Afghanistan: Two decades of the US at Bagram base
IMAGE COPYRIGHTGETTY IMAGESimage caption
US soldiers before eating Christmas dinner at Bagram in 2001
For the US and Nato, the Bagram airbase in Afghanistan has been the epicentre of the war against the Taliban and al-Qaeda for some 20 years.
The US-led coalition forces moved in during December 2001, and it was developed into a huge base capable of holding up to 10,000 troops.
Now they have left as President Joe Biden vows to have all US forces gone by 11 September.
The Taliban have welcomed news of the withdrawal from the base.
The Afghan military will now take over Bagram as part of its ongoing fight against the Taliban.
For the US and Nato, the Bagram airbase in Afghanistan has been the epicentre of the war against the Taliban and al-Qaeda for some 20 years.
The US-led coalition forces moved in during December 2001, and it was developed into a huge base capable of holding up to 10,000 troops.
Now they have left as President Joe Biden vows to have all US forces gone by 11 September.
The Taliban have welcomed news of the withdrawal from the base.
The Afghan military will now take over Bagram as part of its ongoing fight against the Taliban.
IMAGE COPYRIGHTGETTY IMAGESimage caption
An army sergeant hands out flyers to local children near the base in May 2002
IMAGE COPYRIGHTGETTY IMAGESimage caption
An American solider jokes with locals outside the base in December 2001
The airfield was built by the Soviet Union in the 1950s, becoming its main base in the 1980s as it defended its occupation of Afghanistan.
The US inherited the base when it overthrew the Taliban in 2001. Bagram was in ruins after being abandoned, but the Americans rebuilt the base and it eventually grew to around 30 square miles (77 sq km).
The airfield was built by the Soviet Union in the 1950s, becoming its main base in the 1980s as it defended its occupation of Afghanistan.
The US inherited the base when it overthrew the Taliban in 2001. Bagram was in ruins after being abandoned, but the Americans rebuilt the base and it eventually grew to around 30 square miles (77 sq km).
Don't you think Bagram looks like a US Correction-Torture centre?
Bagram after US military left
********
kt notes (on Bagram airfield):
I published the following posts 16 years ago (2005) - reproduced here for your convenient perusal:
Sunday, May 22, 2005
The Tragedy of an Afghan Taxi Driver
"To the country boys here, if you're a different nationality, a different race, you're sub-human. That's the way that girls like Lynndie are raised ... Tormenting Iraqis, in her mind, would be no different from shooting a turkey. Every season here you're hunting something. Over there, they're hunting Iraqis."
 |
Lynndie England |
Following a rocket attack on the base, while he was in prison, he was nevertheless hauled into the interrogation room for another session, but by then his legs were bouncing uncontrollably and his hands were numb. He had been chained by his wrists to the ceiling of his cell for much of the previous four days.
When Dilawar asked for a drink of water, a 21-year old interrogator, Specialist Joshua Claus (obviously no relation of Father Christmas) concocted a form of mental torture to deny the prisoner that, enjoying Dilawar’s agony as the water was either pouring onto the prisoner’s body or squirted into his face.
A guard tried to force Dilawar to his knees, but his legs, pummelled by US military guards for several days, could no longer bend.
After the interrogation Dilawar was sent back to his cell, and chained to the ceiling. Several hours passed before a doctor saw Dilawar. By then he was stiff dead.
And the cruellest and most sad and unjust ending to this atrocity, many months before the official investigation even eventuated - and only after persistent report of torture including the Abu Ghraib scandal - most of the interrogators at Bagram believed Dilawar was an innocent man who simply drove his taxi past the US base at the wrong time.
The report into Dilawar’s death at the USAF base at Bagram contains graphic details of widespread abuse of detainees in Afghanistan carried out by young and poorly trained soldiers, including females like Lynndie England (do read this link), except they made England look like Mother Teresa.
