Incarcerations in Iraq, in context

The WaPo’s Walter Pincus has a very disturbing piece in today’s paper in which he writes that the US forces in Iraq are currently holding about 18,000 detainees, the vast majority of them Iraqis. Pincus also mentions almost as an afterthought that “As of last month, the Iraqi detention [by which I assume he means the separate archipelago of prison-camps that is run by the Iraqi ‘government’] contained about 34,000 detainees.”
For a total of 52,000? This is truly horrendous.
First, remember that these detainees are probably nearly all able-bodied men of breadwinning age and imagine how many dependents each might have, relying on this man to bring home an income for the family.
Second, remember that these ‘detainees’ have not been incarcerated as the result of any transparent, fair judicial hearing. Instead, they are ‘security detainees’– such as may be held by an occupying power in the territory it occupies, if there is an overwhelming security reason to do so in each case… But the conditions for such detentions are strictly regulated in the Fourth Geneva Convention, which Pincus doesn’t mention. I wish he had.
I should note that– notably unlike Afghanistan– the US military and political leadership did say when it went into Iraq that it would respect the Geneva Conventions there and considered its status there to be that of a foreign occupying power. Thus, duly organized combatants captured there would be considered as POWs; and other individuals held as security detainees there should be held only under the conditions specified by the Fourth Geneva Convention. This includes access to the ICRC, guarantees of decent basic treatment, no torture, etc.
If the US and the Iraqis between them are now holding 52,000 security detainees– with the majority of them presumably Sunni Arabs– then this makes the detention rate there comparable with that in numerous other (generally unsuccessful) counter-insurgency campaigns around the world. See some of my notes on this phenomenon in this paper I published recently.
I am also very familiar with mass incarcerations from Israel’s longstanding practice of holding thousands of Palestinians in the occupied territories there in Palestine as “administrative detainees”. I note, though, that while in Israel each such detainee has to have his/her case reviewed every six months, according to Pincus’s account that period of time in the US detention system in Iraq is three times as long: 18 months!
Here’s what Pincus says about the process in the US detention centers:

The average stay in these detention centers is about a year, but about 8,000 of the detainees have been jailed longer, including 1,300 who have been in custody for two years, said a statement provided by Capt. Phillip J. Valenti, spokesman for Task Force 134, the U.S. Military Police group handling detainee operations.
“The intent is to detain individuals determined to be true threats to coalition forces, Iraqi Security Forces and stability in Iraq,” Valenti said. “Unlike situations in the past, these detainees are not conventional prisoners of war.”
Instead, he said, they are “diverse civilian internees from widely divergent political, religious and ethnic backgrounds who are detained on the basis of intelligence available at the time of capture and gathered during subsequent questioning.” [Um, how’s that again? You detain a person on the basis of intel you gather after you’ve detained him? How does that work again? ~HC] Valenti said 250 of those in custody are third-country nationals, including some high-value detainees.
Last month, military spokesmen in Iraq told The Washington Post that the United States held 17,000 detainees — 13,800 in Camp Bucca in southern Iraq and 3,300 at Camp Cropper, outside Baghdad. One year ago, less than 10,000 Iraqis were in U.S. facilities in Iraq, but that figure has grown and could reach 20,000 by the end of this year, according to military contracting documents. [That sounds worrisome. Does it mean some of these people are being guarded and questioned by contractors? And who keeps the contractors in line? ~HC] As of last month, the Iraqi detention system contained about 34,000 detainees.
The initial decision to detain or release those arrested is made by a U.S. unit commander with the assistance of an Army lawyer, Valenti said. A file is made for each detainee that includes intelligence reports and any sworn statements and other evidence that supports the determination that the person is a threat.
At the U.S. detention facility, each case is reviewed by a Magistrate Cell. The decision of the Magistrate Cell is given to each prisoner in writing. Each case is reviewed after 18 months by the Joint Detention Review Committee, an Iraqi-U.S. panel. “Approval for continued detention beyond the initial 18-month timeframe requires joint approval from the MNF-1 commander [Multinational Force commander Gen. David H. Petraeus] and the prime minister of Iraq,” Valenti said.

