24,2008 (What the photographs and the participants say about the people
and conditions
at Abu Ghraib and the culpability of military and civilian leaders in the disgraceful practices - compelling, but not an easy read)
The whistle blowers - what happens to them? Careers and prospects destabilized (Joe Darby, Samuel Provance, Gen Taguba, for example)
The documents:
- (Taguba Report)  http://www.npr.org/features/feature.php?wfId=1870746 
- Geneva Protocol on Treatment of POW’s, US Army Field Manual
- UN Protocol; - Convention Against the Practice of Torture (CAT)
 

Excerpts from related international declarations and laws/treaties:

The United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948)

Article 5. No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.

The Geneva Protocol on the treatment of prisoners of war (1929 and 1949)
. . . the following acts are and shall remain prohibited at any time and in any place whatsoever with respect to the above-mentioned persons:
(a) Violence to life and person, in particular murder of all kinds, mutilation, cruel treatment and torture;

(b) Taking of hostages;

(c) Outrages upon personal dignity, in particular, humiliating and degrading treatment;

The UN Protocol on Political and Civil Liberties (1976)
Article 7

No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. In particular, no one shall be subjected without his free consent to medical or scientific experimentation.

Article 8
No one shall be held in slavery; slavery and the slave-trade in all their forms shall be prohibited.
No one shall be held in servitude.
No one shall be required to perform forced or compulsory labour


- International Ban on the Practice of Torture (1984)
PART I Article 1

1. For the purposes of this Convention, the term "torture" means any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity. It does not include pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in or incidental to lawful sanctions.

2. This article is without prejudice to any international instrument or national legislation which does or may contain provisions of wider application.

Article 2

1. Each State Party shall take effective legislative, administrative, judicial or other measures to prevent acts of torture in any territory under its jurisdiction.

2. No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political in stability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture.

3. An order from a superior officer or a public authority may not be invoked as a justification of torture.

Article 3 General comment on its implementation

1. No State Party shall expel, return ("refouler") or extradite a person to another State where there are substantial grounds for believing that he would be in danger of being subjected to torture.

 

More background sources on torture
Several U.S government reports: http://www.humanrightsfirst.org/us_law/PDF/abuse/schlesinger_report.pdf
TAGUBA REPORT only: The complete document on http://www.agonist.org/annex/taguba.htm

Very brief excerpt below:
4.  (U) The individual Soldiers and Sailors that we observed and believe should be favorably noted include:

a.  (U) Master-at-Arms First Class William J. Kimbro, US Navy Dog Handler, knew his duties and refused to participate in improper interrogations despite significant pressure from the MI personnel at Abu Ghraib. 

b.  (U) SPC Joseph M. Darby, 372nd MP Company discovered evidence of abuse and turned it over to military law enforcement.

c.  (U) 1LT David O. Sutton, 229th MP Company, took immediate action and stopped an abuse, then reported the incident to the chain of command.

Elsewhere

IN AUGUST 2002, Mackey and his team turned over the detention unit in Bagram to the 519th Military Intelligence Battalion from Fort Bragg, North Carolina. The new head of the interrogation unit was Captain Carolyn Wood, a 34-year-old officer and 10-year Army veteran. Wood rewrote the interrogation policy set by Mackey’s group, adding to it nine techniques not approved by military doctrine or included in Army field manuals. Her expanded list included “the use of dogs, stress positions, sleep management, [and] sensory deprivation,” according to an internal Pentagon investigation known as the Fay-Jones report; the report noted that other techniques, such as “removal of clothing and the use of detainee’s phobias,” were also used at Bagram.

In December 2002, four months after Wood and the 519th took over at Bagram, two detainees died in custody at the base. One was Mullah Habibullah, a 30-year-old man from the southern province of Oruzgan; the other was a 22-year-old taxi driver named Dilawar (many Afghans use only one name), who was married and had a 2-year-old daughter. The men had been hung by their arms from the ceiling and beaten so severely that, according to a report by Army investigators later leaked to the Baltimore Sun, their legs would have needed to be amputated had they lived. The Army’s Criminal Investigation command launched an inquiry, but few people outside Afghanistan took notice.

Then in March 2003, New York Times reporter Carlotta Gall tracked down Dilawar’s brother in his home village. The man took from his pocket Dilawar’s death certificate, which he’d been unable to understand because it was in English. Gall read the document and discovered that the Army pathologist who signed the certificate had checked “homicide” as the cause of death. The Times buried Gall’s story on page A14; few other outlets picked it up. It wasn’t until May 2004, more than a year later, that the Army released its report on the deaths. In it, investigators implicated a total of 28 military personnel in crimes including negligent homicide, maiming, and dereliction of duty. To date, however, only one person has been charged—Sergeant James Boland, a reserve military police soldier, who is accused of denying medical care to Dilawar and watching a lower-ranking soldier beat Habibullah. “It is left up to the various commanders whether to bring legal action” against any of the other 27, says Army spokeswoman Lt. Col. Pamela Hart. So far they have not.

By the summer of 2003, it was the 519th’s turn to leave Bagram. Despite Gall’s report and the ongoing criminal investigation, they were redeployed to run another prison—Abu Ghraib. There, Wood proceeded to implement new interrogation rules that, as a Pentagon report later noted, were “remarkably similar” to those she had developed at Bagram. In September 2003, the Army probed tips from other military police officers that members of the 519th had beaten prisoners at Abu Ghraib, but the investigators found the allegations unsubstantiated. Members of the 519th have not been directly implicated in the photographed abuses that set off the scandal.

Wood herself testified last summer at a military hearing in the case of Lynndie England, one of the soldiers prosecuted for the abuses at Abu Ghraib. Wood said she was “outraged” by the photos she had seen.