The torture was not just related to extracting information, but involved punishment (whatever that means) and a la Kempeitai, alleviating the US soldiers' boredom or satiating their cruelty.
Though frequently reported to US officials, the incidents of prisoner abuse at Bagram were casually dismissed by them as isolated problems that had already been thoroughly investigated. Human Rights Watch reports that nine detainees in Afghanistan have died in US custody*, including four cases already determined to be murder or manslaughter.
* kt note: This was in 2005 when I published this post
The dead cannot cry out for justice; it is a duty of the living to do so for them.
- Lois McMaster Bujold
***
Thursday, July 28, 2005
Bagram Villagers: "Die America!"
The USAF air base at Bagram, Afghanistan is one of the most notorious American military torture centres. It forms an important component of the American Gulag Archipelago. In many ways, it is even more notorious than Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay prisons because a few Afghans died there from American torture.
Some months back, an innocent Afghan taxi driver, who happened to be passing the air base shortly after the place was attacked by the insurgents, was dragged in by American guards, beaten and tortured until he couldn’t even bend his legs. He was deprived of water, with a young American guard deliberately tantalizing him with water placed in such a manner he couldn’t drink from. When left alone in his cell, he died from severe injuries. And the tragedy was many Americans at the base knew he was innocent.
Now, a crowd of more than 1,000 Afghans gathered outside Bagram chanting "Die America!" They threw stones at a passing convoy of US military vehicles and attempted to batter down the camp gate. The protestors also threw stones into the compound of the air base. Afghan guards had to use sticks to drive back the mob while other troops fired into the air.
The rioting was in protest against the detention of eight villagers at the base.
One of the protestors said "We have supported the Americans for years. We should be treated with dignity. They are arresting our people without the permission of the government. They are breaking into our houses and offending the people. We are very angry.”
Related posts:
The Tragedy of an Afghan Taxi Driver
The New Gulag Archipelago!
I am sure the Afghans will now enjoy Taliban Kempetai.
ReplyDeleteYou are truly mostrous...no wonder la Monsterball
DeleteNot a single word about these American monsters from the "land of free and home of brave " hehehe. Worse than the Talibans, worse than ISIS...no wonder la the CIA took like ducks to water training the terrorists and provided them funding...birds of the same feather....one more word of Human Rights from these AmeriKKKan bastards ! wanna puke !
All war or peace time atrocities must be investigated and criminals punished.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-55794071
QUOTE
'Their goal is to destroy everyone': Uighur camp detainees allege systematic rape
By Matthew Hill, David Campanale and Joel Gunter
BBC News
2 February 2021
Women in China's "re-education" camps for Uighurs have been systematically raped, sexually abused, and tortured, according to detailed new accounts obtained by the BBC.
The men always wore masks, Tursunay Ziawudun said, even though there was no pandemic then.
They wore suits, she said, not police uniforms.
Sometime after midnight, they came to the cells to select the women they wanted and took them down the corridor to a "black room", where there were no surveillance cameras.
Several nights, Ziawudun said, they took her.
"Perhaps this is the most unforgettable scar on me forever," she said.
"I don't even want these words to spill from my mouth."
Tursunay Ziawudun spent nine months inside China's vast and secretive system of internment camps in the Xinjiang region. According to independent estimates, more than a million men and women have been detained in the sprawling network of camps, which China says exist for the "re-education" of the Uighurs and other minorities.
Human rights groups say the Chinese government has gradually stripped away the religious and other freedoms of the Uighurs, culminating in an oppressive system of mass surveillance, detention, indoctrination, and even forced sterilisation.
The policy flows from China's President, Xi Jinping, who visited Xinjiang in 2014 in the wake of a terror attack by Uighur separatists. Shortly after, according to documents leaked to the New York Times, he directed local officials to respond with "absolutely no mercy". The US government said last month that China's actions since amounted to a genocide. China says reports of mass detention and forced sterilisation are "lies and absurd allegations".
