Under Contract by Noah Coburn

Author:Noah Coburn [Coburn, Noah]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Published: 2018-11-14T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 15

DETAINED

ROADBLOCKS AND SPEED BUMPS

The Afghan police station hallway was dimly lit, but it was difficult to tell whether this was simply a lack of electricity or was done on purpose to make the place feel more menacing. The glow from the office at the end of the dark hallway should have been inviting, but more so, it suggested that all those entering should abandon hope.

As I crossed international borders tracing the routes of the contractors and soldiers, the contrasts among countries became more striking. In some ways the borders mattered little, but in other ways, they greatly shaped the experience that these individuals had in Afghanistan. Citizenship was particularly important when it came to determining the extent to which your home country might (or might not) help you in moments of crisis.

For soldiers, it was almost always clear what role their governments had in protecting them legally within the country, which was done almost entirely through the military bureaucracy.1 Staff Sergeant Robert Bales, for example, who went on a rampage killing sixteen Afghan civilians near Kandahar, was sentenced to life in prison in a U.S. military court after being brought back home, despite calls by Afghan officials to have him tried in an Afghan court.2 Other cases involving U.S. soldiers were similarly adjudicated in the American legal system (usually in military courts). For civilians, their legal protections were less clear and less predictable.3

This was particularly true when contractors ran into problems with the Afghan police. The extent to which a country assisted a citizen who was detained really depended on the country and the person who was detained and if that person had any connections. Your experience of war depended on who you are and who you know.

As an American citizen, I was warned by the State Department that “no part of Afghanistan should be considered immune from violence, and the potential exists throughout the country for hostile acts, either targeted or random, against American and other western nationals at any time. . . . There is an on-going threat to kidnap and assassinate U.S. citizens and Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) workers throughout the country. Afghan authorities have a limited ability to maintain order and ensure the security of citizens and visitors.”4 I was encouraged to register with the American embassy if I insisted on working in Afghanistan, but beyond this, there was no promise of assistance other than being provided a list of lawyers if anything happened to me.5 In reality, there was much more help behind the scenes, but this was never transparent and it was difficult to tell how to access it. Americans did enjoy certain privileges that others did not, which become clear one of the times I was detained.

That early evening in 2006, I was driving with a group of international friends to a restaurant in the center of Kabul. Not long before, a couple of Westerners working for the United Nations had been accused by the Afghan government of illegally communicating with the Taliban.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.