Actually, in counter-insurgency ops everywhere, mass detentions are used for a number of reasons both related and unrelated to the need to protect the public. They are used to punish large swathes of the population. They are used to try to gather intelligence (though the intel gathered from broad round-ups of the population is usually pretty suspect or useless.) But they are also used, crucially, to try to “turn” members of the targeted population– that is, by applying unbearable pressures to these individuals during the time of detention, or by using the detention period to develop means of blackmailing them, the aim is to turn a large enough number of them into informers for the occupying power that then everyone who’s been incarcerated becomes suspect to the insurgent commanders… And thus, the hope is, the the unity of the insurgent force can be eroded.
It nearly always fails to bring victory to the occupying power. But meanwhile, the human cost on the detainees of undergoing those means of humiliation and coercion can be long-lasting and truly damaging.
(And the US forces are doing all this, like Guantanamo, in the name of ‘freedom’?? It truly is Orwellian.)
Pincus writes,

Noah Feldman, a New York University law professor who helped draft the Iraqi constitution, asked, “Pursuant to what law are we holding people who are not turned over to Iraqi courts?” Because they are not considered prisoners of war, he said, the United States must consider them in the “enemy combatant” category used to justify holding detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

I think Feldman fails to understand a few things about the laws of war. The US is still, under international humanitarian law (the laws of war), the occupying power in Iraq… That is the only status the US forces there have: as a “belligerent military force” under the terms of the Geneva Conventions. Certainly, they are not there under the terms of any ‘Status of Forces Agreement’ with the Iraqi government, since the Iraqi ‘government’ has never concluded any such agreement with the US.
So the detainees in Iraq are being held pursuant to the laws of war, pure and simple, Noah Feldman. Why do you think the dainty little ‘Iraqi Constitution’ they paid you to write for them back in the day might get in the way of that?
Feldman is also wrong to say the US must consider the detainees it holds to have the same status as the ‘enemy combatants’ it captured in Afghanistan. Because, as I noted above, the US did (quite rightly) declare that it would respect the Geneva Conventions in Iraq; and because those conventions do allow it to hold security detainees, under conditions regulated by Geneva 4.
(The US was quite wrong, anyway, to undertake that unilateral derogation from the Geneva Conventions in Afghanistan.)
Pincus also quotes an anonymous non-governmental expert as saying that the Iraqi detainees are anyway “better off” being held in US custody for the time being than they would be if they were sent to join the 34,000 detainees being held– often in lethal or otherwise atrocity-marked conditions– by the US-trained ‘Iraqi’ security forces.
Well… yes, at some level I suppose that is true.
On the other hand, the US still is the responsible occupying power in Iraq– and therefore it is just as responsible for the gross abuses being committed by security forces whom it has raised up and trained there, as it is for the abuses its own units commit directly. So the fact that the 18,000 detainees in US hands may in some ways be “better off” than their 34,000 compatriots held by the Iraqis doesn’t excuse the US from having to take responsibility for the whole darned stew of violence, coercion, and brutality it has brought into being in Iraq.
Beyond that, the US needs to figure out how to leave Iraq– rapidly, and completely. Under those circumstances, there is at least a significant chance that the Iraqi political figures and community leaders who have been dealing with each other in one way or another for millennia now will find a way to resolve their currently continuing conflicts and figure out a way to coexist with each other into the future.
That notably has not happened at all during the now four years of US occupation of the country. Instead, every year the US troops have been there the situation of Iraq’s people has gotten significantly worse.
And even in these past few weeks– when the US forces have been “surging” into some parts of Baghdad, and the numbers of suspects detained has also risen further– these tactics have still, quite clearly, done nothing to end the carnage that still stalks the country.
When the US forces do finally leave the country, we will leave behind many broken souls, many broken bodies, many broken families and communities. One of the ways we have been inflicting this harm is through the detentions policy. Let us recognize this harm for what it is and end it– and the whole occupation– as soon as possible.