In the Guardian: Intelligence failures at Guantánamo
12.3.09
For the Guardian’s Comment is free, “Who are ‘the worst of the worst?’” is an article I wrote in response to the news (as yet unsubstantiated by an independent source) that Abdullah Ghulam Rasoul, an Afghan prisoner released from Guantánamo in December 2007, has resurfaced as Mullah Abdullah Zakir, a Taliban leader responsible for roadside bomb attacks in Afghanistan.
As well as providing me with an opportunity to mention the important work undertaken by the Seton Hall Law School in debunking the Pentagon’s ongoing mythology about the numbers of prisoners released from Guantánamo who have “returned to the fight,” the article also gave me the chance to ask why it was considered plausible for Guantánamo to have a recidivism rate of zero (compared, for example, to the enormous recidivism rate of violent prisoners in the penal system), and also to ask why no one was examining the reasons for the Pentagon’s seeming inability to work out who it has been holding at the prison.
I didn’t address another important question: whether some of the handful of prisoners who have “returned to the fight” did so because they had been radicalized by their brutal experiences in US custody. This was for two particular reasons (above and beyond the fact that I had no room to do so). The first is that I believe that very few of the prisoners have been transformed by their experiences into men of violence. I regard it as extremely difficult to convert wrongly imprisoned men who were previously unconnected with terrorism into terrorists, and I’m also aware that the majority of the prisoners at Guantánamo survived their experiences through their faith.
The second reason is that, in the specific case of Rasoul, it seems probable — as he was captured in a car with a senior Taliban leader, Mullah Mohammed Fazil, who is still held in Guantánamo — that he was, all along, a committed member of the Taliban, even though he claimed during interrogations that he was only a peripheral figure. It’s also important to note, however, that the decision to release him outright was taken not by the US authorities, but by their Afghan counterparts. Like all the Afghan prisoners released from Guantánamo since August 2007, Rasoul was not freed on his return to Afghanistan, but was imprisoned in a wing of Kabul’s Pol-i-Charki prison (refurbished by the US authorities under an arrangement that has never been adequately explained) until the Afghan authorities decided to release him.
Perhaps, under different circumstances, he would have been held by the US as a prisoner of war in accordance with the Geneva Conventions (and we would now be debating how long the US intends to remain at war in a country that has had its own elected government since October 2004), but as it stands, of course, Guantánamo was never a prisoner of war camp, and was, instead, a place outside the law, where everyone — whether a terrorist, a soldier for the Taliban or a civilian seized by mistake — was held without rights and treated abominably.
For articles examining other mistakes made by the US authorities in releasing prisoners — and other examples of blatant propaganda on the part of the Pentagon — see If the US administration had behaved intelligently, ex-Guantánamo inmate who blew himself up would never have been released and Identification of ex-Guantánamo suicide bomber unleashes Pentagon propaganda.
Andy Worthington is the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon — click on the following for the US and the UK). To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to my RSS feed.
Who's still at Guantánamo?
4 Responses
Andy Worthington says...
This from the Talking Dog:
If we accept figures from Erik Saar, General Hood and guys like that from early on in GTMO’s sorry history
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/shayana-kadidal/help-stop-the-guantanamo-_b_29664.html
GTMO (save perhaps the “14 high value terrorists”) never held more than 2 or 3 dozen A.Q. members or real terrorists EVER… that said, the vaunted “61 terrorists have returned to the battlefield” (which includes anyone who speaks critically of his illegal detention!) means we have an amazing “recidivism rate” of between 160% and 250%!!! We have more terrorists out than we had in… and, unbelievably, we can’t seem to figure out who they are, so THOSE ARE THE ONES WE RELEASED!
What I’ve never understood is why people fail to accept the inexorable logic that, if we don’t know who we let out, then we must not know who we are continuing to hold… since no reliable trial or vetting procedure has ever taken place, why is the public so willing to assume that we are holding “the right” guys?
Furthermore, the Bush Administration touted as its main selling point (its ONLY selling point, actually) the fact that the United States itself (we’re the only ones who matter, after all) has been “kept safe” from direct “homeland” attacks since 11 September 2001… that said, since the Bush Admin. gets CREDIT for that, since no one from GTMO has managed to attack THE UNITED STATES, why do we count any of their acts in places that don’t count as “terrorism” at all? And, to be fair, this includes killing American troops anywhere except within our borders… since the Bush Administration was never “charged” for this in “an accountability moment” (to wit, an “election”), it’s quite clear that the American people don’t care about this either… ONLY ATTACKS IN NORTH AMERICA COUNT (preferably involving investment bankers and insurance brokers and airplanes). So, judged by the criteria by which the Bush Administration judges itself, “it kept us safe from another September 11th attack”… NO ONE, whether released from GTMO, or anywhere else, has committed a terrorist attack on the United States that gets to count.
