‘The War on Terror Is Not Working’

Amnesty International says governments who fight terror become guilty of human-rights abuses

The human-rights advocacy nonprofit documented the doings of 177 terrorist organizations—or, as they describe them, “armed groups”—in 65 countries over four years. The findings were simultaneously predictable and counterintuitive: while human-rights abuses were committed by 69 percent of these groups, Amnesty concludes that governments combating them perpetrated many of the same violations—torture, sexual abuse, rape.

The annual report also finds that more than half (54 percent) of identified terror groups have killed civilians over the last four years. Twenty percent of the groups committed rape and other sexual violence—but so did 28 percent of governments. One in five armed groups used child soldiers. And with reports that the still-unfolding Abu Ghraib prison scandal in Iraq may have involved more abuse (and consent from higher levels) than already made public, Amnesty concludes that governments in 36 percent of the countries where armed groups were present used torture; more than a quarter (28 percent) used incommunicado detention. At the same time, government-sponsored abuse is often justified as integral to initiatives in the U.S.-led “war on terror,” according to Amnesty executive director William F. Schulz.