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Gee, RG, your on a tear today. Bad mood or what?
Militants found recruits among Guantanamo's wrongly detained
By Tom Lasseter, McClatchy Newspapers
Wed Jun 18, 5:24 PM ET
(This is the third installment of McClatchy's Guantanamo: Beyond the Law series, which can be viewed in full at www.mcclatchydc.com)
GARDEZ, Afghanistan - Mohammed Naim Farouq was a thug in the lawless Zormat district of eastern Afghanistan . He ran a kidnapping and extortion racket, and he controlled his turf with a band of gunmen who rode around in trucks with AK-47 rifles.
U.S. troops detained him in 2002, although he had no clear ties to the Taliban or al Qaida. By the time Farouq was released from Guantanamo the next year, however - after more than 12 months of what he described as abuse and humiliation at the hands of American soldiers - he'd made connections to high-level militants.
In fact, he'd become a Taliban leader. When the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency released a stack of 20 "most wanted" playing cards in 2006 identifying militants in Afghanistan and Pakistan - with Osama bin Laden at the top - Farouq was 16 cards into the deck.
A McClatchy investigation found that instead of confining terrorists, Guantanamo often produced more of them by rounding up common criminals, conscripts, low-level foot soldiers and men with no allegiance to radical Islam - thus inspiring a deep hatred of the United States in them - and then housing them in cells next to radical Islamists.
The radicals were quick to exploit the flaws in the U.S. detention system.
Soldiers, guards or interrogators at the U.S. bases at Bagram or Kandahar in Afghanistan had abused many of the detainees, and they arrived at Guantanamo enraged at America.
The Taliban and al Qaida leaders in the cells around them were ready to preach their firebrand interpretation of Islam and the need to wage jihad, Islamic holy war, against the West. Guantanamo became a school for jihad, complete with a council of elders who issued fatwas, binding religious instructions, to the other detainees.
Rear Adm. Mark H. Buzby , until recently the commanding officer at Guantanamo, acknowledged that senior militant leaders gained influence and control in his prison.
"We have that full range of (Taliban and al Qaida) leadership here, why would they not continue to be functional as an organization?" he said in a telephone interview. "I must make the assumption that there's a fully functional al Qaida cell here at Guantanamo."
Afghan and Pakistani officials also said they were aware that Guantanamo was churning out new militant leaders.
In a classified 2005 review of 35 detainees released from Guantanamo, Pakistani police intelligence concluded that the men - the majority of whom had been subjected to "severe mental and physical torture," according to the report - had "extreme feelings of resentment and hatred against USA ."
The report warned that unless steps were taken to rehabilitate the men, they had the potential of "becoming another Abdullah Mehsud," a former Guantanamo detainee who became a high-ranking Taliban commander in the Pakistani tribal areas bordering Afghanistan . Mehsud killed himself with a grenade last July to avoid being taken prisoner by Pakistani troops.
"A lot of our friends are working against the Americans now, because if you torture someone without any reason, what do you expect?" Issa Khan , a Pakistani former detainee, said in an interview in Islamabad . "Many people who were in Guantanamo are now working with the Taliban."
According to Afghan authorities, Mohammed Naim Farouq was a rural gangster, not a terrorist.
"He was with a group that was kidnapping people. It was a criminal group. It did a lot of extortion," said Attorney General Abdul Jabar Sabit , who interviewed Farouq in Guantanamo.
But, Sabit found, Farouq wasn't linked to the Taliban or al Qaida when the Americans arrested him.
No more. Since Farouq was released from Guantanamo, the Defense Intelligence Agency said, he's had a relationship with al Qaida and the Taliban and heads a group of Taliban militiamen.
"Naim was a very, very small guy before, but now that he's been released, he's a very big problem," said Taj Mohammed Wardak , a former Afghan interior minister who also served as the governor of Farouq's province. "It has a really bad effect when these men return to their communities."
Discussing the effect that Guantanamo had on him, Farouq measured his words.
"Why did the Americans treat me this way?" he said during an interview with McClatchy in Gardez. "I wanted to keep my district peaceful."
A NETWORK FOR RADICALIZING
In interviews, former U.S. Defense Department officials acknowledged the problem, but none of them would speak about it openly because of its implications: U.S. officials mistakenly sent a lot of men who weren't hardened terrorists to Guantanamo, but by the time they were released, some of them had become just that.
Requests for comment from senior Defense Department officials went unanswered. The Pentagon official in charge of detainee affairs, Sandra Hodgkinson , declined interview requests even after she was given a list of questions.
