By Ali Dayan Hasan, South Asia researcher for Human Rights Watch
March 2, 2006: Islamabad will be sealed off so that
President Musharraf can welcome US President George Bush to his capital.
Bush is making the journey to compliment and compensate Musharraf on
services rendered in the ‘war on terror’.
Musharraf is hosting Bush to bask in
the glory of a renewed alliance with the United States and to strengthen
his faltering grip on power. Nowhere is human rights on the agenda.
In the run up to the trip, Bush has praised general Musharraf’s “vision
for a democratic Pakistan” and his commitment to “free and open
elections” Unless Bush knows something that Pakistanis do not, it
appears that the continued disregard and undermining of the Pakistani
Constitution, the marginalization of mainstream political parties, and
the failure to hold a credible election is an odd formula for a
democratic Pakistan and the Bush administration’s broader commitment to
“fostering democracy in the Muslim world.”
The skewed view of President Musharraf held by Bush is certainly based
on shared values. But rather than the shared value of democracy that
Bush likes to speak about, what Musharraf and Bush have in common is a
shared commitment to the priority, above all else, of the ‘war on
terror.’ Bush has been gushing about Musharraf’s role therein,
appreciating his “commitment to joining the world in dealing with
Islamic radicals who will murder innocent people to achieve an
objective.”
Given the conduct of the Bush administration in this context, the US
president’s appreciation of the Musharraf government is hardly
surprising. International human rights law contains no more basic
prohibition than the absolute, unconditional ban on torture and “cruel,
inhuman, or degrading treatment.” To date, the Bush administration’s
understanding of the term “torture” remains unclear. As Human Rights
Watch has noted: In March 2005, Porter Goss, the CIA director, justified
water-boarding, a sanitized term for an age-old, terrifying torture
technique in which the victim is made to believe that he is about to
drown.
In testimony before the US Senate in August 2005, the former deputy
White House counsel, Timothy Flanigan, would not even rule out using
mock executions. Lt. Gen. Michael V. Hayden, the deputy director of
national intelligence and one of those who oversees the CIA, explained
to human rights groups in August 2005 that US interrogators have a duty
to use all available authority to fight terrorism. “We’re pretty
aggressive within the law,” he explained. “We’re going to live on the
edge.”
As Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, and Bagram have shown, the US has not lived
on the edge of legality, it has clearly and frequently crossed it into
territory previously thought to have been the preserve of rogue
governments. In December last year, Human Rights Watch listed 26
documented persons being held as “ghost detainees” at undisclosed
locations outside the United States. They are being held indefinitely
and incommunicado, without legal rights or access to counsel. Most of
them were arrested in Pakistan and some may still be detained here. The
US used to denounce “disappearances”. It now appears to be engaging in
them.
In January 2005, the Bush administration began claiming the power to use
cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment so long as the victim was a
non-American held outside the United States. In December last year,
under political pressure, President Bush was forced to withdraw his
opposition to legislation sponsored by Republican Senator John McCain
banning cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment of terrorist suspects.
However, the US is the only government in the world known to have
claimed this power openly, as a matter of official policy, and to
pretend that it is lawful
In Pakistan, the US has also found a willing partner to employ what the
FBI describes as “locally acceptable forms of interrogation.” The
routine use of torture in Pakistan by both civilian law enforcement and
military agencies is well documented. What is surprising is the use of
torture by the Pakistani security and intelligence services to
interrogate both US and other foreign citizen suspects in the country.
For example, during eight months of illegal detention in Pakistan, Zain
and Kashan Afzal, US citizens of Pakistani descent, were repeatedly
tortured, allegedly by Pakistani authorities. During this period, FBI
agents questioned the brothers on at least six occasions without
intervening to end the torture. Instead, they threatened the men with
being sent to Guantanamo Bay if they did not confess to involvement in
terrorism. They were released in April 2005 only after Human Rights
Watch intervened in their case.
Instead of publicly condemning this behaviour President Bush is coming
to Islamabad to grant legitimacy to the “democratic” vision of his
Pakistani counterpart and award him a Bilateral Investment Treaty. The
promotion of trade and commerce between the United States and Pakistan
is commendable. But Bush’s silence on human rights and the US
government’s outsourcing of torture will bring nothing but a poverty of
dignity to both.
