How not to win hearts and minds (Crispin Black / Guardian)

[struggle4progress]

Aside from the moral case, there's a good intelligence-based argument against rendition

February 15, 2007 5:40 PM
Crispin Black

We need to be absolutely clear why the United States has set up a network of detention and interrogation facilities for suspected Islamist terrorists - outside the jurisdiction of its own legal system - and serviced by the so called "rendition" flights condemned in the European parliament's report released yesterday. As we know, it is because the United States intends to treat these suspect individuals in ways that are against its own laws.

Two reasons lie behind this which the Americans have persuaded themselves will help or even give final victory in the "war on terror". First, the Americans want to take off the streets dangerous Islamist extremists. All well and good some might think. It is possible to see a rationale for detaining certain dangerous individuals for long periods without trial. Indeed this is a view that the British government of the early 1970s shared when we went about the business of "interning" so-called leading members of the Irish Republican Army. But it did not work - we pulled in so many of the wrong people that our intelligence services were a laughing stock and Irish terrorism received a much-needed reputational and recruiting boost.

American military commanders and political leaders have been ransacking history in an attempt to work out what to do in Iraq and the "war on terror". They would do well to revisit this episode. The British found in Northern Ireland that once we suspended the age-old rules of insisting that the authorities produce initial evidence in front of an unbiased magistrate before they can throw an individual into jail, the system begins to unravel. All kinds of corruption begin to seep in - intelligence officers can become quickly prone to paranoia, a "macho" ethic begins to take over the whole security apparatus, individuals in the community are tempted to pay off old scores by informing maliciously, proper investigations are curtailed and perhaps most dangerous of all the terrorist organisations begin to use all these factors to their own advantage. It would seem that this kind of detention is not only wrong but is unlikely to work.

The second reason that the Americans wish to hold suspected terrorists outside the reach of their own courts is that they wish to "interrogate" them in ways repugnant to the United States constitution which as everyone knows explicitly forbids "cruel and unusual treatment". In other words they wish to subject some of these suspects to forms of interrogation which amount to torture or near torture. Indeed American officials have admitted to using "enhanced" methods of interrogation including probably a technique called "waterboarding" - effectively half drowning a person to force them to talk. Klaus Barbie the notorious wartime Gestapo chief in Lyons was a notorious practicioner of this method. But significantly his successes against the French Resistance came from more conventional intelligence networks of spies and informers exploiting jealousies, fears and tensions within French society and the Resistance itself. Barbie knew well that information gained under torture was invariably unreliable. A person under torture will tell the interrogator just enough to stop the pain or incriminate the whole world if necessary. Either way the information is likely to be of little use in the cat and mouse game of counter-terror. It did not work for the Gestapo and it will not work for us ...

http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/crispin_black/2007/02/we_need_to_be_absolutely.html