However, dozens of former detainees, many of whom were reluctant to talk for fear of being branded as spies by the militants, described a network - at times fragmented, and at times startling in its sophistication - that allowed Islamist radicals to gain power inside Guantanamo:
-- Militants recruited new detainees by offering to help them memorize the Quran and study Arabic. They conducted the lessons, infused with firebrand theology, between the mesh walls of cells, from the other side of a fence during exercise time or, in lower-security blocks, during group meetings.
-- Taliban and al Qaida leaders appointed cellblock leaders. When there was a problem with the guards, such as allegations of Quran abuse or rough searches of detainees, these "local" leaders reported up their chains of command whether the men in their block had fought back with hunger strikes or by throwing cups of urine and feces at guards. The senior leaders then decided whether to call for large-scale hunger strikes or other protests.
-- Al Qaida and Taliban leaders at Guantanamo issued rulings that governed detainees' behavior. Shaking hands with female guards was haram - forbidden - men should pray five times a day and talking with American soldiers should be kept to a minimum.
-- The recruiting and organizing don't end at Guantanamo. After detainees are released, they're visited by militants who try to cement the relationships formed in prison.
"When I was released, they (Taliban officials) told me to come join them, to fight," said Alif Khan , an Afghan former detainee whom McClatchy interviewed in Kabul . "They told me I should move to Waziristan," a Taliban hotbed in Pakistan .
Most of the 66 former Guantanamo detainees whom McClatchy interviewed were hesitant to talk about their religious and political transformations in prison.
Ilkham Batayev, a Kazakh, described his stay at Guantanamo in bitter, angry terms. "I learned the traditions of many people," he said. "Of course it changed me inside, but this is something private." He said that Arab detainees spent a lot of time teaching him Arabic and giving him lessons about the Quran.
Others said that fellow detainees showed them the path of fundamentalist Islam.
Taj Mohammed , an Afghan detainee, said that the time he spent at Guantanamo studying the Quran and discussing Islam with radicals helped him see the world more clearly.
"There were detainees who did not pray or who spoke with female soldiers," Mohammed said. "We stopped speaking with these men. Sometimes we beat them."
The U.S. government accused Mohammed of being a member of two insurgent groups in Afghanistan's Konar province and taking part in an attack on a U.S. military base.
Mohammed maintained that he was a shepherd. Mohammed Roze , an official with the Afghan government's peace commission in Konar province, said Mohammed was set up by a cousin with whom he was feuding.
U.S. ATTEMPTS AT SEPARATION BACKFIRE
American officials tried to stop detainees from turning Guantanamo into what some former U.S. officials have since called an "American madrassa" - an Islamic religious school - but some of their efforts backfired.
The original Guantanamo camp, Camp X-Ray, was little more than a collection of wire mesh cells in which detainees were grouped together without much concern for their backgrounds.
In April 2002 , U.S. officials shifted the detainees to Camp Delta, which grew to include a series of camps organized by security level.
For example:
-- Camp One was for better-behaved detainees, who were given toiletry items such as toothpaste and shampoo and more time for outdoor exercise.
-- Camp Two was set up for cooperative detainees - especially those who helped interrogators - who still posed a high security threat to guards. They were given time in exercise areas, but were watched carefully.
-- Camp Three was a high-security facility where detainees spent most of their time in cells with steel mesh walls and little more than mattresses and copies of the Quran.
-- Camp Four was for the best-behaved detainees, and featured communal living spaces, librarian visits and lawns for soccer.
-- Camp Five resembled a U.S. maximum-security prison, with automatic sliding cell doors and a central guard station.
The idea was that detainees who presented graver threats and were uncooperative would be separated from those with looser ties to international terrorism.
What the plan overlooked - according to several detainees and a former U.S. defense official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject - is that even midlevel al Qaida members had been trained in resistance techniques, and that one of them was to avoid calling attention to yourself. An angry cabdriver from Kabul , in other words, may have been more likely to attack a guard and end up in Camp Three than an al Qaida militant was.
As a result, some senior radicals ended up in Camp Four, free to preach their message of international jihad to petty criminals, Taliban conscripts and detainees who had little or no previous affiliation with Islamic militancy.
At times, detainee leaders would order other men to break camp rules so that the guards would send them to higher-security blocks, where they could carry messages from their leaders, said Charles "Cully" Stimson , who was the deputy assistant secretary of defense for detainee affairs from January 2006 to February 2007 .
"The communications network there is like the communications network in any jail," Stimson said. "When Americans are in captivity, they respect rank. ... I suspect it's no different down there."