First-hand accounts from inside the internment camps are rare, but several former detainees and a guard have told the BBC they experienced or saw evidence of an organised system of mass rape, sexual abuse and torture.
Tursunay Ziawudun, who fled Xinjiang after her release and is now in the US, said women were removed from the cells "every night" and raped by one or more masked Chinese men. She said she was tortured and later gang-raped on three occasions, each time by two or three men.
Ziawudun has spoken to the media before, but only from Kazakhstan, where she "lived in constant fear of being sent back to China", she said. She said she believed that if she revealed the extent of the sexual abuse she had experienced and seen, and was returned to Xinjiang, she would be punished more harshly than before. And she was ashamed, she said.
.....cont..
...cont
ReplyDeleteIt is impossible to verify Ziawudun's account completely because of the severe restrictions China places on reporters in the country, but travel documents and immigration records she provided to the BBC corroborate the timeline of her story. Her descriptions of the camp in Xinyuan county - known in Uighur as Kunes county - match satellite imagery analysed by the BBC, and her descriptions of daily life inside the camp, as well as the nature and methods of the abuse, correspond with other accounts from former detainees.
Internal documents from the Kunes county justice system from 2017 and 2018, provided to the BBC by Adrian Zenz, a leading expert on China's policies in Xinjiang, detail planning and spending for "transformation through education" of "key groups" - a common euphemism in China for the indoctrination of the Uighurs. In one Kunes document, the "education" process is described as "washing brains, cleansing hearts, strengthening righteousness and eliminating evil".
The BBC also interviewed a Kazakh woman from Xinjiang who was detained for 18 months in the camp system, who said she was forced to strip Uighur women naked and handcuff them, before leaving them alone with Chinese men. Afterwards, she cleaned the rooms, she said.
"My job was to remove their clothes above the waist and handcuff them so they cannot move," said Gulzira Auelkhan, crossing her wrists behind her head to demonstrate. "Then I would leave the women in the room and a man would enter - some Chinese man from outside or policeman. I sat silently next to the door, and when the man left the room I took the woman for a shower."
The Chinese men "would pay money to have their pick of the prettiest young inmates", she said.
Some former detainees of the camps have described being forced to assist guards or face punishment. Auelkhan said she was powerless to resist or intervene.
Asked if there was a system of organised rape, she said: "Yes, rape."
"They forced me to go into that room," she said. "They forced me to take off those women's clothes and to restrain their hands and leave the room."
Some of the women who were taken away from the cells at night were never returned, Ziawudun said. Those who were brought back were threatened against telling others in the cell what had happened to them.
.....cont
...cont
ReplyDelete"You can't tell anyone what happened, you can only lie down quietly," she said. "It is designed to destroy everyone's spirit."
Mr Zenz told the BBC that the testimony gathered for this story was "some of the most horrendous evidence I have seen since the atrocity began".
"This confirms the very worst of what we have heard before," he said. "It provides authoritative and detailed evidence of sexual abuse and torture at a level clearly greater than what we had assumed."
The Uighurs are a mostly Muslim Turkic minority group that number about 11 million in Xinjiang in north-western China. The region borders Kazakhstan and is also home to ethnic Kazakhs. Ziawudun, who is 42, is Uighur. Her husband is a Kazakh.
The couple returned to Xinjiang in late 2016 after a five-year stay in Kazakhstan, and were interrogated on arrival and had their passports confiscated, Ziawudun said. A few months later, she was told by police to attend a meeting alongside other Uighurs and Kazakhs and the group was rounded up and detained.
Her first stint in detention was comparatively easy, she said, with decent food and access to her phone. After a month she developed stomach ulcers and was released. Her husband's passport was returned and he went back to Kazakhstan to work, but authorities kept Ziawudun's, trapping her in Xinjiang. Reports suggest China has purposefully kept behind and interned relatives to discourage those who leave from speaking out. On 9 March 2018, with her husband still in Kazakhstan, Ziawudun was instructed to report to a local police station, she said. She was told she needed "more education".
