Peacekeeping: Doing Easy Time

Archives

May 19, 2009: The U.S. has completed the training of about 2,500 Iraqi prison guards. This is part of the process where the U.S. is shutting down its own prison system, which held as many as 26,000 prisoners (in 2007). The U.S. is only holding 12,000 now, and is turning about 1,500 a month over to Iraq. The U.S. is also handing over its prisons.

The U.S. is trying to reform the Iraqi prison system. Most prisons in the region tend to feature brutal guards, lots of torture (some just to intimidate or punish, not extract information) and abysmal living conditions. Saddam's prisons were bad even by Middle Eastern standards. For example, when Iraqi prisons became too crowded, Saddam simply ordered the guards to take their least favorite prisoners out and kill them.

The U.S. training emphasized Western concepts of how you run a prison and treat prisoners. This is all alien stuff to most Iraqis, aside from the depictions of prisons they have seen in Western movies and TV shows. Some Iraqis have taken to these new (for Iraq) ideas, but many of the new prison guards are inclined to go along with whatever their supervisors ask of them. So far, this is not working out too well. The culture of corruption and cruelty in the Iraqi prison system is surviving despite strenuous American efforts to change it. Iraqi prisoners now consider their time in U.S. run prisons as the good old days.

 

X

ad

Help Keep Us From Drying Up

We need your help! Our subscription base has slowly been dwindling.

Each month we count on your contributions. You can support us in the following ways:

  1. Make sure you spread the word about us. Two ways to do that are to like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.
  2. Subscribe to our daily newsletter. We’ll send the news to your email box, and you don’t have to come to the site unless you want to read columns or see photos.
  3. You can contribute to the health of StrategyPage.
Subscribe   Contribute   Close