From my own perspective, I began interviewing knowledgable players starting in ’05 with a relatively open mind; my view was that we were probably holding bad guys, probably a lot of bad guys, but the arbitrary terms and conditions under which we were holding them were chillingly Soviet in their styling. As I interviewed more people, it became obvious that the information our own government compiled showed that the overwhelming majority of those held should never have been there, and since there was, and still is, no reliable screening method for who were holding and who we are releasing (the one and only release criteria has been political… does the detainee have “a lucky passport” from a country that cares about him)… well, one can see the problem, assuming there were ANY terrorists in their to begin with AT ALL… and the more and more people I talked to (the United States government, and even ex-officials responsible for the policies, wouldn’t talk to me), but those who did gave consistent accounts of abuse of those being held, and total arbitrariness. Don’t believe me? How about Darrel Vandeveld, an ex-prosecutor of Guantanamo military commissions, who says we’re past the point of even being able to give anyone at GTMO anything resembling a fair trial, and only a tiny number did anything for which they even could have been charged.
http://thetalkingdog.com/archives2/001262.html
So why, after so much arbitrariness, are so many people still willing to give the benefit of the doubt to a Government that has not earned it? The multi-year propaganda effort has been successful to a degree, to be sure, but I would bet sterling to starlings or dollars to donuts that the correlation is overwhelmingly partisan: that those willing to scream “we can’t release any terrrrrrrrrorists” are overwhelmingly supporters of the Bush Admin. and its policies… and so, the facts just aren’t going to change any hearts and minds under these partisan circumstances, much as we’d like them to.
...on March 13th, 2009 at 10:52 am
Andy Worthington says...
And my reply:
Hey TD,
You’re in a blaze of righteous anger today! Can’t blame you, of course. The number of prisoners estimated by the intelligence services as being connected with al-Qaeda is supremely important, as I’ve repeatedly tried to emphasize, and you’re right to point out that it is between 35 and 50 – which means that we’re all waiting for Obama to arrange for the release of at least 190 men.
However, we may indeed have created some recidivists through our treatment of these men, which would not be surprising, although, as I’ve said, in my meetings with former prisoners what has impressed me in particular is their fortitude and their decency, after all they have been through.
Particularly significant is your comment, “if we don’t know who we let out, then we must not know who we are continuing to hold,” and I’ll be hammering away at this one until the majority of the men are released. It’s where the importance of looking at individual cases really comes into its own: if the administration has never known who these men are, then, in theory, the prison could be full of terrorists, but when their individual stories are examined, what’s apparent, in many cases, is the distance between their own statements –- say, that they attended a training camp a few months before the 9/11 attacks –- and statements made by unidentified “sources” (often alleged members of al-Qaeda), who conveniently contradict this with more inflated claims about their significance.
Readers who want to know more should check out my definitive prisoner list, which provides links to some of these stories:
http://www.andyworthington.co.uk/2009/03/03/guantanamo-the-definitive-prisoner-list/
...on March 13th, 2009 at 10:53 am
Connie L. Nash says...
As the Press Release Just out today from The European Anti-Torture Committee reminds, no matter the recidivism, doing torture is plain wrong & will always come back to haunt both the those who do it and the innocent. Yes, I’ve been listening to Al-Jazeera as well – invaluable. Glad that even rather glossy while courageous Arianna at Huff Post is listening…
There are many other layers, of course, in brief, have to be studied & watched as well:
ONE::
The tricks of the US-CIA to play “both sides” — ie — to train & support folk connected to our supposes “enemies” to do our dirty work: U all know but for any who don’t see John Perkins work – “Confessions of an Economic Hit Man” (see his chapters and sections on the mess US helped make in Iran and Iraq years ago) also his other books.
How do we know this doesn’t, isn’t going on right now? And the whole fairly recent history of the CIA as well.
TWO:
At the same time, we sometimes have to consider strategy, Talking Dog, such as how might we support Obama & his chosen carefully & wherever we might – in order to better have these leaders listen to what we know? Looks like to me, as progressive & concerned with these issue as Marjorie Cohn obviously is (President of the National Lawyers Guild) http://www.marjoriecohn.com — she has a tone befitting to being heard by any & all concerned.
JUST IN: Press release on Torture:
http://oneheartforpeace.blogspot.com/2009/03/press-release-council-of-europe-anti.htmlStrasbourg – 13.03.2009 – The Council of Europe’s Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CPT) has published today the response of the Government of Denmark to the report on the CPT’s most recent visit to that country, in February 2008. The response has been made public at the request of the Danish authorities.The CPT’s report on the February 2008 visit was published on 25 September 2008.The response of the Danish Government is available on the Committee’s website: http://www.cpt.coe.intCouncil of Europe Press release–HREA – http://www.hrea.org
...on March 13th, 2009 at 3:20 pm
Connie L. Nash says...
JUST IN: Cheney questions Obama’s Detainee Policies – perhaps would make a helpful little discussion?
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090315/ap_on_go_pr_wh/cheney
...on March 15th, 2009 at 5:43 pm