UN special rapporteur on military crimes

Last week the Human Rights Council of the United Nations published a report by Philip Alston, its special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions. Alston’s subject was a mission he undertook to the United States earlier this year.

As with the Amnesty International report mentioned below, the report makes harrowing reading. Leaving aside Alston’s comments on the judicial system within the United States and at Guantanamo Bay, he takes the military and judicial authorities in America to task for their failures to protect human rights in Afghanistan or Iraq.

“It is noteworthy,” says Alston, “that ‘command responsibility,’ a basis for criminal liability recognized since the trials after World War II, is absent both from the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) and the War Crimes Act. It appears that no U.S. officer above the rank of major has ever been prosecuted for the wrongful actions of the personnel under his or her command. Instead, in some instances, commanders have exercised their discretion to lessen the punishment of subordinates for wrongful conduct that resulted in a custodial death.”

Alston says there has been a “zone of de facto impunity” for private contractors and civilian intelligence agents operating in Iraq and Afghanistan, not through a lack of law, but through an unwillingness of prosecutors to prosecute. He adds: “Prosecutors have also failed, even years after alleged wrongful deaths, to disclose the status of their investigations or the bases for decisions not to prosecute. One well-informed source succinctly described the situation: “The DOJ has been AWOL in response to these incidents.” “

He gives as an example the August 2002 shooting to death of Afghan national Mohammad Sayari. The army investigation into Sayari’s death recommended charges including conspiracy and murder against four members of a Special Forces unit. In fact, the commanding officer dropped all charges and issued only a written reprimand of a captain who had ordered his subordinates to destroy evidence.

The best way to end these abuses, says Alston, is to create a commission of inquiry tasked with carrying out independent, systematic and sustained investigation of policies and practices that lead to deaths and other abuses. He also recommends the appointment of a ‘Director of Military Prosecutions’ who would be independent of the chain of command.

The final section of Alston’s report deals with the legal basis for ‘targeted killings’ – in particular the use of missiles fired from drones that often kill innocent civilians.

Alston says he has asked on several occasions for details of the legal basis for these attacks. He says the US government has been evasive in its answer, telling him the answer lies outside his remit. The best he can ascertain is the fact that in September 2001 President Bush signed a ‘presidential finding’ pursuant to the authority of which the CIA developed the concept of “high-value targets” for whom “kill, capture or detain” orders could be issued in consultation with lawyers in DOJ, CIA, and the administration.

However, that leaves many questions, not least on whether or not it is legal to carry out such attacks in a country such as Pakistan with which the USA is not at war.

Alston’s report makes depressing reading. It shows that for all the talk about freedom and democracy, the US pays little heed to these values in the way it deals with the crimes and errors of an admitted tiny minority.

US Army tweets in Afghanistan

The US Army has decided to start using new media to keep the public informed of its activities in Afghanistan. As of this morning, you can now follow the latest developments on YouTube, Facebook and Twitter. Not sure what the policy is on Twitter. Former commander of US forces in Afghanistan, General McKiernan's farewell speech in Kabul today gets four tweets, but no mention so far of the four US soldiers reported killed by IEDs in Wardak yesterday.

Could the Taliban be much worse?

If it were any other country, we would be calling for boycotts and protesting outside embassies across the world at the activities of President Karzai’s regime in Kabul. The publication of Amnesty International’s annual report on the country is both shocking and shameful.

Its summary is uncompromising: “Millions of people living in southern and eastern Afghanistan, terrorized by the Taleban, other insurgent groups and local militias ostensibly allied with the government, suffered insecurity that further restricted their already limited access to food, health care, and schooling. Indiscriminate attacks, abductions and the targeting of civilians reached unprecedented levels. The Taleban and other anti-government groups significantly expanded their attacks to cover more than a third of the country, including areas once considered relatively safe in the centre and the north. Increased military attacks between anti-government groups and US and NATO troops resulted in more than 2,000 civilian deaths. The government failed to maintain the rule of law or to provide basic services to millions of people even in areas under its control.”

The catalogue of human rights abuses is endless: a ministry of justice that refused to cooperate with the country’s human rights commission; trials for former Guantanamo prisoners that “failed to meet national or international fair trial standards”; failure to prosecute those responsible for human rights abuses; the state execution of 17 people in 2008 and the upholding of 131 death sentences; the lack of a systematic programme for assisting those injured by Afghan and international military forces; the decision by NATO and US forces to continue to hand over detainees to Afghanistan’s NDS intelligence service, which is known to perpetrate human rights violations including torture and arbitrary detention.

Then there is the intimidation, both by the government and the Taliban, of journalists, several of whom have been killed or injured. In one particular notorious incident, in September 2008, Ahmad Ghous Zalmai, a journalist and former spokesperson for the Attorney General, and Mullah Qari Mushtaq were each sentenced to 20 years’ imprisonment for publishing a Dari translation of the Qur’an without the Arabic text alongside.

