function, or even death.” Later that year, in December, the Department of Defense’s general counsel, William J. Haynes II, sanctioned coercive interrogation, known as Counter-Resistance Techniques, exclusively for Guantanamo’s interrogators. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld later approved the techniques contained in the Haynes memo. Additional memos and directives authorizing US forces to use coercive interrogation emerged after 2002.15
It is possible that there were other memos that haven’t been made public, authorizing troops in Afghanistan to apply torture or abuse during 2002. Perhaps there is proof—through memos, verbal orders, or military directives—that senior officers directed soldiers to rough up detainees and even outlined the techniques that troops could employ. That such evidence exists has been a common belief among those who have researched and read about US torture.
“There seemed to be a regimen or a system in place where prisoners were routinely roughed up as a matter of policy,” observed a human rights researcher I knew who had interviewed dozens of former detainees from Bagram and Kandahar. “Someone had to issue an order or directive. American soldiers just don’t do that sort of thing on their own.”
To date, no evidence has been found that senior military commanders issued explicit directives to soldiers in Afghanistan to abuse and torture detainees during the time Habibullah and Dilawar were in US custody. According to Reed College professor and noted torture expert Darius Rejali, high-ranking officers and government officials typically have not ordered torture policies in most documented cases of torture. Instead, in most historical cases, “torture began with the lower downs, and was simply ignored by the higher ups.”16
If the cases of Habibullah and Dilawar mirror the same pattern of guidance and leadership (or lack thereof), they force us to ask: How do we account for cases in which troops lacked directives and still committed abuse? It is too easy, and sometimes inaccurate, to claim that heated combat operations lead to torture. So what happened?
It’s hard to pinpoint exactly when US torture and abuse first emerged during the war on terror or to determine who first planted the seed—either with respect to the conditions in Afghanistan or the origins of the techniques themselves.
Chris Mackey, an Army interrogator who served in Afghanistan during the early years of the war and chronicled his experiences in his book The Interrogators, offers one of the few glimpses into this period.17 Mackey and his interrogation unit started out in Kandahar during early 2002. It was the first time most of them had actually performed realworld interrogation work. Like other forces, they had to hastily learn about their adversary in order to conduct intelligence operations. It demanded hard work and long hours of study. Understanding the war and their enemies was confusing, and they grew even more frustrated through repeatedly questioning detainees who misled them.
“The interrogators were swimming in deceit, all day every day,” wrote Mackey.18 But once his unit transferred to Bagram in the spring of 2002, it encountered a far more hostile prison population. “And the interrogators’ hostility toward them increased in turn.”
Mackey wondered how this hostility would affect his work as an interrogator, and how the antagonistic environment would generally alter his troops’ outlook and behavior toward their detainees. “It made me wonder sometimes whether we were becoming like the troops in Vietnam who had become so prejudiced against the ‘gooks’ and ‘slopes’ and ‘Charlie,’ ” he mused.19
Mackey said that he and his fellow interrogators didn’t apply any kind of coercive techniques for most of his tour in Afghanistan. “But during the coming months in Bagram, a combination of forces would lead us—lead me—to make allowances that I wouldn’t have even considered in the early days at Kandahar,” he admitted.20
They tinkered with their methods, making “tiny encroachments on the rules.” The first technique they used was sleep deprivation, though Mackey referred to it as the “adjusted sleep routine.” While in Bagram, Mackey worked with a seasoned military intelligence officer and interrogator named Steve (a pseudonym, as is Mackey’s name), who seemed to have special insight into how sleep deprivation affected human behavior.
“[Steve] talked in almost academic terms about patterns of prisoner behavior,” wrote Mackey. “He told us at one point that hard-core prisoners were unlikely to start cracking until about fourteen hours into an interrogation, and it was clear that he wasn’t just pulling this number out of his head.”21
Mackey further reasoned that Steve’s informed understanding about the successes of this technique gave it further legitimacy. But the interrogators also wanted to impress the special operations forces they worked with and sought to match their toughness to prove to them that they were equally capable of producing successful interrogations.22
Steve didn’t order harsh interrogation techniques, but implied that they should be used. “He made it clear to me,” wrote Mackey, “that we would be letting him down, letting down [the task force], if we were to take our foot off the gas pedal. There was clearly more pressure.”23
According to Mackey, in the summer of 2002, he and his unit met another intelligence officer at Bagram, a sergeant, who encouraged them to use the “adjusted sleep routine” more often.
“He was a very enthusiastic guy, always pushing us to be more aggressive in the booth,” remembered Mackey, referring to the interrogation booth. Once, while he was giving interrogators pointers in the ICE (Interrogation Control Element) the sergeant suggested they combine their regimen with other techniques—and try to frighten detainees in the process.
“ ‘You’ve got to scare them,’ he said, ‘get right up in their faces and monster them.’ From then on there was only one word that we used for keeping prisoners in the booth until they or their interrogator broke: monstering.”
The name stuck. And so did the continued use of monstering and other coercive techniques even after Mackey’s unit had left Bagram.
“By the time we left Afghanistan, we had come to embrace methods we would not have countenanced at the beginning of the war,” wrote Mackey. “Indeed, as we left, it was clear they did not regard this as a method of last resort but as a primary option in the interrogation playbook.”
Members of the Army’s 519th Military Intelligence Battalion succeeded Mackey’s unit in August 2002 and embraced the techniques that his unit left behind. What started out as “tiny encroachments on the rules” led to monstering. As Mackey further explained, his successors “took to monstering with alacrity … What was an ending point for us was a starting point for them.” He went on to say, “And during their stint in Afghanistan, they undoubtedly added their own plays, many of which were probably exported to Iraq.”
Mackey has tried to distance himself from a system of abuse that he and his interrogators put in motion, explaining that the rise in violence compelled other units to turn to these harsh interrogation techniques. After Mackey’s unit had left and was replaced by a new company, “the stakes got very high,” he said.24 “We went from losing three or four soldiers a month to scores of them. [The interrogators’ command] must have been under a tremendous amount of pressure.”25
Other soldiers have also maintained that the US and its allies sustained heavy attacks during this period in Afghanistan, and that this partly explains what drove troops to use torture during interrogation. But this justification doesn’t square with the facts.
The rate of attacks on US forces in Afghanistan during 2002 in general—and especially during the latter part of that year—remains uncertain. But the military has provided information about the number
