Gareth Porter, independent historian and journalist for IPS News, discusses his article “90% of Petraeus’s Captured ‘Taliban’ Were Civilians,” fact checking Afghan War statistics to prove US claimed gains were illusory; the maze of US, JSOC, NATO jails and prisons, Petraeus’s effective PR blitz in late 2010 that pushed back withdrawal to 2014 and beyond and the expectation for a summer drawdown.
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Alright y'all, welcome back to the show.
It's Anti-War Radio.
Gareth Porter's back on the line, independent historian and journalist for Interpress Service, writes for Antiwar.com as well, original.antiwar.com/porter, and you'll see his most recent article in our top news headlines today.
90% of Petraeus's captured, quote, Taliban, were civilians.
Welcome back to the show Gareth, how are you doing?
I'm doing fine, thanks.
That's good.
Bad news, this article you've been working on here.
Well, it's bad news for Petraeus.
At least one hopes that the word will get out sufficiently so that it will cause him some discomfort, particularly in light of the fact that he is due to become our new director of the Central Intelligence Agency.
Yeah, well, he'll be in charge of the review, I'm sure.
So yeah, I mean, this story basically reveals that Petraeus was more than disingenuous.
He was just outright dishonest in his initial set of figures released in August of last year, when he was determined to make an initial impact on the news media to convince them that we were making progress out there in the fight against the Taliban, he released a set of figures about the special operations forces, the night raids, and the results.
And he was saying that SOF raids had netted 365 Taliban leaders, meaning middle or high-ranking commanders, and he said that there were 1,355 rank-and-file Taliban who were captured, and another 1,000-plus killed.
So basically, it was impossible to fact-check the figures for the combination of killed and captured higher-ranking, supposedly higher-ranking Taliban, but it was possible to fact-check his figure for the total number of rank-and-file Taliban that he claimed had been captured, and that's finally what I was able to do in this story.
And what it turns out is that roughly 90 percent of the people he was claiming as Taliban rank-and-file troops were, in fact, simple civilians.
Well, and this is from the years between what and what?
Well, this is the 90-day period previous to August of 2010.
He was saying all that was done in just 90 days.
Now, later in the year, the folks working for Petraeus put out another figure.
They gave it to Bill Roggio, I think I'm pronouncing the name right, the pro-war blogger for the Long War Journal website.
He said that he was told by ISAF officials that this was early December of 2010.
He said that 4,100 rank-and-file Taliban had been detained, had been captured and detained.
And, of course, I was able to fact-check that because the document that the Task Force 435, which is responsible for detainee affairs in Afghanistan, put out an unclassified piece of paper, makes it clear that for the period that he's talking about, the first 11 months of the year, there were only 690 people admitted to the detention facility.
That means that basically, again, 80 to 90 percent of the folks who were claimed to be Taliban rank-and-file were simply civilians.
Well, and so what's the process for figuring out who's who?
Because Daphne Eviatar was on the show last week and she described the process as far below any global legal standard, any American one by far, maybe Cuba, either side of the wall, or Zimbabwe, a place like that.
Well, absolutely.
I've seen Daphne's very good study of the current situation regarding the legal process that, or what they call a legal process, that detainees are able to go through in order to challenge their status.
It's not really a challenge to their status.
It's simply having a review of their files by the military officers there at the detention facility.
And even though the process is far below any acceptable international legal standard for due process, as Daphne points out in her study, nevertheless, what I calculate based on the data that is in this unclassified piece of paper from the task force is that 20 percent of all of the detainees who passed through, who did pass through this main detention facility during 2010, were actually released because they couldn't possibly justify keeping them there.
There was simply not any real evidence against them.
And so this 20 percent release figure is part of the calculation that the total number of people who were set free, either within days because they were released after initial interrogation, or because their files were reviewed and they found they didn't have any evidence against them, they constitute 90 percent of the total number of people that they swept up in these special operations forces raids.
You talk about Parwan in here, and of course we hear about Bagram and then the real JSOC prison at Bagram.
I guess that's the the initial place where people are held there.
But how many different actual NATO jails or U.S. jails are there in Afghanistan?
Do you know?
I don't know that we know the exact number.
I mean, they are scattered around the country, of course, at forward operating bases.
That's where the initial interrogation takes place, and where undoubtedly, you know, mistreatment still is carried out, that abuse of prisoners and abuse of the of the detainees.
And so this all takes place within the first 15 days.
Now, are there cases where they violate that rule?