There are other serious human rights abuses, including the killing of civilians, both by the Taliban and by Coalition and Afghan government forces. There is little oversight of private military contractors. Several hundred thousand people in Afghanistan are internal refugees. Many women and girls are denied the right to education.

Where does this leave us morally? Looking at it logically, in the name of democracy we are spending billions of dollars propping up a backward, repressive, religiously conservative government. Perhaps you can live with that, but do you really think that the Taliban could be much worse?

A snaphot of the war in Afghanistan

I make no apologies for recommending a book by my friend and former colleague Stephen Grey. Operation Snakebite: The explosive true story of an Afghan desert siege tells the story of the attempt by British and other forces to liberate the Taliban stronghold of Musa Qala in Helmand Province in December 2007. It was to become the biggest operation conducted by the British in Afghanistan for more than a century.
He says the book is “neither an official nor a comprehensive or definitive account of the war in Afghanistan. It is an attempt to look in detail at one small snapshot of a modern counter-insurgency action through the eyes and ears of a few key individuals, both in command and on the front line.”
There is no end to military books on Afghanistan. Journalists, aid workers, former soldiers have all done their best to give a sense of what it is like to be a frontline soldier in this most inhospitable of wars. Most fail miserably, mainly because their writers have very little insight.
Stephen’s book is different. It describes events over just a few days and successfully combines a narrative of what happened and what it was like for the soldiers on the ground with a detailed and fascinating account of the power politics in Kabul and elsewhere that informed these events. He interviewed more than 200 people, from lowly private soldiers up to the chief of the General Staff and including diplomats, spies and everyone in between.
“I soon discovered the real story of the Battle of Musa Qala,” Stephen writes, “and the events leading up to it, had all the dimensions of a thriller – courage, love and betrayal, intrigues at the palace in Kabul, tension between friends, assassination and intelligence blunders and occasionally high farce.”
What also comes across is the picture of a very complex battlefield. In the same terrain, there are NATO soldiers from different countries, including Americans, then American soldiers who are not part of NATO, but are operating independently as part of Operation Enduring Freedom, as well as US Marines, British Royal Marines, special forces units from all of the above, CIA, MI6 and other intelligence operatives, Afghan National Army soldiers and many others.
If you want to know how the war in Afghanistan is being fought today and to understand something of what is meant by asymmetric warfare, I strongly urge you to read this book.

Your money. Safe in their hands?

When the Office of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction issued its first report last week, it noted that the military command overseeing $15bn in US military aid cannot be sure the money is being managed effectively.
In fact, the Combined Security Transition Command- Afghanistan (CSTC-A) is not based in Afghanistan at all, but in Maryland - nine time zones away. At the time of the inspection, four months ago, the CSTC-A had no-one working in Afghanistan and just one technical representative (from another company) actually located in Afghanistan.
In other words, as was the case in Iraq, when billions of dollars were left unaccounted for, no-one appears to be watching out for the US taxpayer. Huge contracts are being let with little supervision.
To make the point clearly, the Special Inspector decided to look at one contract in particular - a $404 million contract to an unnamed company to train the Afghan Army. This is what their report says:

"We found that assigning one contracting officer's representative in the field did not provide the degree of oversight that is needed to ensure that funds are used as intended. The person assigned this duty has limited contracting experience and is on a six-month assignment to Afghanistan. According to CSTC-A, this person has taken the required contractor officer's representative training, but CSTC-A acknowledged that additional training is needed. This assigned contracting officer's representative told us that visits to training sites are not performed; therefore contractor performance is not effectively monitored. Because of other duties, this official does not have time to make field visits. In addition, because some of the training sites are located far from Kabul, availability of transportation resources is also a factor that makes it difficult to perform field visits to oversee contractor performance."

It did not take long to find out that the unnamed company in receipt of an unsupervised mult-million dollar contract was Military Professional Resources Inc (MPRI), a Virginia-based company formed in 1987 by eight former senior military officers, including former Army Chief of the General Staff, Gen. Carl Vuono. Today it has more than 3,000 employees in 40 countries. In 2000 it was taken over by defence contracting giant L3 Communications.
MPRI is no stranger to controversy. In 2004 The Center for Public Integrity revealed that MPRI wrote the Pentagon manual for contractors on the battlefield. They noted:
"Since 1997, Military Professional Resources Inc., which has two contracts worth a total of $2.6 million related to reconstruction in Iraq, has also produced Field Manual 100-21, also known as Contractors on the Battlefield. The manual "established a doctrinal basis directed towards acquiring and managing contractors as an additional resource in support of the full range of military operations", according to the company's website."
In the same year MPRI was hired by the Pentagon to work with the armed forces and national police in Colombia to teach them psychological operations, training, logistics, intelligence and personnel management. After a year Colombian defence officials denounced them as useless, noting that no-one on the company's staff spoke Spanish. The contract was not renewed, although the Pentagon publicly backed the company.
Further information on MPRI, particularly that related to Operation Storm in Croatia in August 1995, where the company was accused of having trained Croatian soldiers who carried out one of the largest episodes of ethnic cleansing during the Balkan War, can easily be found on the internet.
Why is the military unable to supervise its own contractors? Answers on the back of a dollar bill, please.

