US concerned over army’s human rights abuses in Swat

LAHORE: The military is the most powerful institution in Pakistan. Its cooperation is essential for the US war on militancy, especially in Afghanistan, where Western forces are battling an Afghan Taliban insurgency.

A September 10, 2009 cable called “US concerned about massive human rights abuses by the Pakistan Army” sent by ambassador Anne Patterson said, “The crux of the problem appears to centre on the treatment of terrorists detained in battlefield operations and have focussed on extra-judicial killing of some detainees.”

The cables also reveal that the American embassy had received credible reports of extra-judicial killings of prisoners by the Pakistan Army more than a year before the Obama administration publicly acknowledged the problem and before a video that is said to show such killings surfaced on the Internet.

The killings are another source of tension, complicated by American pressure on Pakistan to be more aggressive in confronting terrorists on its own soil.

In a September 10, 2009, cable labeled “secret/noforn”, meaning that it was too delicate to be shared with foreign governments, the embassy confronted allegations of human rights abuses in Swat and the Tribal Areas since the Pakistan Army had begun fighting the Taliban a few months earlier. While carefully worded, the cable left little doubt about what was going on. It spoke of a “growing body of evidence” that gave credence to the allegations.

“The detainees involved were in the custody of Frontier Corps or Pakistan Army units,” the cable said.

The Pakistan Army was holding as many as 5,000 “terrorist detainees”, the cable added, about twice as many as the army had acknowledged. Concerned that the US should not offend the Pakistan Army, the cable stressed that any talk of the killings must be kept out of the press.


(2010-12-2/dailytimes.com.pk)