I'm sure it happens.
But it is absolutely a very clear-cut regulation that all detainees, all people who are who are detained even temporarily for a few days, must be passed back to the Parwan detention facility within 14 days or released.
And so whatever is being done outside that is a violation of U.S. regulations, U.S. military regulations in Afghanistan.
Well, and then probably in a lot of cases, released means turned over to whatever local Vichy puppets were propping up over there, some warlord in some district, right?
Well, this question of whether people who are released by the U.S. military after the initial interrogation are in fact then picked up by NDS has come up in discussions with people about my article.
Undoubtedly that does happen.
I don't know that it is a... that there's a system, a systematic process by which people who are released are turned over to the NDS.
There's no evidence that the NDS is processing that many people at all.
I think some of them are, but not that many.
So you think in most cases they are just set free?
In most cases they are set free, yes.
To join the resistance, most likely.
There's also instances where once they're at Parwan, where they are in long-term detention at Parwan and their files are reviewed, there are some cases where they really don't want to release them, but they can't justify keeping them at Parwan either, and so they do turn them over to the NDS.
This is well-documented.
Kate Clark talked about this in a paper that she wrote for the Afghan Analyst Network.
But in the piece of paper that I'm talking about from the task force, that is called transfer, not release, so it's a separate category.
Gotcha.
All right, well, we'll have to hold it right there and go out to break.
We're talking with Dr. Gareth Porter from Interpress Service and Antiwar.com.
Antiwar.com/Porter.
The latest piece is 90 percent of Petraeus' so-called Taliban were civilians.
Of course.
We'll be right back.
All right, y'all.
Welcome back to the show.
It's Antiwar Radio.
I'm Scott Horton.
I'm talking with Gareth Porter about his new piece at IPS News and Antiwar.com.
Ninety percent of Petraeus' captured Taliban were civilians, and it's all about how, well, according to this paperwork anyway, Petraeus must have known he was lying when he was claiming these high numbers of Taliban detainees, and now this was really all key to the media narrative that no longer are we going to have our army stumbling around like a broad sword.
No, sir.
We're going to use the Delta Force and the SEAL teams and the special forces, and we're going to go in there like a scalpel, and we're going to get those bad guys in these night raids, and the rest of our occupation troops are just to basically stand around and be traffic cops, provide local security, while the our elite special forces do the the surgical strike with the intelligence that leads to the victory, and this went on for a while, and people were buying it, and it was in great part based on things like these numbers you're referring to here that turned out to not be right.
This was of the essence of his media strategy, which as you exactly put it correctly, was to focus on special operations forces as these almost superhuman warriors who had the ability to sniff out exactly where the Taliban were and who they were, and just to go right in and catch them.
This was a revolutionary change in the situation, which according to the impression that Petraeus was creating in the media, really changed the whole complexion of the war, when in fact what was happening was, of course, the night raids were being stepped up all right.
They were being increased by a factor of six under a combination of McChrystal and Petraeus, but all they were doing was picking up a lot of people who were not actively directly involved in the Taliban operations and pissing off a lot of Pashtuns, a lot of Pashtun families, making more enemies, and so in the end it clearly has not made any fundamental change at all.
It simply deepened the hole in which the United States finds itself in Afghanistan.
Yeah, well, I mean, I'm reading McClatchy newspapers for those on, for historical record, decades from now they'll be listening to all of our interviews on this show here, Gareth, just so that they know after all this, the headline this week in the summer of 2011, or I guess it was last week for McClatchy newspapers, is, oh yeah, they've totally abandoned the coin doctrine at the military colleges and whatever.
Nobody really believes in that nonsense.
I guess it really, maybe the entire surge, like in Iraq, was really about us, believing there was some new strategy that made staying this much longer worth it.
Yeah, I mean, I think that that was the line, that was what McChrystal and Petraeus really wanted the American people to believe, right up until Petraeus actually got there and came to realize, I think, just how bad the situation was, and that counterinsurgency was not going to make the difference, you know, the idea of winning hearts and minds was really not going to happen.
And so he did whatever he could, which was to take advantage of this media hype around the SOF units and their night raids.
And I must say, you know, that he did a great job of it, and he took the news media by storm.
I mean, they basically lapped it up one after another in August, September, October, November of 2010, and placed him very well politically in order to put pressure on the administration to back off the idea of really rounding up the U.S. involvement militarily in Afghanistan by 2014, by the end of 2014.
