 | | Karina Mateo with photos of her family. Her partner, Jermaine Rogers, was arrested in Kuwait in 2015 and accused of being a major drug trafficker, which he denies. He is still in prison and recently lost his last appeal.Eli Durst for The New York Times |
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After more than 19 years fighting the so-called war on terror, the United States has grown its presence to more than 80 countries around the world, with military bases in at least 78 nations and territories. As the military rapidly expanded for conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Pentagon hired hundreds of thousands of contractors — so many that a 2019 Congressional Research Service report estimated that they “frequently accounted for 50 percent or more of the total D.O.D. presence in-country” during those campaigns. |
Camp Arifjan in Kuwait is no exception. It is the largest military base in the U.S. Central Command, providing logistics support to operations in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and other parts of South Asia and the Middle East. Many of the contractors employed there are former service members seeking high-paying jobs and perform support functions, like I.T., food service or supply transport. And while the culture may feel very similar for them to their time in the service, there is one important exception: In Kuwait, defense contractors are not covered by the status of forces agreement — the terms under which American service members are protected from arrest and prosecution under Kuwaiti law. If a U.S. soldier is arrested in Kuwait, he or she must be handed over to U.S. custody. Contractors, however, have no such protections. |
Americans may find themselves incarcerated for breaking laws and facing lengthy prison sentences for misconduct not deemed particularly serious or even illegal in the United States. Worse, they may be arrested and charged for crimes they didn’t commit and then dropped into a legal system rife with human-rights abuses and corruption, dealing with officials who don’t speak English and left to hope that the United States will intervene on their behalf. |
That’s exactly what has happened to at least 28 defense contractors, many of whom are military veterans, who have been imprisoned in Kuwait over the last five years — some on trumped-up drug charges, pinned on them through forced confessions after being physically abused. All but three of the incarcerated Americans are Black; not one of them is white. And yet, before 2019 the State Department did little more than perform the occasional consular visit, despite the accusations and evidence of torture that officials repeatedly documented. |
Nicodemus Acosta, a Black Navy veteran who began contracting in Kuwait in 2016, was arrested one night after Kuwait police officers stormed his apartment and demanded that he tell them where he kept his drugs. He admitted to having two Mason jars of marijuana, which Acosta says he used recreationally. |
Acosta was taken in custody. Very quickly, the interrogation escalated to physical abuse — suspended from wooden poles by handcuffs, he was kicked and punched as the police demanded that he tell them where they could find more drugs and a drug dealer called Emperor. Other prisoners have reported enduring similar assaults. At least one other American had a stun gun jammed into his head until he began to foam at the mouth. After that, consular officials documented that he had “no clear grasp on reality” — yet they did not take action. By 2020, the State Department recorded at least nine “credible cases” of Americans being tortured. |
Doug Bock Clark spent two and a half years reporting on the men abandoned by the State Department for The New York Times Magazine. The story, which you can find in print in this Sunday’s issue, is based on dozens of interviews with the prisoners (over their contraband cellphones), State Department officials, Kuwaitis, the prisoners’ families and others. Clark also reviewed State Department records and Kuwaiti government files, including police reports. |
Early on after his arrest, Acosta kept expecting the U.S. Embassy in Kuwait to intervene and rescue him from prison, but that never happened. It took a week before he met with a consular official, who spent 20 minutes with him and then left. “The default assumption” among the consulate officers was that they “were picked up for some sort of just cause,” an American official told Clark. “Racism is on such a subconscious level,” the official said, acknowledging that some cases were not given the attention they warranted. “These guys are so much easier to forget about.” |
“The prisoners’ experiences reveal a failure by the State Department to urgently address systemic Kuwaiti mistreatment of Americans,” Clark writes. “Strikingly, they point to an unexpected cost of deepening inequality in the United States: As Americans increasingly chase prosperity abroad, they are plunging into risks they do not fully understand.” |
Lauren Katzenberg is the editor of the New York Times At War newsletter. |
Afghan War Casualty Report: October 2020 |
 | | Residents in Kabul gathered near the site of an attack on an education center on Saturday.Agence France-Presse — Getty Images |
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At least 369 pro-government forces and 212 civilians were killed in Afghanistan in October, marking the highest civilian death toll in a single month since September 2019. [Read the report.] |
Here are four articles from The Times that you might have missed. |
 | | Clearing the remains of a home in Ganja, Azerbaijan, this month after a strike from a Scud missile fired by Armenian forces.Ivor Prickett for The New York Times |
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“We became obsessed with our dreams instead of focusing on the possible.” While Azerbaijan is the main driver of the Nagorno-Karabakh war, analysts say, Armenia’s populist prime minister pushed the situation to the brink. [Read the article.] |
“Our interviews with victims and their families reveal the near complete failure of parties to the conflict to acknowledge harm caused.” For at least a year, the Afghan government has failed to provide funds, despite having the money for somewhere between 4,000 and 5,000 claims of civilian casualties in 2019 and 2020, Afghan officials and human rights groups say. [Read the article.] |
Al Qaeda and the Islamic State, as well as their global affiliates and supporters, “continue to generate violence around the world.” American drones and U.S. allies killed several Qaeda leaders and operatives in the past week. But the organization has “ingrained itself in local communities and conflicts,” according to the United Nations. [Read the article.] |
“While one guard pointed his Kalashnikov at me, the other took my glasses, notebook, pen and camera.” An Afghan man believed to be a former Taliban commander was arrested for the 2008 kidnapping of the Times journalist David Rohde and two others. [Read the article.] |
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