According to her account, Ziawudun was transported back to the same facility as her previous detention, in Kunes county, but the site had been significantly developed, she said. Buses were lined up outside offloading new detainees "non-stop".
The women had their jewellery confiscated. Ziawudun's earrings were yanked out, she said, causing her ears to bleed, and she was herded into a room with a group of women. Among them was an elderly woman who Ziawudun would later befriend.
The camp guards pulled off the woman's headscarf, Ziawudun said, and shouted at her for wearing a long dress - one of a list of religious expressions that became arrestable offences for Uighurs that year.
"They stripped everything off the elderly lady, leaving her with just her underwear. She was so embarrassed that she tried to cover herself with her arms," Ziawudun said.
......cont
TS, I started to publish all your comments but after releasing you're just spamming to block out other commentators, I have stopped your mere reproduction of lengthy media pieces
DeleteThat is NOT the way to make comments at a blog - if you want to bring to our attention a lengthy piece just add its link or links, but your method is definitely not way, to wit, the reproduction of the piece a la "War & Peace" or "Romance of the 3 Kingdoms"
BBC News - 'Their goal is to destroy everyone': Uighur camp detainees allege systematic rape
ReplyDeletehttps://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-55794071
All inhumanity against fellow human beings should be condemned, including CCP Kempetai.
Don't just selectively pick on Yanks only.
Many people couldn't understand why the Taliban, the al-Qaeda could continue to exist in Afghanistan despite their known & published atrocities.
ReplyDeleteHave they ever thought for a second that these resistant fighters exist bcoz of the appearance of the foreign forces?
Yes, there were internal conflicts due to ideological crashes, political gameplay & greedy warlords strengthening their turf. But all these skirmishes were localised with limited appeals & deaths!
The moment the foreign military forces got involved the total scenario on the ground changed.
Competiting foreign countries began to take local sides by supplying weaponry, usually more lethal & massive, which were unavailable to those local warring thugs. Death toll increased many folds as the result.
The foreign soldiers also created their own atrocities inflicted upon the locals. Battle always forced a grain of inhumanity amongst the fighters.
The unfortunate bystanders became victims of not their choices. Many of them turned radicals when their own personal creul experiences induced them to join the other radicals to fight the local govt whom they concluded in collusion with foreigners.
The Afghan might go through a painful period whose duration depends upon the sincerity of the foreign military withdrawals. This is the cumulative results of yrs foreign military aids for the local warlords. They have been fed enough to grow their territorial thirsts. Many battles would endure until their weonponry resources wear out w/o supplies.
Only then the reduced scale of casualty due to reduced weaponry & battle fatigue would eventually bring a skimmer of hope for local peace. Perhaps too there will be sensible Afghan rises up to change the whole scene!
Leave the local conflicts to the licals to solve them out themselves!
Is this not what u Yankee Doodle ever want in yr f*cked persuade of superfluous peace & humanitarianism?
Blurred mfers, while u r enjoying yr c&p farts, have u paid any attention to the names of victims quoted in the bullshitting broadsheet Corp?
ReplyDeleteDo a googling of some of these names & record the numbers of times they appeared & the appearing timestamps.
Wakakakakaka….
ALL of them have been repeated ad nauseam in ALL BBC reports as if there were no new victims to be located. The funnest parts r the contradicting dates & localities mentioned by some of the alleged victims - to the extend of if fabricating death of father/husband & names son/daughter & relatives!
BBC should be professional in its fake news fabrications. Yet it isn't!
Have u forgotten that BBC runaway china-based reporter to Taiwan after been caught photoshoped his news photo about Xinjiang 'concentration' camp?
Caught red-handed many times & yet BBC still games on playing, with the helps of pommie as slickers, like u!