Lessons learned for soldiers

It is always interesting get an insight into how soldiers prepare for war and so the launch of Afghan Lessons Learned for Soldiers is to be welcomed. Created by four American veterans of the conflict in Afghanistan (three senior NCOs and a major), the site is designed to help share knowledge. “We were filled full of bullshit by those who trained us and so we are trying to help tell it like it really is,” they remark.

The first ‘chapter’ on the site deals with ‘Gear’. An interesting subject. Readers may remember the disdain with which US soldiers regarded their British counterparts at the beginning of the conflict in Afghanistan. They often referred to them as ‘Flintstones’ or The Borrowers, friendly jibes based on the poor quality equipment the British Tommies had to make do with.

Now we can understand why the US soldier is so well equipped. He clearly buys much of it himself. There is a list of 69 items that are recommended for those deploying to Afghanistan. For example, weapons lubrication that doesn’t attract sand seems to be a good idea, as do extra bootlaces, a stainless steel mug, lock de-icer and disposable hand and feet warmers.

And I can understand the need for a pair of comfortable desert boots. “All they will give you is a regular summer set and a set of Goretex lined for waterproof needs. Desert is a cold place at these altitudes in the winter time”, says the site.

The same point is made about the standard US Army issue tac vest – for holding magazines and other small pieces of gear. “Dump the IBA tac vest you get issued. Get a Tactical Tailor MAV chest rig (does not matter if you get 1 or 2 piece one as you want to keep the front open for laying in the prone. You don’t want mags pushing into your chest making it hard to breathe).”

Then there’s the computer gear - laptop, screen wipes, canned air to blow dust out of equipment, a DVD ripping program, personal GPS, webcam and headset, skype account, external 120gb USB hard drive, digital camera, MP3 player, LED lights and batteries for 30 days.

Not to mention the soap, toilet paper, baby wipes (30 days supply) foot and body paper, desert tan spray paint, hand sanitizer, Fabreeze fabric softener, a stack of clothing, towels, pillow, pillow cases and sheets.

Eighteen M4 ammunition magazines and nine 9mm mags seems reasonable, as does a LULA mag loader/unloader and a reasonable assault pack.

Not quite so sure about the weightlifting supplies or shower shoes, but I wouldn’t begrudge them.

I think you get my point. War has changed. Today’s soldier expects to be regularly in touch with family and friends half a world away and to be clean and comfortable when not actually out in the field. Even if he has to pay for the equipment himself - (I presume this list is only for male soldiers as there is no concession to women soldiers).

I’m not sure how much all these items would cost the average soldier, but it cannot be much short of $3,000.00.

While the ALL site is good on gear, its understanding of history and Afghan culture is not so good. This is what it says: “Afghanistan has been like the cartoon character who is run over by a car, struggles to his feet and has scarcely dusted himself off when he is run over again. And again. And again, ad nauseum.” Er, I don’t think so. In Afghanistan, the wheels usually fall off the car before it gets a chance to run over anyone.

“If you think of Afghanistan as an individual, this would be a person who has suffered repeated blows to the head and suffers from TBI and PTSD.” I think you will find that PTSD is far more prevalent amongst Allied troops returning from Afghanistan than amongst Afghans themselves, who have known nothing but war for the last two generations.

“In your research you will find that the Persians, Alexander the Great, Tamerlane, Genghis Khan, Kublai Khan, and more recently the British Empire and the Russians have all swept through Afghanistan. For some, this paints a picture of the indomitable Afghan. I tend to disagree, as the Afghans have indeed been conquered on numerous occasions.” Actually, the British, the Soviets and most other people who tried to hold territory in Afghanistan have come to grief. That is indisputable.

I can’t blame soldiers for wanting to talk up their own prospects and for talking down their enemies. However, let’s face it, the US and its Allies have now been fighting in Afghanistan for twice as long as they fought in the Second World War and for longer than they fought in Vietnam. There is presently no end in prospect and certainly no sign yet of a military defeat of the Taliban.

It never does any good to underestimate your enemy. The reality is that the Afghan fighter is unequalled as a guerrilla. He will march for 30 miles a day at altitude, carrying everything he needs and living on little more than pressed mulberries and dry bread. He is willing to die gladly for his beliefs but will seldom give his life cheaply. There’s no shame in admitting any of this. It is simply a fact. Forget it and you will lose before you even step outside your FOB.