Paran Balakrishnan: The question of torture

MY WORD!

How many people are slain in terrorist attacks or encounters in Kashmir every year? The answer may come as a shock to people who don't keep an eye on the scorecard between the terrorists and the police.

The death toll has averaged about 3,000 annually for the last 14 years. That includes the occasional daring attacks that make the front-pages and also the low-level skirmishing that barely merits a line or two. That's about 34,000 people since the insurgency started.

And, has the death toll fallen this year now that India and Pakistan are switching from war-war to jaw-jaw? No. Between January and June there have been a steady toll of deaths in the never-ending war of attrition between the two sides. About half the 34,000 casualties are, of course, terrorists.

But even in the heat of battle no Indian Army or police officer has ever claimed the right to torture prisoners. Let's not kid ourselves, they may have beaten up or tortured prisoners behind the walls of police or army camps. But they haven't pretended that these were lawful actions.

So, what should we make of US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld who according to The Washington Post, "approved in December 2002 a range of severe methods including the stripping of prisoners at Guantanamo, and using dogs to frighten them? He later rescinded those tactics and signed off on a shorter list of 'exceptional techniques'".

Is it a sign of strength that American officials and soldiers put everything in writing as they figured what to do with prisoners in Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib? Or, is it bureaucratic buck-passing carried to an extraordinary extent.

Take, for instance, Lt Col Diane E Beaver, the legal counsel at Guantanamo who argued in favour of tough interrogations provided, "there is an important governmental objective, and it is not done for the purpose of causing harm or with the intent to cause prolonged mental suffering". That sentence with its tough to define "important governmental objective" would have the lawyers tangled in knots for months. And when does mental suffering become "prolonged"?

Beaver was a small-time player in the torturous war of words between officials of the Pentagon, the justice department and the state department. It was a battle that began in January 2002 and stretched on for the next two years.

In the frontline was Jay S Bybee, of the justice department who first argued that captured Taliban soldiers should not be treated as prisoners of war but as enemy combatants who have fewer protections under the Geneva Convention. Later Bybee argued that certain rough techniques could be used to interrogate Al Qaeda suspects.

Bybee's finest moment came when he argued that torturing suspected terrorists might be legally defensible. His conclusions were so extreme they were recently disowned by the Bush administration.

If Bybee had been a lone voice, this might not have been too worrying. But others were also straying over an invisible line. That included Rumsfeld who even helped the CIA to conceal a prisoner from the Red Cross for several months in Iraq. When pressed Rumsfeld could not explain his actions.

Fortunately, the United States Supreme Court has not looked very kindly on these weasly-worded bureaucratic memos. This week it struck a giant blow for freedom by ruling that prisoners in Guantanamo Bay are entitled to their day in court. The first cases will probably be filed in a few days and then, we'll hear first-hand accounts of what has been happening there for the last two years.

Let's not make any mistake. We should care about what happens in the United States because, for better or for worse, the US has been the guiding light in our modern world. Even in recent months the Senate hearings when Rumsfeld was closely questioned about his conduct were an example of a system that works and which respects human life.

When the Americans start arguing that torture is permissible under "certain circumstances", it sends out the wrong signal to dictators and unpleasant regimes around the world. It sends out a signal that for everyone the world is suddenly a slightly less safe place.