Buzby, the Guantanamo commander, said that he, too, suspected that information flowed freely between militant leaders and their men at Guantanamo's camps.
"It would be foolish to not believe that there is a hierarchy of information being passed up and down the chain of command," Buzby said.
Abdul Zuhoor, an Afghan detainee who spent time in Camp Four, said that radical detainees used the system to their full advantage.
Zuhoor said he remembered watching groups of senior Taliban and Arab detainees meet in the exercise yard.
"They considered themselves the elders of Guantanamo," Zuhoor said in an interview in the Afghan town of Charikar. "They met as a shura (religious) council."
The group, Zuhoor said, acted in concert with others across Guantanamo to issue fatwas, which then were disseminated by detainees who were being moved to other areas for medical checkups, interrogations or transfers to higher-security blocks.
An attorney for one Arab detainee, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he feared implicating his client, said his client told him at one point that he couldn't meet with his legal team anymore.
"He said there were five or six detainees who had assumed positions of leadership in the camp, and that he had to deal with them," the attorney said. "And they said that he would need a fatwa to continue speaking with us, to continue speaking with Americans."
The fatwa, the shura council told the attorney's client, couldn't come from just any imam; it had to be from a senior cleric in Saudi Arabia , a hotbed of fundamentalist Sunni Islam .
In June 2006 , Zuhoor said, a Taliban member at Guantanamo bragged to him that there soon would be three "martyrs."
"The Arabs and some Taliban sat together and issued a verdict," Zuhoor said. "Three of the men volunteered to kill themselves to get more freedom for the other detainees."
The next morning, Zuhoor said, the news spread across Guantanamo: Three Arabs had committed suicide.
The Guantanamo commander at the time, Rear Adm. Harry Harris , called the suicides acts of "asymmetric warfare."
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Chalk this one up to the learning curve.
Bad news: We accidentally created hardened terrorists.
Good news: We learned something valuable.
Stupid news: Once again, detaining people indefinitely without trials turns out to be against our long-term interests.
If we had actually bothered with evidence and the trials, the genuine thugs could have been turned over appropriately before they become actual converts to Al Qaida ideology.
The US military has, in the Iraqi detention centers, learned this lesson, and has started applying it with very good results.
The ethical thing=the best thing for our long interests. Exactly what I have been saying for some time now.
all y'all who think that "no trials for terrorists" is a good policy. I dare any of you to question the military on this one.
Gee, RG, your on a tear today. Bad mood or what?
That's just Guantanamo.
There is news this week that US forces have detained, abused, and murdered 100s of innocent Afghans "because of 9/11".
"Not that there is anything wrong with that", but has there been ANY off-setting benefit to the American invasion of Afghanistan, which has more US troops now that it did months after the invasion?
Hmmm....maybe women able to actually go to school and live a life that was unthinkable under the Taliban. But I know to you that's not worth it.
So...for the 1,234,654,759,654,000 time on this forum...a liberal posts, bashes the US Government, and overlooks/ignores/exonerates/excuses/justifies, the actions and methods of the actual terrorists, in the aim of bashing the Bush Admin/US Govt.
There is definitely a mental shortcircuit there...I mean at the cognitive level, you and your type are just incapable of processing the available information and giving it an objective analysis.
All you can do...is aim your limited and dim world view, along with all your resentment frustration, rage, etc. through the lens you have focused the US Govt as being the cause of any and all evils in this world.
It's so incredibly ing stupid...
I mean I can easily predict the bias and slant of any article you, boutons, Nbadan post...
And the funny thing is...
I think ya'll believe yourselves to be intellectuals...inspite of extremely limited mental flexibility.
It's like once liberals actually were intellectuals...and now they have all these stupid pseudo intellectuals adopting past liberal stances as a means of passing themselves off as intelligent or intellectual.
Seirously...you guys suck ass.
You aren't objective, you aren't enlightening, nor is your analysis insightful or original.
Compared to you, Jerry Falwell is Timothy Leary.
OMG the US is responsible for terrorism. Down with the USA! I look forward to the day where I can say I'm proud of my country.
"overlooks/ignores/exonerates/excuses/justifies, the actions and methods of the actual terrorists"
what strawman bull .
dubya's totally failed presidency is fully bashable on every front.
The bashers, dissenters don't support the terrorists or any other bogus enemies of the USA. The logic is so simple even a cretinous bubba as yourself ought to be able have it explained. Do you need pictures?
You really are one stupid, knee-jerk dumb ing dubya-sucking asshole.
