Since 2005, when a team of inspectors accidentally discovered an archive of Guatemala’s former National Police, experts have been painstakingly decoding and documenting decades of heinous crimes executed by Guatemalan state authorities. “The Atrocity Files: Deciphering the archives of Guatemala’s dirty war” (Harper’s December 2007), Kate Doyle’s personal account of the process, provides readers with a most formidable response to those who claim the Bush administration’s use of torture is a new phenomenon.
Doyle describes how the police covered their tracks, something to keep in mind when reading the news:
In addition to finding clues about the fate of some of the disappeared, archivists are beginning to understand the mechanisms of cover-ups – how the state was able to maintain deniability for so long about so many crimes. Sometimes the process was as simple as censoring from the books information that reflected badly on government institutions. In one of the large bound registries, for example (this one recording citizen complaints to the National Police), a “verbal order” made on April 2, 1982, by the chief of the Joint Operations Center – a unit that coordinated death-squad operations – directs that “all complaints from the public should be recorded as described, except when they are made against elements of the security forces, in which case they should not be mentioned in any document.” Other methods of concealment were more subtle. Anyone perusing the police documents quickly perceives a habit of writing that sounds strange to the ear-the persistent use of the passive voice to describe everything. Police do not kidnap suspects; a suspect “is kidnapped” (se secuestro). Security forces do not assassinate; the victim “is shot and killed” (se disparo y se murio). A police report from November 1983 reveals that this grammatical tic was a matter not of dialect but of deliberate choice when one agent, describing his surveillance outside the home of a suspect, slips uncharacteristically into the first person. “Approaching the house, I was able to observe a young woman,” he writes, “who, when she noticed my presence, jumped up and looked at me suspiciously, so I decided to retreat.” This section of the report is cordoned off in red ink and a note is written in the margin: “Never personify – the third person must always be used.”
IRAQ: Awoken to a New Danger
By Ali al-Fadhily and Dahr Jamail*
BAGHDAD, Jan 14 (IPS) – The newly formed ‘Awakening’ forces set up by the U.S. military are bringing new conflict among people.
For months now the U.S. military has been actively building what it calls ‘Awakening’ forces and “concerned local citizens” in an effort to reduce attacks on occupation forces.
Members of the forces, which comprise primarily former resistance fighters and tribal groups, are paid 300 dollars monthly. There are at present about 80,000 recruits to these groups. The U.S. military plans to cap the number at 85,000.
According to the U.S. military, 82 percent of the members are Sunni.
The forces, which are opposed by the Iraqi government led by U.S.-appointed Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, are also being strongly criticised by Sunni residents in Baghdad and other cities.
“The armed groups called ‘Awakening’ are now the only powerful players in many Sunni areas in Baghdad, and so they show their power the way others did,” Qussay al-Tai’i, a lawyer from Saydiya town southwest of Baghdad told IPS. “It seems that violence has become routine procedure for American soldiers, Iraqi security men and now the so-called Awakening fighters.”
Witnesses from the area who have recently fled to Baghdad told IPS that more than 200 residents have been arrested by Awakening fighters supported by the al-Muthanna battalion of the Iraqi army.
“They came and arrested my 14 and 17-year-old sons,” said Hajja Um Ahmed. “I told them my sons are only schoolboys who did nothing wrong, but they pushed me away.”