“Her thoughts on women and torture went like this. Women in the West could choose to do anything that they wanted. So why would they choose to do that? …. She went through that long list of thoughts, examining each one from different angles. After that she started to wonder whether she would make a good torturer. Which led her to wonder what sort of information could she want so badly that it would deliberately make her hurt someone.” (pg 84)
Parvana’s erratic schedule of sleep management, stress positions and access to food made me feel emotionally distraught and exhausted. The brick thrown at the school, the hateful posters in town, the men gathering around Parvana and her mother, the newspaper stories of the Taliban burning down schools, the American personnel’s visit at the Academy, Parvana’s interrogation, and the bombing of the base also heightened the gravity of living in a war zone. As a reader, I was surprised and confused by her focus on female torturers. As I reviewed the text I realized that I had missed Parvana’s reference to the treatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib.
Abu Ghraib. 2004. Iraq.
Certainly photos and stories from Abu Ghraib would instill fear of what women in the military could possibly do if driven. Parvana indicates that she could understand and fears abuse from men because she has been hit by men from the Taliban and men in the community before. But women inflicting pain and suffering on other women? The most notorious women in the case were Brigadier General Janis Karpinski and Lynndie England. Karpinski was the commander in charge of prisons in Iraq during the inhuman and torturous treatment of the inmates at Abu Ghraib and private Lynndie England, the woman in many of the dehumanizing and cruel photos.
Private Lynndie England was sentenced to three years. | The "Vietnam" stress position used for interrogation involved standing on a box for an extended period of time hooked up to wires with the threat of being electrocuted if you fell. | "The Humanity of Americans" protest in Jordan using photos from Abu Ghraib. Specialist Sabrina Harman poses by a corpse. |
The Brigadier General in charge of Iraqi prisons had wanted to be in the military since she was five. She was a successful business-woman in the United States and a reservist with no experience in prisons or prison management. Many of the soldiers brought to Abu Ghraib were also reservists eager to prove themselves and most did not have any experience in prisons.
Indeed, the military personnel sent into Abu Ghraib were untrained and unprepared for the circumstances they encountered there. The prison was attacked daily and the access road to the prison was extremely dangerous. Interviews with men and women stationed there confirm that conditions at Abu Ghraib negatively affected them physically, emotionally and mentally. Furthermore, their actions appeared to be acceptable because so many other people were participating in the photography, and the dehumanizing and cruel treatment of detainee’s.
Some men and women interviewed also argued that they accepted the interrogation strategies because they became numb to the realities of their daily job in addition to being extremely angry at the Iraqi’s for the injustices of 9/11.
As in the case of Abu Ghraib, many of the detainees were believed to be terrorists, members of the Al-Qaeda or somehow connected to the 9/11 attacks therefore any and all information was supposed to be extracted at any cost. As hardened criminals capable of extreme actions it was appropriate to use extreme measures to gather information. As also seen in My Name is Parvana the superiors want results and the military personnel must comply by gathering all information about terrorist activities.
Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, as well as General Sanchez and General Miller had ordered the interrogations and had drafted documents outlining the lengths of torture, duress and humiliation that prisoners could be subjected to under the Geneva Convention because terms such as “severe” were ambiguous and subjective. Military personnel sent reports to the United States informing them of the conditions of Abu Ghraib and the treatment of detainee’s. In fact, Charles Graner, the man with the largest sentence for his actions at Abu Ghraib, had recently received written praise for his performance and was awarded commendation a few months before being charged and convicted.
I do not believe that there is an excuse for violence or dehumanization, but I also believe that many of these reservists serving as prison guards did not dream of becoming torturers. So why does Ellis engage in a discussion of female torturers? How does this develop the theme of women, women’s rights and women’s education? How does this develop the varying perspectives of American involvement in the Middle East?