Enduring Freedom - Abuses by US Forces in Afghanistan

"Enduring Freedom - Abuses by US Forces in Afghanistan" is a report released in March 2004 by US-based human rights organisation, Human Rights Watch.

It has a negative view of the actions of United States armed forces in Afghanistan, following the campaign by US forces to eliminate the Taliban in 2001.

It alleges that there were several concerns, particularly regarding the conduct of US forces during arrests, and over the detention of prisoners, and recommends that the Afghan President, Hamid Karzai put pressure on the US to ensure that human rights laws were more strictly enforced.Specifically it mentions:
# Indiscriminate and excessive force used during arrests, in forms of that the military Rules of Engagement seems to be used where law enforcement protocols are necessary. International humanitarian law seeks to minimize civilian casualties by the imperative that military forces differentiate between combatants and civilians.
#*Suppressing fire in residential areas, not in response to enemy fire
#*Blasting doors open with grenades of families' homes, who (according to U.N officials) often turned out to be law-abiding citizens
#*Rough treatment of women and children
# Arbitrary arrests and detention. U.S. troops routinely arrest civilians taking no part in hostilities.
#* U.S. forces sometimes take all men in military age in the vicinity of an operation into custody.
#* Many of the prisoners are repeatedly beaten or mistreated in detention, held for months without family visits and eventually released, only to find their homes looted by Afghan troops.
# Mistreatment in detention.
#* In the Bagram airbase, U.S. personnel forced prisoners to stand up for long periods of time. The prisoners were deprived of their sleep and were forced to stare into bright spotlights, forced not to turn away their head. In March 2003, Roger King, spokesperson of the Bagram airbase said: "We do force people to stand for an extended period of time... Disruption of sleep has been reported as an effective way of reducing people’s inhibition about talking or their resistance to questioning."
#* In the Kandahar airbase, several of the detainees were beaten. Several of the detainees suffered broken bones that were untreated. Several were beaten until unconscious. Some of the prisoners in Kandahar were later transferred to Guantanamo Bay detention camp.
# Detainees held by Afghan forces. Human Rights Watch has documented numerous cases of mistreatment including torture and beatings of persons in the custody of Afghan military.
# Deaths in U.S. custody.
#* U.S. military doctors, after conducting autopsies, has ruled the deaths of two Afghans homicides. These two deaths occurred at the Bagram airbase in December, 2002.
#* Another Afghan detainee died near Asadabad in Kunar province in June, 2003.

The report points out that the US State Department has condemned many of the methods allegedly used in Afghanistan as 'torture' in their annual "Country Reports on Human Rights Practices".

In response to the report, Lt Col Bryan Hilferty, the US military spokesman in Afghanistan, was quoted as saying "We've seen the report, we are taking the allegations seriously." "We feel it shows a lack of understanding of the laws of war and of the environment we are facing in Afghanistan. "They say we should be using police procedures when we carry out arrests, but this is a combat zone."

The United States military continues to investigate human rights abuses in Afganistan. In March 2007, U.S. forces were implicated in what has become known as the Shinwar Massacre.

Also, a photograph of a pair Taliban bodies being burned by U.S. Special Forces for psychological warfare was taken by Australian photojournalist Stephen Dupont. The two Taliban corpses, who were KIA the previous night, were laid out facing Mecca.

Links

* [http://www.hrw.org/reports/2004/afghanistan0304/ Enduring Freedom: Abuses by US Forces in Afghanistan] - online version
* [http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/3541839.stm US condemned for Afghan 'abuses'] - www.bbc.co.uk