Mission & Justice

19/4/08

More than 300,000 USA military veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or major depression, new research released yesterday estimates. The study by a team at the Rand Corporation, a non-profit US think tank, showed mental disorders were more prevalent and lasting than previously known, surfacing belatedly and lingering after troops had been discharged. The study also concluded that about 320,000 veterans of those conflicts experienced a “probable” traumatic brain injury (TBI) during deployment, but the long-term impact on mental health was unclear. Military officials praised the Rand study, which was consistent with their own studies, and said it would reinforce efforts to try to improve mental healthcare. The findings were extrapolated from a survey of 1926 recently returned service members. The sample was designed to represent the 1.6 million troops who had been deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan since 2002.

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Jonathan Power; 18/4/08

If the US prosecution system weren’t so generally competent, I would advocate referring the US to the International Criminal Court so that senior figures in the Bush administration could be arrested and tried for crimes against humanity, in particular the use of torture. But it is competent, although it has been hamstrung by the clever legal footwork of the Bush administration, plus the use of the presidential veto - as with the recent veto of legislation that would have required the CIA and all intelligence services to abide by the restrictions contained in the US Army Field Manual on holding and interrogating prisoners. We all know that the US practices torture against terrorist suspects - water boarding or simulated drowning is clearly that - and we all know that when a new president is elected, given the clear statements of the remaining three candidates, the practice will stop. What we don’t know is if a new president will have the guts to open the windows in the Justice Department and allow the fresh air of the rule of law to blow into every corner.

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Jamal Nasser;17/4/08

Military interrogators assaulted Afghan detainees in 2003, using investigation methods they learned during self-defense training, according to Pentagon documents released Wednesday. Detainees at the Gardez Detention Facility in southeastern Afghanistan reported being made to kneel outside in wet clothing and being kicked and punched in the kidneys, nose and knees if they moved, the documents show. A 2006 Army review of the case concluded that the detainees were not abused but that the incident revealed misconduct that warrants further action. The documents, which were turned over Wednesday evening to the American Civil Liberties Union, focus on the 2003 death of Afghan detainee Jamal Nasser, who died in U.S. custody at the Gardez facility.

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James Emery;16/4/08

The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime World Drug Report includes a section on the annual prevalence of abuse for opiates, cannabis, and other drugs as a percentage of the population aged 15 to 64 for each respective country monitored. These rates reflect the percentage of people who used the drug in the 12-month period prior to the survey. Morphine use is typically very small and included in the number of heroin users.

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17/4/08

Hundreds of Afghans returning home after the closure of a refugee camp in northwest Pakistan have been left stranded because of a roadblock, the United Nations refugee agency has said. About 70,000 Afghans are being forced to either return to Afghanistan or relocate elsewhere in Pakistan after the closure of the Jalozai refugee camp. Kamal Hyder, Al Jazeera’s correspondent reporting from the Peshawar-Torkham highway, said: “For the last three days the main crossing between Afghanistan and Pakistan has been closed because of a dispute between tribal elders and a group known as Lashkar-e-Islam.” Laskhar-e-Islam, which is sympathetic to the Taliban, stopped trucks along the highway, saying that drivers must stop trafficking alcohol and drugs across the border.

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16/5/08

Afghans in Pakistan’s largest refugee village have been forced to leave as a deadline to close the camp has passed. More than 3,300 Afghans have left Jalozai for Afghanistan since March, following an agreement between elders in the camp and Pakistani authorities to leave between March 1 and April 15 At least 70,000 Afghans in Jalozai, in Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province, must now either relocate to another camp or return to Afghanistan.

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Robert Leeson; 15/4/08; Visiting professor of economics at Stanford University and adjunct professor at Murdoch and Notre Dame Australia universities.

What is the framework that informs Kevin Rudd’s view of the world? Our Prime Minister has made his debut on the world stage, embracing some old and stale rhetoric about drugs. Rudd wishes to eradicate the Afghan poppy crop and thus (he hopes) undercut the flow of funds to our enemies. This was a challenge staring us in the face when he visited Afghanistan in 2004 but it hasn’t got better since then. We must, he asserts, begin to achieve a resolution of how this is to be done. The war in Afghanistan since October 2001 has been tortuous and inconclusive: 78 months compared with two completed world wars (51 and 71 months, respectively). By the end of 2010, the agents of Operation Enduring Freedom will have endured the illogicality of their endeavours longer than the defeated Soviet occupiers (December 1979 to February 1989). Rudd states that his commitment to maintaining our 1000 troops is rock solid. As he told the ABC, “As I’ve said to President Bush in Washington, it’s for the long haul.” However, the war on the Taliban and its opium crop is no common or garden war: instead, it resembles the equilibrium of the four-decade-long Cold War.

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Waleed Aly; 14/4/08

Afghanistan used to be our feel-good war. The regime really did turn out to have links with terrorists, and al-Qaeda suffered heavy losses there, at least until we invaded Iraq and breathed life into global terrorism. But above all, Afghanistan delivered the altruism of liberation long after similar ideals evaporated in the violent chaos of Iraq. With the Taliban gone, and Hamid Karzai installed as President, freedom would be irrepressible. The people of Afghanistan would once more be enchanted by music and warmed by the glow of television. Most symbolic were the Afghan women. No more beatings, no more repression, and especially, no more burqas. They would march in the Taliban’s wake towards the equality with which we endowed them.

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Brendan Nicholson; 12/4/08

An Australian-Controlled company whose employees killed three Iraqi civilians in Iraq is employed by the Australian Defence Force to provide building materials for projects in Afghanistan. Unity Resources staff were involved in the shooting of two women, Marou Awanis and Geneva Jalal, in Baghdad in October, 2007 and in the slaying of 72-year-old university professor Kays Juma in March 2006. Professor Juma, an Australian permanent resident, spent much of his time in Baghdad with his Australian wife, Barbara. He was shot dead when he failed to stop at a checkpoint. The Seven Network reported last night that Unity Resources, run by former Australian soldiers, had been paid more than $750,000 for a series of defence contracts. The ADF responded that Unity Resources provided logistical support to Australian forces in Afghanistan and was not employed in a security role. Its task was to obtain and deliver construction materials.

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David Rohde & Tim Golden;11/4/08

Dozens of Afghan men held by the United States at Bagram Air Base and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, are being tried here in secretive Afghan criminal proceedings, based mainly on allegations forwarded by the US military. The prisoners are being convicted and sentenced to as much as 20 years in jail in trials that typically run between half an hour and an hour, said human rights investigators who have observed them. One early trial was reported to have lasted barely 10 minutes, an investigator said. Witnesses do not appear in court and cannot be cross-examined. There are no sworn statements of their testimony.

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