The merchants of democracy and human rights!

As back as in April 1971 a young US Navy lieutenant and leader of Vietnam veterans against the war in a testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee put up a harrowing picture of war crimes committed in Vietnam. He also testified that those were not isolated incidents but the crimes were committed on a day to day basis at the full awareness of the officers placed over the perpetrators of the crimes. The obscure Navy lieutenant of 1971, now Senator John Kerry, also a democrat candidate to US presidency, told the committee on behalf of over 150 honourably discharged and some very highly decorated veterans the stories that at times "they had personally raped, cut off ears, chopped off heads, taped portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blew of bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in the fashion reminiscent of Gengis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stock and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam in addition to the normal ravages of war".

That was in Vietnam three decades ago, then came Afghanistan where in a war on terror soon after 11 September reckless arrest and illegal detention of anyone suspected of having Taliban or al-Qaida links became a routine procedure of the US occupation forces. Presently 60 Pakistanis captured on suspected Taliban/al-Qaida links continue to be held as detainees in Sharbaghan alone. However the total number of Pakistani detainees in all facilities reportedly add up to almost 500. They are neither convicted nor charged and have been held up simply on the suspicion that they would be able to provide information regarding Osama or Mullah Umar. They are yet to be given a legal hearing.

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The US forces operating in Afghanistan also arbitrarily detained civilians in separate detention facilities at Bagran, Kandahar and Jalalabad military bases. These frequent arrests of civilians and prolonged detention without informing the next of kin is a normal practice of the occupation authorities. Faulty intelligence led to most of the arrests where the civilians were detained indefinitely without charges. All prisoners languishing in the detention facilities in Afghanistan have absolutely no contact with any outside agency and human rights group. Worse still, some prisoners from these facilities are shifted to Guantanamo Bay by air from Pakistan's Kohat. At Guantanamo, the torture stories and denial of legal facilities are yet more horrifying. The data collected through private sources and journalists reporting from near camp X-ray in Cuba point to a sordid detail of the prisoners' abuse by their captors. It was all in the name of democracy, rule of law and human rights!

Now there is Iraq to undergo the same ordeals again in the name of freedom for people who suffered in an autocratic regime run by a cruel dictator, Saddam Hussain. In Iraq the US holds 8,000 prisoners in 14 different jails -- three prominent which are Abu Ghraib and Camp Crooper in West Baghdad and Camp Bucca near Umm Qsar which hold inmates for extended period. It is one of these prisons, at Abu Ghraib that photographs clearly depicting inhuman behaviour towords Iraqi prisoners were shot and then leaked, by a compassionate US sergeant, to the American media, which brought an international uproar against the US, the trader of human right and created an unprecedented outrage in the Arab world.

US Defence Secretary Ronald Rumsfeld, apparently caught unawares mumbled to insist that the pictures showing Iraqi prisoners being abused and tortured at the Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad was an aberration by a few soldiers and are not reflection of American values. But almost at the same time BBC reported of the Al-Wafd -- an Egyptian newspaper showing photograph of another incident where the US soldiers were shooting civilians from a helicopter in Iraq. Following this contradiction between Rumsfeld's claim and reality on the ground the Defense Secretary had to go through a six-hour grilling session and testify before the Senate Armed Forces Committee. Over the prisoners' scandal in Iraq, while some Democrats on Armed Services Committee called for his sacking, the Republicans backed him as had the President himself.

Donald Rumsfeld took the only viable course open to him: to tender an apology accepting "full responsibility for what he said" but remained circumspect on the question of resignation. It was, of course, followed up with the routine measures such as investigation and court martialling -- ostensibly to mollify American pride at being 'found out'.

But the prisoners' abuse in Iraq is too colossal to be hidden under rugs and its miasma too strong to be suppressed. The hollowness of US freedom and human right is indeed synonymous with American military presence in an occupied country. Can there be an end to this occupation? Even if there is one the leash will still be held by the same occupiers on some pretence or other. That is what American 'freedom or liberation' is -- as envisaged by her.

Brig ( retd) Hafiz is former DG of BIISS.