Prisons and Radicalization

It makes me wonder, which insurgency were we trying to counter? Perhaps the assumptions that guided our thinking were off from the beginning - Abu Ahmed and the network he belongs to seem to have had a different insurgency in mind, one that in retrospect almost makes our efforts conducive to their goals.

As a lowly platoon leader patrolling sw Baghdad all those years ago, i never quite understood what would happen to a detainee once he passed through my hands. There was always the Iraqi Army option of handing them over lest they were on one of our bolo lists, but even that didn't make sense as the Iraqi intentions with detainees could hardly be trusted.

The whole detainee thing turned us into the police. Problem is we didn't see ourselves as the police, so we became a "special police". So on the one hand we were never permitted or charged with policing to maintain order, whereby we would have, for better or for worse, established ourselves in the communities on a more meaningful basis than "security". On the other hand we were expected to act as the SWAT team prosecuting our intelligence driven "targets". Except for the clearing operations, most of us were that most of the time. So while Iraq had a massively effective SWAT police presence, it had next to nothing where it came to common policing that could enforce order.

It seems to me at times that we replicated the entire War on Drugs paradigm in Iraq. And just like the war on drugs, it was an endless whack-a-mole game where you only whacked the mole that got too big for our tastes. We never "rooted out" extremists from their communities. We never demanded the people believe something. We never expected the people to respect us except in the most banal and pointless "I'm here to help so don't screw with me please" a la Gen. Mattis (PBUH) sense. The people could come to us for nothing worth having. So we only attracted the opportunists, a few idealists, and we only did that with blunt money. And the alternative, Iraqi Government, was never credible except with the opportunists and the idealists. It's almost like we replicated the war on drugs AND our own political system.......perhaps these two things are so deeply rooted in us that only conscious effort to cast them off could have ever worked.

What many Americans and many US military could not understand while in Iraq is the concept of detaining of civilians of what was called "military aged males". By the way even Abu Ghraib had a juvenile section of approximately 400.

Captured ie "detained" whether through raids before during or after firefights, by flash checkpoints and or regular checkpoints, at the points of IEDs that had exploded, on patrols and just about anywhere else US military came into contact with Iraqis.

In 2005, initially the detained Iraqis flowed from the BCTs to Division Interrogation Facilities and then on to Abu Ghraib--this was changed in April 2005 and the BCT was allowed to hold detainees and then move them onto Abu G.

Here starts the problem---the BNs had their own insurgents they were chasing as well as did the BCT so any number of detainees would end up at the Brigade level to be either released back out and or sent to Abu G.

Needless to say the large majority were in fact in the wrong place at the wrong time--but the BCTs had no real incentive to release out and many "non insurgents" were moved onto Abu Ghraib simply because the BCTs could not figure out if the individual was an insurgent or not---following the motto---"let Abu G figure it out"--and actually Abu G could not often figure it out as well because while in theory a Corp level facility there was little to know real intelligence support from the national level up through the end of 2006 and it did not improve much in the following years.

At the height of the fighting and ethnic cleansing we held over 25-30K detainees and I would venture a guess that 80-85% were wrongly detained but a large number of them became insurgent fighters and or logistics supporters after they were released.

Even if it was determined at Abu G that individual was the wrong person at the wrong time and place it could take up to 18-24 months to get them released and there was no "compensation" paid to them for an improper arrest and detention.

So not only did we give the AQI and Sunni insurgent groups which were recruiting and training in say Abu G a free reign and we never knew it or even better we might have assumed it was ongoing but as long as the detainees were quiet "who cared" was the general attitude.

We drove a large number of those illegally detained initially at the BCT levels straight into the arms of AQI and the other Sunni insurgent groups.

At my BCT level we were able to defuse a lot of the initial angry of those detained for nothing by paying them 5 USD per day while they were in the detention facility which meant they went home with money in their protect and did not seem to mind the detention because it paid out in the end and many were unemployed so it was a good amount to take home.

Word also got out that we were paying for wrongful detention and as a whole many Iraqi's were not so angry when they came in as they had already heard about being paid and then released out.

In the end we had to stop the program and the State Department in Baghdad got bent out of shape and forbid the BCT from further payments.

So again our entire detainee/detention/arrest process created far more insurgents based on our own actions --not by active AQI or other Sunni insurgent recruitment efforts.

There is a long running thread on the Forum (which started in 2006), entitled 'Capture, Detain and COIN: merged thread' and it has a number of pointers to the multitude of issues involved. On a quick scan it has earlier reports on Camp Bucca, reported (again) this week as a university for what became ISIS.

There are a number of examples where detained / imprisoned persons have turned against the use of violence; yes, maybe for tactical reasons, but many would argue it was a fundamental change and led to political agreement. Northern Ireland, South Africa, Italy, Eygpt and Spain are well known examples. Maybe Turkey and Israel / Palestine can be added.

It does not appear to have worked in Rhodesia / Zimbabwe, where leaders were detained and released at times - Robert Mugabe to cite the most well known prisoner.

I am sure that at times even in those nations where violence was to be rejected, there were long periods where prisons were universities for violence and Northern Ireland for long periods had considerable violence and protests inside prisons.

If de-radicalisation is to happen in prisons the big problem is WHO is going to do this? State agents are hardly likely to be credible. Even if staff can be found, WHAT message is acceptable to both the prisoners and the politicians / senior decision-makers?

From the cited thread there are some suggestions how to make progress and I list those that struck me:

1) reduce the numbers before prison, "screening"

2) keep prisons secure - far too many successful mass escapes

3) disruption and distance from families is a two-edged weapon

4) prisons are where prisoners LEARN regardless of what the guards do