Chris Mackey had trained with Wood before she got her command at Bagram. He says that while he was “gravely disappointed” when he found out about her changes to the interrogation rules, he understands what might have been going on. “After she took over, the stakes got very high,” he says. “We went from losing three or four soldiers a month to scores of them. She must have been under a tremendous amount of pressure.”

Mackey also says he couldn’t imagine that Wood’s superiors didn’t know what she was doing. “I don’t think it was sinister and programmatic,” Mackey says of the military’s handling of detainees in Afghanistan and Iraq. “But there was horrible incompetence at the leadership and oversight level. People were aware of what we were doing because we were open. [The prison] was practically a Disney ride, with lots of higher-ups and officials coming through. But the common response we got was, Aren’t you kind of babying them?”

THE DEATHS OF HABIBULLAH and Dilawar weren’t the only signals that something was going awry in the Afghan detention centers. In March 2003, just as U.S. troops were streaming into Iraq, American troops in Afghanistan arrested an 18-year-old soldier in the Afghan army, Jamal Naseer, at the behest of a provincial governor embroiled in a dispute with local warlords. The arrest wasn’t recorded and no charges were filed, but Naseer was taken to a U.S. base near Gardez. Two weeks later, he was dead. A report prepared for the Afghan attorney general, who considered bringing charges against unnamed American soldiers in the case, found that he had been severely beaten over the course of two weeks. The Afghan investigators and a report by the United Nations also recorded allegations that other prisoners at Gardez had been beaten, immersed in cold water, given electric shocks, hung upside down, and had their toenails torn off. The U.S. Army investigated the circumstances of Naseer’s death, but closed its inquiry because there were no records of who was in charge at the base, or of the names of victims and witnesses.

By the summer and fall of 2003, more and more detainees were coming forward to complain about abuse in U.S. custody. In September 2003, a former Afghan police colonel told the Afghan human rights commission that he had been sexually abused while being detained at Bagram, Gardez, and Kandahar for a total of 40 days. Another former detainee named Abdurahman Khadr, who was held at Bagram in March 2003, later testified in a Canadian federal court that U.S. soldiers “got me naked and they were taking pictures of my face and my private parts—just constantly taking pictures of my private parts.” Khadr also said that he’d seen other prisoners hung from a wall by their shackles for as long as four days. Two other detainees, Saif-ur Rahman and Abdul Qayyum, told the Associated Press that they had been deprived of sleep, forced to stand for long periods, and taunted by female soldiers during the fall and winter of 2002.

The Army report on the deaths of Dilawar and Habibullah documented similar practices. The investigators found that members of the Cincinnati-based 377th Military Police Company, which was based at Bagram along with the 519th, slammed prisoners into walls, twisted their handcuffs, shackled a detainee’s arms to the ceiling, and forced water into another detainee’s mouth “until he could not breathe.” Finally, last June, a grand jury in North Carolina indicted a private CIA contractor, David Passaro, in connection with the death of an Afghan man who had voluntarily surrendered to U.S. troops at another base in Afghanistan; the man had been savagely beaten with a flashlight.

LAST SUMMER, a small group of American lawyers began talking about the pattern of misconduct at Bagram and Abu Ghraib laid out in the Army’s Fay-Jones report; attorneys at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and other groups are now preparing to file lawsuits on behalf of a number of detainees who claim to have been tortured in either Afghanistan or Iraq. The lawyers argue that the Bush administration laid the groundwork for abuse by claiming that those captured in Afghanistan were “enemy combatants” not covered by international law. With the restrictions of the Geneva Conventions lifted, says Priti Patel, a lawyer with the group Human Rights First, interrogators developed harsh techniques that ultimately were transferred to Iraq. (The Bush administration has not backed down from its stance on the detainees’ legal status; in fact, it has looked for additional ways to hold foreign prisoners outside the reach of American courts. In October, the House of Representatives passed a measure that would allow foreign detainees to be deported to countries that engage in torture. Also late last year, the White House helped kill a legislative provision that would have explicitly banned intelligence officers from torturing detainees.)

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Islamic HADITH:  RULES OF WAR
Abu Bakr as-Siddiq, a close companion and successor of the Prophet Muhammad,
told one of his military commanders: "I advise you of  ten things [relating to the
rules of war.] Do not kill women or children or an aged, infirm person. Do not cut
down fruit-bearing trees. Do not destroy an inhabited place. Do not slaughter
[animals] except for food. Do not burn
bees and do not scatter them. Do not steal
 from the materials captured in combat, and do not be cowardly
.
"
(Al-Muwatta, Volume 21, Hadith 10)

 

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Why is a robust UN Security Council action in response to massive crimes in Sudan so difficult to achieve?
Economic considerations (e.g., France and China have oil deals with Sudan; Russia is selling weapons to Sudan)

Diplomatic considerations (e.g., Some countries on the Security Council are reluctant to be seen as too quick to go along with US proposals; many countries, perhaps African states especially, are reluctant to create precedent of intervention in a sovereign state's internal affairs.

Domestic US considerations (e.g., The US is somewhat overextended militarily (in terms of available personnel?) and reluctant to send even small numbers of troops to another country at this time; US is willing to pass resolution creating economic sanctions against Sudan's government.)
 

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Torture, U.S. Foreign Policy and Law:
Domestic Law                                                             International Law

The Alien Tort Statute

Filartega v. Pena-Irala (crime in Paraguay in 1976)        Geneva Convention on treatment of
decided in US Court of Appeals, 2nd Circuit in 1980.    POWs 1949

Sosa v. Alvarez-Machain No 03-339                            International Covenant of Civil and Political Rights 1976
decided by 6-3 verdict in US Supreme Court 6/2004    Political Rights 1976 
                                                                                          Article 4 on nonderogable rights and Article 7 on torture
                                                                                    Convention Against Torture 1987