Daily Times

Last Tuesday, the US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence released its long-awaited assessment of the detention and interrogation regimes employed by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) after 9/11. At a time when the US is becoming increasingly wary of its global role — and consequently reducing the amount of international agenda items from its to-do list — the report has been coined as the most severe condemnation of the tactics employed in the global war on terror. Not only does the report establish itself as a significant account of the past years, it also contains warnings for the days to come, especially when seen in the context of the emerging security threats in Syria and Iraq.

While the report has generated a lot of chatter in political circles in Washington and abroad — even North Korea and Russia jumped on the opportunity to criticise — there is one aspect of it where it has also drawn consensus. Even the staunchest critics of the findings have to admit that the report has meticulous research to support its conclusions. The final document is over 6,700 pages long, with 38,000 footnotes and the executive summary alone spans 528 pages. However, unlike any other document of this length, the report stops short of feeling mundane and contains some truly horrendous accounts of torture activities.

Broadly, torture can be defined as any act by which severe suffering, physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for obtaining information or a confession, or punishing him for committing an act, or for intimidating or coercing him. There are multiple international conventions that have strived to prevent or at least limit the use of torture in contemporary times. The United Nations Convention Against Torture is one example, which has been recently bolstered by the Sub-Committee for the Prevention of Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. Additionally, the European Union has also taken up this cause, and it too has a specific Europe-wide committee for this purpose. Still, with all these developments, torture has been brazenly employed repeatedly as a coercion tool.

According to the Senate report, prisoners that were detained upon suspicion of involvement in terrorist activities were subjected to various inhumane treatments such as sleep deprivation, forced to stand on broken legs, rectal feeding, waterboarding, keeping prisoners in unofficial dungeons and even sexual assault and threats of hurting families of detainees by the torturers. Furthermore, the report also claims that some of the prisoners were detained without substantial proof of their involvement in terrorist activities. However, even more harrowingly, the report critically points out the lack of any significant information that was obtained as a direct result of the torture techniques employed. This is perhaps the most terrifying news of all: the fact that the CIA continued to slide further into denial even when the uselessness of the programme was becoming gradually evident.

But perhaps the biggest development after the report’s release so far has been the complete collapse of the master narrative sold to the US public and politicians alike by the spymasters. For a long while after 9/11, allegations of torture were flouted by the agency and an administrative consensus was cited as enough cause for doing so. But that picture has been undone now, to the point where debate about prosecuting the perpetrators of the torture programmes under international treaty obligations is also being heard from the fringe. That being said, one can also hear whispers about how the programme was the appropriate response at the time, since the actions were done in good faith to protect US citizens from harm. And therein lies the huge tension between national security and the requirements of international law and treaties.

That torture is used as a weapon against detainees and prisoners is hardly news to anyone. However, the problematic fact is that it was employed by the very flag-bearers of liberty, freedom and equality. After all, the US’s leadership has been at the forefront of pushing for a more open, liberal, international order. But, whereas the desire to transport democracy to other regions of the world sometimes overrides other concerns, the report has brought out the internal contradictions present close to home as well. Not only is this evident from the Senate report, but the US has also refrained from signing on an additional optional protocol for torture prevention, which was formulated in the last decade, smack in the middle of the war on terror.

Disturbingly, the Senate report goes on to mention how many of the actions under the torture regime were hidden from the public as well as official view, to the extent that secretaries of state and defence were not briefed about the particular CIA programme until 2003. Recently, the Panetta Review of the CIA’s activities also pointed out that the president was also supplied false information about activities related to torture. If you think it could not get any worse, then wrap your head around the fact that many of the personnel responsible for the torture had troubling personal and professional histories, with a proclivity for violence and abuse. To add further insult to injury, there is no record of any punishments being handed to the perpetrators whatsoever.

For the supporters of the programme, many of the worst atrocities noted in the report can be justified when seen in the context of the timeframe when they were conceived. Whereas the liberal, pan-global language of the UN’s documents finds its inspiration in the desire to escape the horrors of the two world wars, the CIA programme also has its origin in a similarly traumatic experience, albeit with an altogether different response. Just after that terrible morning of September 11, 2001, the loss of many more lives seemed imminent — as the Anthrax scares demonstrated — and, consequently, the CIA programme was given the green light only six days after 9/11. Clearly then, it was meant to expunge the collective memories of the horrors that had preceded it.

However, in its desire for an ‘appropriate’ response, the programme went way overboard. Not only do the techniques described in the scrupulous report go against all conceptions of humane behaviour but, on a deeper level, they also demarcate a clear link between controlling the mind by dehumanising the body through corporal punishment. This last facet is found not only in illegal torture activities but also in the criminal justice systems of many states. Unless we can find a way to mitigate this link, we will just keep on penetrating deeper and deeper into this heart of darkness.

The author is a freelance columnist with degrees in political science and international relations