It is 20 years since torture and terrible abuses by the US military began at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. Reports of what was happening soon emerged, and an internal military report found “numerous incidents of sadistic, blatant, and wanton criminal abuses”. But it was not until April 2004 that shocking photos were leaked showing the extent of the depravity, including personnel taunting naked prisoners and a hooded man attached to electric wires.
George W Bush, the then president, apologised. Donald Rumsfeld, the then secretary of defence, dismissed the perpetrators as “bad apples” and said that he had found a way to compensate Iraqi detainees who had suffered grievous and brutal abuse. Yet a new report from Human Rights Watch finds that the US government has apparently failed to compensate or provide other redress for victims tortured and abused at Abu Ghraib and other US-run prisons in Iraq, and that there is no clear path to pursuing claims.
Thousands of men, women and children were held at the prison by the US. An International Committee of the Red Cross report said military intelligence officers estimated that 70 to 90% of those detained in 2003 had been arrested by mistake.
Abu Ghraib was not an outlier because horrors took place there. It stood out because the public saw physical evidence to back up the claims of former detainees, and because there was clearly no way of attempting to justify naked human pyramids as part of “enhanced interrogation techniques”, the term the US used to explain away torture. In other regards, it reflected what happened across US military detention centres and CIA “black sites”, as the treatment meted out to “unlawful combatants” held at Guantánamo Bay migrated to Afghanistan and Iraq. Those prosecuted, at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere, were lower ranking individuals rather than the architects of – or even officers within – this system. Under Donald Trump, Gina Haspel, who oversaw a black site where at least one detainee was tortured, became head of the CIA.
As president, Barack Obama rescinded all Bush-era memos allowing torture, but said his administration would “look forward” instead of pursuing more prosecutions. Yet this is not merely a historic issue. Iraqis are still suffering. Taleb al-Majli told Human Rights Watch that his detention and torture at Abu Ghraib “destroyed me and destroyed my family … They stole our future from us.”
The scandal stains the US’s reputation to this day. The invasion of Iraq, intended as a reassertion of America’s military supremacy, instead dealt a heavy blow to its global standing. The images of Abu Ghraib were seen by many as representing the real US intentions for the region – not to bring democracy and freedom, but to subjugate and humiliate. Washington’s battle with Beijing for global influence is cast in moral terms by the west. But those who take a more cynical view, informed by their memories of what happened in Iraq, have little reason to change their minds while the US refuses to address it adequately.
Last year, the Pentagon published an action plan to reduce harm to civilians in US military operations. While welcome, it does not include a compensation mechanism for past instances of harm. Compensation, as one form of accountability, might play a limited role in preventing future crimes and addressing the damage done to the US’s reputation. Most importantly, it would be a small step towards justice for detainees who have been waiting for two decades.