The Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC), formerly known as[1][2] the US Army School of the Americas, is a United States Department of Defense Institute located at Fort Benning near Columbus, Georgia, that provides military training to government personnel of Latin American countries.
The school was founded in 1946 and from 1961 was assigned the specific goal of teaching "anti-communist counterinsurgency training," a role which it would fulfill for the rest of the Cold War.[3] In this period, it educated several Latin American dictators, generations of their military and, during the 1980s, included the uses of torture in its curriculum.[4][5] In 2000/2001, the institute was renamed to WHINSEC.[6][7]:233
The US Army School of the Americas was founded in 1946. From 1961 (during the Kennedy administration), the School was assigned the specific Cold War goal of teaching "anti-communist" counterinsurgency training to military personnel of Latin American countries.[3] At the time and in those places, "communists" was, in the words of anthropologist Lesley Gill, "... an enormously elastic category that could accommodate almost any critic of the status quo."[7]:10
During this period, Colombia supplied the largest number of students from any client country.[7]:17 As the Cold War drew to a close around 1990, United States foreign policy shifted focus from "anti-communism" to the War on Drugs, with narcoguerillas replacing "communists".[7]:10 This term was later replaced by "the more ominous sounding 'terrorist'".[7]:10
In 1999, the School of the Americas website said in its FAQ section, "Many of the [School′s] critics supported Marxism -- Liberation Theology -- in Latin America -- which was defeated with the assistance of the U.S. Army."[3]
WHINSEC[edit]By 2000 the School of the Americas was under increasing criticism in the United States for training students who later participated in undemocratic governments and committed human rights abuses. In 2000 Congress, through the FY01 National Defense Act, withdrew the Secretary of the Army's authority to operate USARSA.[8]
The next year, WHINSEC was founded as a successor institute. U.S. Army Maj. Joseph Blair, a former director of instruction at the school, said in 2002 that "there are no substantive changes besides the name. [...] They teach the identical courses that I taught and changed the course names and use the same manuals."[1]
But in 2013 researcher Ruth Blakeley concluded after interviews with WHINSEC personnel and anti-SOA/WHINSEC protesters that "there was considerable transparency [...] established after the transition from SOA to WHINSEC" and that "a much more rigorous human rights training program was in place than in any other US military institution".[9]
Participation[edit]In 2004, Venezuela ceased all training of its soldiers at WHINSEC[10] after a long period of chilling relations between the United States and Venezuela. On March 28, 2006, the government of Argentina, headed by President Néstor Kirchner, decided to stop sending soldiers to train at WHINSEC, and the government of Uruguay affirmed that it would continue its current policy of not sending soldiers to WHINSEC.[11][12]
In 2007, Óscar Arias, president of Costa Rica, decided to stop sending Costa Rican police to the WHINSEC, although he later reneged, saying the training would be beneficial for counter-narcotics operations. Costa Rica has no military but has sent some 2,600 police officers to the school.[13] Bolivian President Evo Morales formally announced on February 18, 2008, that he would not send Bolivian military or police officers to WHINSEC.[14] In 2012, President Rafael Correa announced that Ecuador would withdraw all their troops from the military school at Ft. Benning, citing links to human rights violations.[15]
In 2005 a bill to abolish the institute, with 134 cosponsors, was introduced to the House Armed Services Committee.[16] In June 2007, the McGovern/Lewis Amendment to shut off funding for the Institute failed by six votes.[17] This effort to close the Institute was endorsed by the nonpartisan Council on Hemispheric Affairs, which described the Institute as a "black eye" for America.[18]
Criticism of WHINSEC[edit]Human rights violations by graduates[edit]WHINSEC has been criticized for human rights violations performed by former students of its predecessor, the School of the Americas.[1][29][30]
According to the Center for International Policy, "The School of the Americas had been questioned for years, as it trained many military personnel before and during the years of the 'national security doctrine' – the dirty war years in the Southern Cone and the civil war years in Central America – in which the armed forces within several Latin American countries ruled or had disproportionate government influence and committed serious human rights violations in those countries."[citation needed] SOA and WHINSEC graduates continue to surface in news reports regarding both current human rights cases and new reports.
Defenders argue that today the curriculum includes human rights,[31] but according to Human Rights Watch, "training alone, even when it includes human rights instruction, does not prevent human rights abuses."[29]
On the lessons taught at the School, former SoA direction of instruction Maj. Joseph Blair said, "The doctrine that was taught was that if you want information you use physical abuse, you use false imprisonment, you use threats to family members, you use virtually any method necessary to get what you want... [including torture] and killing. If there's someone you don't want you kill them. If you can't get the information you want, if you can't get that person to shut up or to stop what they're doing you simply assassinate them, and you assassinate them with one of your death squads."[32]
"Sources at the [US Army School of the Americas] say that when Honduran and Colombian soldiers go through the urban-combat exercise with blanks in their weapons, half the time the village priest (played by a US Army chaplain) is killed or roughed up," Newsweek reported.[33]
On September 20, 1996, the Pentagon was forced to release training manuals that were used at the US Army School of the Americas and distributed to thousands of military officers from eleven South and Central American countries, including Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, and Panama, where the US military was heavily involved in counterinsurgency. These manuals advocated targeting civilians, extrajudicial executions, torture, false imprisonment, and extortion.[34][35][36]
In "Teaching Human Rights Violations", a Washington Post editorial commented on its report, "US instructed Latins on Executions, Torture", "The US Army advocacy of terror methods reaches far beyond the question of whether or not the US Army School of the Americas ought to be shut down {"Army Instructed Latins on Executions, Torture", front page, Sept. 21}. It has to do with US complicity in human rights crimes."[5]
In "School of the Dictators", the editors of The New York Times commented, "Americans can now read for themselves some of the noxious lessons the United States Army taught to thousands of Latin American military and police officers at the School of the Americas during the 1980s. A training manual recently released by the Pentagon recommended interrogation techniques like torture, execution, blackmail and arresting the relatives of those being questioned. Such practices, which some of the school's graduates enthusiastically applied once they returned home, violate basic human rights and the Army's own rules of procedure. They also defy the professed goals of American foreign policy and foreign military training programs."[4]WHINSEC has said "that no school should be held accountable for the actions of its graduates."[31]
