Modernizing Repression: Police Training, Political Violence, and Nation-Building in the “American Century”

Abstract

Our police training program is a vital part of our effort to help less developed countries achieve internal security, which is essential if economic development is to help create viable free nations. For the first three days, the police beat me continuously. When I regained consciousness they beat me again. I hope we teach these guys more than just how to direct traffic. During the 2004 presidential election campaign, Vice President Richard Cheney called for the “Salvador option” in Iraq, implying the training of local paramilitary and police forces to “pacify” the insurgency and restore public order.4 As in El Salvador in the 1980s, where the CIA was implicated in the training of death squads, the results so far have been catastrophic. American-trained police have been infiltrated by insurgents and found responsible for a litany of human rights abuses, including participation in sectarian warfare, torture, and revenge killings. They have only added to the nation's growing anarchy and the suffering of its people, but further tarnished America's reputation.5 Though neglected in public debates and commentary, American strategy in Iraq—and its pitfalls—represents a stark continuity from the Cold War and imperial eras when the United States provided technical aid to local police and built up the penal apparatus of client regimes in order to promote social stability and export Western administrative systems.6 Presented to the public as humanitarian initiatives to strengthen democratic development, these programs fulfilled a less explicit agenda in securing the power base of local elites amenable to U.S. economic and political interests and contributed to extensive human rights violations. They also often backfired politically, breeding animosity and resistance and fuelling vicious cycles of violence.