Last edited by boutons_; 06-19-2008 at 06:33 PM.
Reading this post was like being bukkakke'ed with stupid.
1) I will bash the US government when it does something stupid. Shame on you for not holding our government to a high standard. Just because low acheivement is OK in your mind, doesn't make it OK in mine.
Oh really?and overlooks/ignores/exonerates/excuses/justifies, the actions and methods of the actual terrorists,
PLEAS SHOW THE EXACT WORDS WHERE MY POST " overlooks/ignores/exonerates/excuses/justifies, the actions and methods of the actual terrorists":
Go ahead.
Didn't think so.
If you want me to, once again, say that I think that people who buy into the al Qaeda ideology are buying into evil, pure and simple, I will do so.
BUT
If you are too ed to realize that there is value in analyzing what they do, in order to figure out how to counter it, please STFU.
As for the rest of it:
Not worth the effort of responding.
The woman just called... The whole town was leveled, including the school, because there were some Taliban dudes inside. Her children died too. She asks if you please could GTFO of their country.
War is a necessary evil. I will assume this is true for making a point. The Taliban were targeted. People who associate with them should know they are at risk. If they don't have a choice in the matter, then what does that tell you. It would be nice to have no calateral damage, but how many more people would the Taliban victimize, rape, mame, and murder by not taking them out?
"Whole town leveled?"
I call bull .
But consider the above agument even if true.
I'm just playing devil's advocate.
But I think a lot has to do with culture and ideology. I think if your average afghan wanted to see the Taliban gone, they would unite and back up the international forces, and they would be gone by now. They would rat out who is supporting them from Pakistan, or where they're hiding.
The thing is, I think they like the US less than the Taliban.
And as far as the atrocities, well, we have state-sponsored murder that seem to fit nicely in our culture and ideology, even if the justification is that the victims are the worst of our society.
Having lived in different cultures, sometimes it's hard to grasp the way other people think, and the reasons they think like that (and let me say I don't presume to understand afghan culture in it's entirety at all). I just sometimes wish I could understand.
Now if you ask me what I think it's the superior culture, well, I'm a big fan of democracy, but obviously, my ideology gives me the bias.
lol you're funny.
The average Afghan has lived under brutality for a long time. They don't have the spirit or means to resist.
I only have a few minutes left befor having to take off. Keep in mind all the intricacies. We cannot place our undestanding of the world upon others.
No, they wouldn't.
The Taliban has killed people for cooperating, and still does.
They are well-financed by drug money, and consequently very well armed respectively. They have the capacity to kill, and this makes them something to be feared.
There was a very good bit on the other day in which one of the forward bases that the US mans in the frontier had an embedded journalist team.
Quite striking was the fact that during the embed, local leaders came up en masse, some walking a hundred miles or so, to ask for protection from the Taliban, who are not liked.
These tribal leaders do not have the military capacity to fight against 100-200 strong detachments of armed men.
Sadly the debalacle/distraction in Iraq is draining away the manpower that is needed to stabilize and secure Afghanistan in a timely manner.
We can do it, and likely will succeed eventually, but it will take much longer than it should.
Reading this post was like being bukkakke'ed with stupid.
1) I will bash the US government when it does something stupid. Shame on you for not holding our government to a high standard. Just because low acheivement is OK in your mind, doesn't make it OK in mine.
Oh really?
PLEAS SHOW THE EXACT WORDS WHERE MY POST " overlooks/ignores/exonerates/excuses/justifies, the actions and methods of the actual terrorists":
Go ahead.
Didn't think so.
If you want me to, once again, say that I think that people who buy into the al Qaeda ideology are buying into evil, pure and simple, I will do so.
BUT
If you are too ed to realize that there is value in analyzing what they do, in order to figure out how to counter it, please STFU.
As for the rest of it:
Not worth the effort of responding.
Well...what a load of that was...it gets said by every Lib in the course of bashing America, 3 trillion times per day.
Always an excuse for your bias and double standards.
But the bottom line is this:
1. You only expect one side to play the rules.
2. You are only worried about one side adhering to certain ideals.
3. You primarily hold one side accountable.
4. You primarily about one side.
IOW, you are biased, you are just too stupid to understand that's what you are.
Furthermore, you are strategic asshat as well...because those same rules of civility you and moan about American playing by, that we already play by more than the terrorists do, and that incidentally, are what the terrorists take advantage of to do what you are ing about in the initial post in this thread, are a liability in a conflict such as this. And they are the primary cause of this incident...
