The Salvador Option

Here's a scary story well worth following.

According to a recent Newsweek article, Pentagon officials are considering applying a desperate and sinister new approach to the war in Iraq. It is called "the Salvador option", and involves training Kurdish and Shiite fighters to kidnap and kill Iraqi insurgents and their supporters in the style of the right-wing death squads that terrorized Central America in the 1980s.

I have included some interesting quotes from this breaking story, and links to the original Newsweek article and other interesting commentaries. At the end is a press release from Jennifer Harbury and the Stop Torture Permanently Campaign of the UUSC.

Quotes

"We have to find a way to take the offensive against the insurgents. Right now, we are playing defense. And we are losing." (Senior military official, to Newsweek)

"[The insurgents] are mostly in the Sunni areas where the population there, almost 200,000, is sympathetic to them." (Maj. Gen.Muhammad Abdallah al-Shahwani, director of Iraq’s National Intelligence Service)

"The Sunni population is paying no price for the support it is giving to the terrorists. From their point of view, it is cost-free. We have to change that equation." (A Pentagon source)

"This is a perilous path to pursue. Trying to achieve democracy through death squads does, to say the least, seem counterintuitive." (David Corn, Washington editor of The Nation)

"If we are serious about freedom for Iraq, then we must, at all costs, protect its citizenry from all acts of torture, terror and assassination. Democracy imposed by us at gunpoint is poorly disguised tyranny indeed." (UUSC Stop Campaign)

"The Salvador option is of a piece with other policies suggesting how seriously the Bush administration has lost its way. The indeterminate jailing of hundreds of suspects without charge, the legalization of torture, and now the drift toward terrorism as a weapon against terrorism are all signs of an administration steadily brutalized by its own brutal and misguided war. For the United States to promote the Salvador option is an admission that our hopes and ideals have been defeated." (Editorial from the Rutland Herald)

"I'm afraid I don't have any information for you." (Sean McCormack, a White House special assistant who handles national security matters, to CNN's Wolf Blitzer, when asked about the White House reaction to the Salvador option.)

Read the Newsweek article

Read David Corn's Commentary

Read the Rutland Herlad's Editorial

UUSC STOP Campaign Statement on 'Salvadoran Option'

WASHINGTON, Jan. 11 /U.S. Newswire/ -- The following was released today by The UUSC Committee on the "Salvador Option" proposed by the Pentagon:

"The Unitarian Universalist Service Committee (UUSC), wishes to express its profound opposition to the "Salvador Option" now proposed by the Pentagon for utilization in Iraq. We remember with great clarity and pain the horrors inflicted upon the people of Central America by the U.S.-backed death squads throughout the 1980s. This shameful and deadly chapter of our history must never be repeated.

"If we are serious about freedom for Iraq, then we must, at all costs, protect its citizenry from all acts of torture, terror and assassination. Democracy imposed by us at gunpoint is poorly disguised tyranny indeed. On moral grounds alone, we must categorically reject the use of U.S.-sponsored death squads. Torture and terror by proxy is still torture and terror.

"The devastation inflicted by the U.S.-backed army death squads in Central America is well documented. In El Salvador during the 1980s these units were responsible, for example, for the murders of Archbishop Oscar Romero and tens of thousands of civilians, including union members, peasant leaders, physicians, and anyone working with the poor. In Guatemala, the 200,000 victims of the army and its death squads included Bishop Juan Gerardi and Rosario Godoy de Cuevas, a young mother raped and killed in 1985 together with her 19-year-old brother and two- year-old son. The baby's fingernails were torn out as a warning to others. The U.S. support for the Guatemalan death squads was sharply criticized by the U.N. Truth Commission report in 1999. In both countries, civilian institutions were dangerously weakened, and the rule of law was lost. Can we seriously call these results the building blocks of democracy for Iraq?

"Engaging in death squad activities is not merely immoral but also highly illegal. Such acts are prohibited by numerous international treaties, including the Convention Against Torture, the Third and Fourth Geneva Conventions (which protects civilian saboteurs), the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The right to life, freedom from torture and kidnapping, and a fair trial are sacrosanct. Our domestic laws, including the War Crimes Act and the anti-torture statute confirm these values and make conspiracy to carry out such actions a felony.

"Last but not least, we must remember that violence will always beget violence. Already, the U.S. detainee abuses are unifying the Islamic world against us. Sadly, it is our young service men and women who may pay the price, but civilians are endangered as well. Sowing the seeds of hatred and terror will leave us with a long and bitter harvest indeed to reap."

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For information contact, Jennifer Harbury, 800-388-3920, 512-751-5852 (cellular), or at jharbury@hotmail.com. UUSC is an international human rights agency based in Cambridge, Mass., and directs the STOP (Stop Torture Permanently) Campaign.

Posted by elcanche at January 11, 2005 03:35 PM