In the last few weeks, since the last US troops left Afghanistan and the Taliban swept into Kabul, bringing the US’s nearly 20-year occupation of the country to an ignominious end — in defeat — I’ve been thinking about the extent to which that defeat is linked to the existence of the prison at Guantánamo Bay, and the significance of the Afghans held there — around 220 in total — as well as the numerous other Afghans held in the US’s prison at Bagram Airbase.
When we think of Guantánamo, we have been encouraged to think of the “high-value detainees” moved there from CIA “black sites” in September 2006, or the hundreds of Arabs — mostly Saudis and Yemenis — who had been in Afghanistan at the time of the 9/11 attacks, and who were subsequently regarded as terrorists, even though most of them had only gone to Afghanistan to help the Taliban secure victory in their long-standing inter-Muslim civil war with the Northern Alliance.
And yet the Afghans were the largest group by nationality who were held at Guantánamo, and from the beginning their treatment in US prisons in Afghanistan, and the subsequent rendition of many of them to the lawless prison on the US naval base in Cuba was revelatory in terms of understanding the shameful extent to which the US failed to win the “hearts and minds” of the people it was supposedly liberating.
In the long quest for justice for the victims of the US’s “war on terror,” Guantánamo — the main focus of my work for the last 13 years, where men are held indefinitely without charge or trial, and where the use of torture was widespread in its early years — is not, by any means, the only venue for crimes that should shock the consciences of all decent people.
At Guantánamo, nine men died between 2006 and 2012, and many of those deaths are regarded as suspicious, but they are not the only deaths in US custody.
Several reports have sought to assess how many prisoners have died in US custody in Iraq and Afghanistan, with researcher John Sifton establishing in May 2009 that, at that time, “approximately 100 detainees, including CIA-held detainees, have died during US interrogations, and some are known to have been tortured to death.” The majority of these deaths were in Iraq, but, back in July 2009, I published an article, When Torture Kills: Ten Murders In US Prisons In Afghanistan, in which I sought to establish quite how many deaths had occurred in Afghanistan. Read the rest of this entry »
Investigative journalist, author, campaigner, commentator and public speaker. Recognized as an authority on Guantánamo and the “war on terror.” Co-founder, Close Guantánamo and We Stand With Shaker, singer/songwriter (The Four Fathers).
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