- Note - The camp story is, indeed, an obvious propaganda
piece and ignores the searing inhumanity and human rights violations at
Guantanamo regarding the majority of older prisoners about which scores
of stories and reports have been written to date.
-
- Comment
- From Ted Twietmeyer
- tedtw@frontiernet.net
- 3-7-4
-
- Jeff - The story about camp Gitmo being almost like a
paradise, is clearly US propaganda via a UK mouthpiece. During WW2 it was
Tokyo Rose. Now it appears we use teenagers instead. The operative word
here is 'camp', not a stay at the Marriott.
-
- POW camps all through history have never been a paradise.
Snorkeling and swimming after very mild interrogation ? NO WAY.. It seems
everyone has forgotten that the few photos taken there, show prisoners
in orange uniforms, with mits covering their hands, and their entire heads
covered so they cannot see. All this in stifling summer, near equatorial
heat. That would quickly become torture for most anyone. And NO photos
ever came out, showing any kind of friendly, warm and cozy interrogation.
-
- So, now we see, in an *election* year for a new US dictator
(oops- president), how wonderful and great life in a POW camp is under
US govt. control. And since this supposedly comes from a young boy, that
is supposed to make it more believable.
-
- Is Bush getting desperate, or has the govt. taken to
brainwashing and using post-hypnotic suggestions on camp Gitmo 'graduates'
to make such places appealing ? To take a line from the movie Animal House
- 'A new low.' Maybe they should be renaming it 'Camp Gizmo.'
-
- ----
-
-
- Asadullah strives to make his point, switching to English
lest there be any mistaking him. "I am lucky I went there, and now
I miss it. Cuba was great," said the 14-year-old, knotting his brow
in the effort to make sure he is understood.
-
- Not that Asadullah saw much of the Caribbean island.
During his 14-month stay, he went to the beach only a couple of times -
a shame, as he loved to snorkel. And though he learned a few words of Spanish,
Asadullah had zero contact with the locals.
-
- He spent a typical day watching movies, going to class
and playing football. He was fascinated to learn about the solar system,
and now enjoys reciting the names of the planets, starting with Earth.
Less diverting were the twice-monthly interrogations about his knowledge
of al-Qaida and the Taliban. But, as Asadullah's answer was always the
same - "I don't know anything about these people" - these sessions
were merely a bore: an inevitably tedious consequence, Asadullah suggests
with a shrug, of being held captive in Guantanamo Bay.
-
- On January 29, Asadullah and two other juvenile prisoners
were returned home to Afghanistan. The three boys are not sure of their
ages. But, according to the estimate of the Red Cross, Asadullah is the
youngest, aged 12 at the time of his arrest. The second youngest, Naqibullah,
was arrested with him, aged perhaps 13, while the third boy, Mohammed Ismail,
was a child at the time of his separate arrest, but probably isn't now.
-
- Tracked down to his remote village in south-eastern Afghanistan,
Naqibullah has memories of Guantanamo that are almost identical to Asadullah's.
Prison life was good, he said shyly, nervous to be receiving a foreigner
to his family's mud-fortress home.
-
- The food in the camp was delicious, the teaching was
excellent, and his warders were kind. "Americans are good people,
they were always friendly, I don't have anything against them," he
said. "If my father didn't need me, I would want to live in America."
-
- Asadullah is even more sure of this. "Americans
are great people, better than anyone else," he said, when found at
his elder brother's tiny fruit and nut shop in a muddy backstreet of Kabul.
"Americans are polite and friendly when you speak to them. They are
not rude like Afghans. If I could be anywhere, I would be in America. I
would like to be a doctor, an engineer _ or an American soldier."
-
- This might seem to jar with the prevailing opinion of
Guantanamo among human rights groups. An American jail on foreign soil,
Guantanamo was designed, according to Amnesty International, to deny prisoners
"many of their most basic rights", which in America would include
special provision for the "speedy trial" of juveniles. But, seized
in the remotest wilds of violent Afghanistan, the boys knew practically
nothing of their rights, and expected less.
-
- They were also unaware that the American defence secretary,
Donald Rumsfeld, had described Guantanamo's inmates as "hard-core,
well-trained terrorists" and "among the most dangerous, best-trained,
vicious killers on the face of the Earth."
-
- Naqibullah and Asadullah were arrested one night in November
2002, in Musawal village, Paktia province, by around 30 American special
forces soldiers. More than 30 local men were also arrested, and remain
in Guantanamo.