So by all means...keep ing about the terrorists rights, as they take advantage of the rights they already have.
You can't expect one side to play by the rules and not the other...you can't only about one side and not the other...
Label it idealism and expectation all you want...I'll call it what it is, it's outright stupidty, and only under the umbrella of a country like America is it allowd to you...
Go be an idealist in Afghanistan and see what happens to you...or just ask the British what idealism got them.
You biased...I just clicked on your name and it's easy to see the topic and focus of 90% of your threads started in this forum are about...
In fact it's so obvious that it'd be a joke for me to even post them...why should I have to work just because you can't see your own bias?
But anyway...by all means, keep ing about how America must play by the rules, then some more when the side not playing by those rules takes advantage of that fact...and then that we aren't playing by those rules enough and that's why it's happening...
Seriously...why don't you go to ing DisneyLand...there your views will have some basis in non-stupidity.
OR better yet...go play with a Grizzly, and see where your stupid idealism gets you.
You're not playing devil's advocate...you are playing dumbass.
Thart's like saying the American Indians embraced European colonization...after all, it happened. They don't rise up against it...
What's your next great take...most Mexicans are catholic and speak Spanish because they embraced the relgion, culture and language?
I guess they embraced smallpox too...I mean, after all, they didn't stop it.
Devil's advocate indeed...
I guess the Japanese embraced American culture and getting nuked...I mean after all, they didn't stop it.
The Jews? They embraced the holocaust...I mean after all, they didn't stop it.
Your argument completely fails because none of the cases you describe had the biggest army in the world backing up the little guy (like in this case)
Now if you would please think a little more before posting such a stupid answer, we'll all save some time here. Dumbass.
Wrong...wrong in just about every concievable way you could be wrong.
Do you have the balls to google and actually find out just how wrong you are?
Nah...you'll probably elect to continue being IGNORANT.
Now if you would please think a little more before posting such a stupid answer, we'll all save some time here. Dumbass.
Whatever...you don't know what you are talking about, you are speaking from a position of ignorance, and it is obvious.
You opinion is worth the amount of research you did in forming it...not much at all.
I'll leave you with this bit of advice...knowledge isn't gained by osmosis. You'll stop being stupid when you decide you actually want to have a clue what the you are talking about.
Why don't YOU do the googling and post which great and mighty armies were backing up any of the little guys in your examples?
Really? Why don't you start telling me what the average Afghan thinks about the country that happened to help arm the Taliban to the teeth to repel the Russian invasion? Or maybe what their toughts are about living in chaos for decades now?Whatever...you don't know what you are talking about, you are speaking from a position of ignorance, and it is obvious.
You opinion is worth the amount of research you did in forming it...not much at all.
I'll leave you with this bit of advice...knowledge isn't gained by osmosis. You'll stop being stupid when you decide you actually want to have a clue what the you are talking about.
You think you know , but you're just full of it.
And BTW, my opinion is that, just an opinion. If you are going to tell me it's wrong, you need to back your up, not bring weak ass analogies.
You know what? It's just not worth it...believe what you wish.
Did you just read the article before starting to bash anybody who disagrees with you?
You know what? It's just not worth it...believe what you wish.
Do you really think it's all bull and they were all hardcore Al Queda/Taliban members from the beginning or do you agree that some were just regular thug before meeting with terrorist over there?
Whatever dude. If you can't even argue your own point, I'm not about to argue it for you. Like I said before, THINK before you post and spare us the bull .
You know what? It's just not worth it...believe what you wish.
You sad, sad little man.
1) You only expect one side to play the rules.
Yes I expect our side to fight by "the rules". Just as I expect police to abide by "the rules" when it comes to fighting crime. Just as I expect CPA auditors to abide by "the rules" when it comes to auditing financial statements.
You cannot control other people's ethics, but you can control your own.
"If they eat puppies for breakfast, that means it's ok for us to cook 'em up on the grill on Saturdays."
"If that guy is bribing a government official, then it is ok for me to do the same."
"If that guy killed my best chef, then it is ok for me to bomb his kitchen."
Wake me up when you find out what ethics are.
Moral authority that comes from "playing by the rules" is more powerful than you can wrap your immoral brain around.
You already said that.
(sighs)
Fine.
Terrorists who indescriminantly bomb and kill are bad people. They should really stop doing that.
I will have to stop voting for Al Qaeda in the next election. I mean, they haven't held up to their campaign promises of... oh wait, I forgot, Al Qaeda doesn't give a about my vote.
How exactly do you want me to hold Al Qaeda "accountable"?
Hmmm?
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