Basically, it was during that period that Petraeus succeeded in turning the White House around and getting them to agree that we would continue to have a military presence right up to the end of 2014 and beyond, 2014 and beyond.
Well, for that matter, you know, the historians of 2011 can go back and listen to our interviews from 2008, 9, and 10, and see how all this played out exactly as you were describing it.
Well, I hope they do.
I hope the historians do pay attention to that source of documentation.
Yeah, which, by the way, at antiwar.com/radio and at scotthortonshow.com, there are more than 100, probably 125-something interviews of Gareth Porter now, dating from January 2007, and you can see why I have him on all the time.
It's because he knows the answers to all my questions, right, and everything.
Well, I hope I'm not suffering from overexposure here.
The people are getting tired of hearing my voice on your show.
Oh, no, no, no, it's not about that.
It's about the news and the analysis, you know.
I'm always on the edge of my seat.
I know the guys in the chat room love you, and the comment section too.
So, let's see where to go with this.
I guess, you know, supposedly a month from right now they're going to start drawing these troops down, and I guess they'll probably do a little bit of that for TV, right?
Well, I'm not sure what you mean by doing a little bit of that, but what is going to happen is the final, not the final, but a penultimate battle politically between Petraeus and the White House over the level of withdrawal.
I mean, it's clear that the White House wants to withdraw a very substantial number, and that they're aiming now at 30,000 troops to be withdrawn over the next year to 18 months.
That total figure may or may not be acceptable, Petraeus, but he wants to push back the date when the substantial withdrawals begin for as long as possible.
That's always been his MO, and it's very clear he's going to do that again.
So, so the credibility of Petraeus really is a question that should be in the spotlight in the coming few days before we get the decision from the White House on the level of withdrawal.
I mean, you know, as the next CIA director, as well as the guy who's, you know, really calling for keeping troops there for as long as possible at the highest possible level, you know, he needs to be asked about his, the credibility of what information he's given out to the public and is passing on to the White House.
Yeah, well, I don't expect that's going to happen.
I mean, maybe in the House, but he doesn't have to testify to the House.
No, I agree with you.
That's what should happen, but I don't think it will happen.
We're going to be treated to the same sort of political dynamics that we have for ever since the Obama administration came into office, which is that the news media is part of the game.
It's part of the political forces who put pressure on the White House to meet, to accommodate the interests of the national security state and, you know, making the news media really part of the national security state itself, the central element of the national security state.
Well, and it's bad politics to lose a war to the Taliban, you know?
Might as well just keep going forever as long as, you know, it's like the Israeli occupation of the West Bank.
They never killed that many of us at a time, so screw it.
We'll just, you know, keep going.
You know, I've just been rereading the account of the Obama administration's policymaking toward Afghanistan in Bob Woodward's book, Obama's Secret War.
Or is it War?
I can't remember.
War, I guess.
And what strikes me upon this rereading, particularly now, is the degree to which everybody in the administration, including those people who were against the troop surge in the White House, including Vice President Joe Biden, how much they bought into the fundamental argument from the military that, of course, we can't allow the Taliban to win because that would be to embolden the jihadists all over the world.
It's, you know, it's a very, I mean, this is an argument that we're all familiar with, but what I'm interested in here is the degree to which this tilted the policymaking process from the very beginning and how this whole argument is essentially nothing but a carryover from the Cold War.
You just substitute jihadists for the Soviet Union or communists and you get the fundamental rationale for Cold War/war on terrorism programs.
Yeah, same thing for Iraq, too.
Yeah, well, exactly.
I mean, the Iraq War, of course, being part of that whole deal.
Well, look, I got a biased opinion about this, but I think that really for Ron Paul, at least, it would be really easy to just say, oh, I don't care about that emboldening anybody.
I just want out of Afghanistan because it's the right thing and I always was against it anyway, and so who cares what they say if they call it a victory?
Forget them.
And the reason he would be right is that the folks in the military who put forward that bogus argument never considered the reality that what they were doing was, in fact, not just emboldening, but giving greater traction in the Islamic world to the jihadists.
They were giving them, they were handing them their best argument, as we talked about in a previous program.
Yeah, well, and just the very last one, KPFK, last Friday night, which you can find at kpfk.org or soon at antiwar.com/radio.
Thanks again for doing the show, Gareth.
You're the best, man.
My pleasure.
Thanks, Scott.
All right, everybody, that's the great Gareth Porter, IPSnews.net, antiwar.com/Porter.
See you tomorrow.