-
- Naqibullah, the local imam's son, said he stumbled into
the raid while cycling from a friend's house. Asadullah is from a village
three days' walk away, in neighbouring Logar province, but was working
for a local farmer along with several men who were also arrested.
-
- It seems likely the Americans were looking for a local
commander, Mansoor Rah man Saiful, who had fought against the Taliban for
years, but joined the radical Islamists when America attacked Afghanistan.
If so, they were unsuccessful: Mr Saiful is still at large.
-
- The captives were taken to Bagram airbase, a short helicopter
ride away. Naqibullah grins as he mimes the Chinook's whirring rotary blade;
but he was less relaxed at the time. "It was terrifying, I didn't
know what was happening to me," he said, seated cross-legged in a
small reception room, cut into a thick fortress wall. "There were
many of us in a small cell. Some men were screaming to be let free."
-
- Naqibullah was interrogated every day at Bagram. "They
kept asking me, 'Do you know the Taliban? Do you know al-Qaida? Have you
given them shelter? Have you given them food?'," he said.
-
- "I told them, 'I don't know these people, and I
am too young to give anything to anyone without my father's authority'."
After two weeks, Naqibullah said, he was asked whether he had any objection
to being taken to "another place".
-
- "I said, 'What can I do? You will take me wherever
you want to'." That night, bound, blindfolded and fitted into orange
overalls, he was loaded on to a cargo plane and flown non-stop to Cuba.
Naqibullah's first 10 days in Guantanamo were the worst of his life, he
said. He was put in a tiny cell with a single slit-window as his interrogation
continued. Then everything changed. "I was taken to an American general
who said, 'We will educate you and soon you will go home'. And my situation
improved."
-
- Naqibullah, Asadullah and Mohammed Ismail were moved
into one large room, which was never locked. They were taught Pashto (their
own language), English, Arabic, maths, science, art and, for two months,
Islam. "The American soldiers ate pork but they said we must never
do that because we were Muslim," said Naqibullah. "They were
very strict about Islam."
-
- The boys played football every day, and sometimes basketball
and volleyball with their guards. Asadullah said his particular friends
were called Special Sergeant M and Private O - their real names were kept
from him. Officially, he was called Prisoner 912. "But my friends
called me Asadullah, which made me happy."
-
- The boys never spoke to Guantanamo's other prisoners
- "lots of Arabs and Afghans," according Naqibullah.
-
- Meanwhile, their own interrogation became a predictable
affair. "I said, 'Look, I don't anything about the Taliban',"
said Asadullah. "But anyway, the Taliban were the government so lots
of people worked with them. Just because you were Taliban it doesn't mean
you're a criminal."
-
- After five months, Naqibullah wrote home for the first
time. Taking this first letter, written on Red Cross notepaper, from his
pocket, he now reads it aloud. "My greetings to beloved family, to
my beloved father, to my beloved uncles, to my beloved cousins, to my beloved
brothers. I am in good health and happy. I am in Cuba, in a special room,
but it is not like a jail. Don't worry about me. I am learning English,
Pashto and Arabic." The next two lines of the letter were scrubbed
out by the Guantanamo censor. Asadullah said he couldn't for the life of
him remember what they said.
-
- Despite their gentle treatment, the boys were homesick.
"I was very sad because I missed my family so much," said Asadullah.
"I was always asking, 'When can I go home? What day? What month?'
They said, 'You'll go home soon', but they never said when."
-
- Meanwhile, the boys' parents were suffering agonies.
In Khoja Angur, Asadullah's village, the boy's mother describes how she
cried "every night thinking about my son."
-
- Covered entirely by a sheet of turquoise silk, she speaks
through a male relative while the Guardian's translator stares respectfully
at his feet. So conservative is Asadullah's society that his mother's name
is a family secret. "I prayed to God, I asked, 'Where is my son?',"
she continued. "He was just a boy, much too young to disappear on
his own."
-
- Asadullah was gone for seven months before his parents
discovered his whereabouts. For the first two months, his uncles and cousins
were afraid to tell his elderly father, Abdul Rahman, that he was missing,
believing the shock might kill him. Almost the entire male population of
Khoja Angur, a fortified mud-village, snowbound and ringed by icy peaks,
downed tools and went searching for the boy. "They went to Bagram,
but the Americans said they didn't know anything about him," said
Abdul Rahman, white-bearded and heavy-breathing. "They went to Logar
and Gardez, even to Kandahar, but no one knew about him."
