definition which excludes the mass violations of human rights entailed in the forcible displacement of populations, or in the failure to provide physical security and access to basic education and health care, as described in Chapter 5. If these failings could potentially be considered a form of torture, this raised questions around who the actors might be, and how they could have organised and legitimised torture on such a grand scale. It also began to suggest that the protected villages, despite failing in the stated objectives of protection of civilians and counter-insurgency, might be serving a function after all.
When I then turned to the literature on torture I found analyses which, rather than privileging individual intention above all else, incorporated and integrated multiple elements, not least the impacts on victims but also the multiple actors and their roles, the benefits and functions of torture, and the mechanisms used to justify it. As such there were direct conceptual links to some of the ‘building blocks’ of a counter-narrative outlined above, indicating that a non-legal model of torture could and should incorporate elements from the existing literature on today's wars, not least considerations of political economy, social psychology, and discourse analysis.
In seeking to create a counter-narrative which would make explicit these linkages I initially focused on what the literature suggested about the following four elements: impacts of torture, actors, benefits and functions, and justificatory mechanisms.
Impacts
As Melamed et al. point out (1990), ‘Torture is defined not only by the acts committed, but also by the individual's response to these acts’. In other words, it is not always necessary to know who the torturer was, how exactly they did it, or what their precise intentions were, in order to be able to diagnose a victim of torture. In asylum determination procedures, for example, medical examination to corroborate the claims of torture victims may count for more than the account of torture itself.
Diagram 1.1 Key Elements in Identifying Torture
Some of the key states to be found in victims of torture, as summarised by Suedfeld (1990: 3), include debilitation, dependency, dread and disorientation.
Debilitation is the result of the captor deliberately inducing physical and mental weakness. The elements identified by Suedfeld as key to debilitating torture victims are ‘Hunger, fatigue, lack of medical attention, lack of shelter from the elements, lack of sleep, beatings’. Linked to debilitation is a strong element of enforced dependency, both material and psychological. The former arises when victims are unable to meet their own needs, and Suedfeld describes how psychological dependency is created when ‘friendships and lines of authority among prisoners are destroyed, and the prisoner is stripped of status and dignity’. Dread is described by Suedfeld as the state of mind induced in a victim who is kept ‘in a constant state of fear and anxiety’, and a key tactic in this is ‘keeping the prisoner in doubt as to when if ever he or she will be released’. Disorientation is induced by removing the victim's sense of control by making events unpredictable and incomprehensible, a process which seriously hinders the victims’ capacity to develop coping mechanisms (Suedfeld 1990, Melamed et al. 1990: 16). The main tactic to achieve this is to change the treatment of the victim ‘in unpredictable fashion’ (Suedfeld, 1990:3).
While debilitation, dependency, dread and disorientation are the states which torturers seek to induce, evidence of torture can also be found in symptoms which are less visibly linked to the act of torture itself. Thus victims may continue to exhibit symptoms related to their experiences long after the acts of torture are over. These would normally fall under the rubric of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), defined as the development of ‘characteristic symptoms following a psychologically traumatic event that is generally outside the range of usual human experience’.6 Symptoms of PTSD which are particularly prevalent in torture victims include ‘psychic numbing or emotional anaesthesia. There is loss of ability to feel close; frequently, intimacy and sexuality are not possible’ (Melamed et al. 1990: 15). Studies such as those of Peterson and Seligman (1983) show that the ‘uncontrollability of the onset and termination of victimization…best explains why some victims become numb and passive. They [Peterson and Seligman] believe that because the onset is unpredictable and the event inescapable, coping attempts are futile. Low self-esteem and self-blame are associated with this state’ (Melamed et al. 1990: 15–16).
Along with victims of abuse and oppression more broadly, torture victims often get blamed by others for their own misfortunes, and tend to search for their own responsibility (i.e. blame themselves) for what happened to them.
Actors
Having once identified various physical and psychological states and behaviours as possible impacts of torture, it is necessary to read backwards to find the actors involved. Much of the literature on torture and genocide draws on a model of perpetrators, bystanders and victims. The term perpetrator, as used by Staub, encompasses not only ‘the torturers themselves, but also those who are in charge of a system which perpetrates torture.’ (Staub 1990:106).
The bystander group includes all those who either observe directly or at least are aware that torture is being committed, but take no action to prevent or stop it, despite having some potential to do so. This inaction may be because they are intimidated as a result of being aware of the torture of others, or because they share some of the perpetrator group's values (Staub 1990, 1995, Hilberg 1992). Staub distinguishes ‘internal’ bystanders who are individual ‘members of society who are neither victims nor part of the perpetrator group’, from ‘external’ bystanders whom he considers to be ‘other nations’ who fit into an international relations model of nations as metaphorical individuals in a community of states.
Closer scrutiny of the relationship between the actions of perpetrators and those of ostensibly passive bystanders suggests that over time the distinction between the two can break down. As Staub himself points out, using the example of the doctors who help to keep torture victims alive, it is disturbingly easy for actors to shift between bystander and perpetrator positions: ‘although their participation may be seemingly humane, it usually serves the perpetrators not the victims – by helping to revive or keep alive victims for more torture or selecting methods of torture to minimize visible signs’ (Staub 1990: 68).
Futhermore, there is reason to suppose that some victims become perpetrators themselves – possibly against a less powerful third party – as a means of dealing with their situation. Gilligan, for example, argues that ‘The violent criminals I have known have been objects of violence from early childhood’ (Gilligan, 2000: 45). As such, in analysing torture, it is necessary to hold two viewpoints simultaneously; on the one hand the snapshot or cross-sectional view, in which the perpetrator-bystander-victim distinctions are clear, on the other the filmed or longitudinal view over time, in which individuals shift between roles or indeed experience several roles simultaneously.
Benefits and Functions
Staub makes a convincing case that, alongside its overt functions of coercing direct victims into particular behaviours (e.g. yielding a confession, handing over information about ‘rebel co-ordinators’), torture serves a psychological function for its perpetrators. He argues that rich and poor alike – when they experience ‘difficult conditions of life’ such as ‘severe economic problems, persistent and intense political conflict, and rapid, substantial social change’ – are liable to develop certain psychological needs. These include the need for a sense of security, a sense of ‘positive identity’ (both individual and group), ‘a meaningful comprehension of reality, a sense of how the world is ordered and of one's place in it’, and also a ‘connection to others’. Turning against another group is one of a number of processes whereby groups will seek to meet these psychological needs rather than addressing