-
- When Asadullah returned to Khoja Angur last month - at
a day's notice - the village elders gathered to ask how the Americans had
treated him. When he said they had treated him well, they ruled that the
matter was closed. "We have nothing against the Americans, they looked
after the boy. They taught him English and other things," said Haji
Mohammad Tahir, an elder of the village, gesturing to Asadullah's drawings
of the planets, which were proudly displayed on the floor.
-
- But, for Asadullah's father, the matter is not closed.
He borrowed several thousand dollars to support his relatives' families
while they looked for his son. To raise the money, he was forced to forfeit
his land. Now, his creditors come visiting every day to demand money that
he cannot repay, he said. His eldest son - a shopkeeper in Kabul - last
week cancelled his engagement, for want of $2,000 to pay the dowry. And
that is not Abdul Rahman's only concern. "I thank God that my son
has come back, but he has changed," he said. "He is impatient
and refuses to listen to his elders. He has grown disobedient."
-
- So, while Naqibullah is at home now, helping his father
in the fields, Asadullah is in Kabul, seeing if the UN will continue his
schooling. "There is no electricity and no clinic in my village. It's
a bit boring, nothing new happens there," he said, looking embarrassed.
-
- Loitering in Kabul this week, Asadullah came across an
American soldier. "I asked him, 'How are you, sir?'," he recalled,
grinning shyly. The soldier said he was well, and asked the boy what he
wanted. Asadullah replied: "Nothing, I was just asking," as the
American walked away.
-
- http://www.guardian.co.uk/guantanamo/story/0,13743,1163435,00.html
-
-
- Comment
Alton Raines
3-7-4
-
- There can be no doubt that atrocities have taken place
and are taking place at the hands of the US special forces in Afghanistan.
We already know about the tricky coloring of unexploded cluster bombs to
look exactly like food relief packages. We know how the US rounded up Afghanis
almost at random, men (and very young men) who are traditionally armed
to defend their property, homes, wives and livestock, under the ridiculous
umbrella of "enemy combatant" as carte blanche for a quick trip
to GITMO (if not into the back of a metal transport to die in the heat).
But I have to take exception with Mr. Twietmeyers obvious "Mooreism"
here... like the liar Michael Moore, Twietmeyer tries to make an issue
of the cloth sacks put over the heads of the detainees, as though it were
a deliberate act of torture.
-
- Well, first off, he knows that's a lie. He knows that
the coverings are because leftist organizations would scream holy hell
if images of the faces of these men were ever shown! Its Geneva law. He
also knows (or should know) that those sacks are very light, you can even
see through them from inside, there's no trouble breathing and Afghanis
are used to wearing almost total head-coverings in severe heat and sandstorms
of considerably thicker material! Remember all the stink over the American
kid who went to fight with the Taliban when his face was shot all over
the news when he was captured??
-
- This is what makes me sick about the knee-jerk left.
Despite my being a conservative against the war, against the Bush admin
atrocities and madness, I'm constantly having to deal with the ignorant,
ridiculous assertions and accusations of leftists who aren't doing the
anti-war/anti-bush issue any damned good with fabricated stories, alarmist
overkill and patently absurd comments which only give the right wing fuel
to label leftists as liars and idiots. Speak like an idiot... and you deserve
the label. It's quite sad to see the left daily drop kick their own asses
into the right-wing camp for a good stomping. Like Kerry coming down on
Bush for soldiers in iraq who didn't have adequate provisions, like bullet
proof vests... and Kerry was the one who voted against increased spending
for such things. Hypocrisy reigns.
-
- And for some insane reason, it has become anathema to
mention anything good or decent being done by anyone in the US contingent
anywhere in the world. Sure, we've got our share of Sgt. Rock lunatics
who pick off arab heads like flies on a wall. But the vast majority are
scared to death, 19 year old, baby faced Guard and Reserve dudes who just
want to do their time and come home. They aren't raping people, slapping
Arabs around or torturing anyone. A great many in both Afghanistian and
Iraq are rebuilding schools, helping with local infrastructure for community
relations, feeding the impoverished and malnourished, even helping to rebuild
homes. But you never hear about these guys. Nooo. That would shine favoriably
on Bush. BULLCOOKIES. It shines favorably on individual humanity and acts
of good will, it has NOTHING to do with Bush.
-
- If the anti-war left wants to take the high road (yeah,
fat chance) in this, they'll stop with all this slanted crapola and with
censoring out what little good news there is, and demonstrate a righteous,
upper hand. But I won't hold my breath. The left and the right are just
an idiotic punch-n-judy show for the world to laugh at.
|
