[Mb-civic] My Guantanamo Diary - Mahvish Khan - Washington Post Op-Ed

[William Swiggard]

My Guantanamo Diary
Face to Face With the War on Terrorism
<>By Mahvish Khan
The Washington Post
Sunday, April 30, 2006; B01

GUANTANAMO BAY, Cuba

The sailor at the entrance to Camp Echo peers through the gate as Peter 
and I hold up our laminated blue cards. "HC," for habeas counsel, they 
read. "Escort Required." He waves us through, searches our bags for 
recording devices, then issues safety instructions -- dial 2431 on the 
wall phone in the room -- in case anything should happen in our meeting 
with prisoner No. 1154.

The gravel crunches beneath our shoes as we follow a soldier across a 
dusty courtyard to a painted brown door. Before we go in, I drape the 
shawl I'm carrying over my head and arms. This is my first meeting with 
a Guantanamo Bay detainee, and I'm feeling nervous about sitting down 
with a man who may be a terrorist.

Ali Shah Mousovi is standing at attention at the far end of the room, 
his leg chained to the floor. His expression is wary, but when he sees 
me in my traditional embroidered shawl from Peshawar, he breaks into a 
smile. Later, he'll tell me that I resemble his younger sister, and that 
for a split second he mistook me for her.

I introduce myself and Peter Ryan, a Philadelphia lawyer for whom I'm 
interpreting. I hand Mousovi a Starbucks chai, the closest thing to 
Afghan tea I've been able to find on the base. Then I open up boxes of 
pizza, cookies and baklava, but he doesn't reach for anything. Instead, 
in true Afghan fashion, he urges us to share the food we have brought 
for him.

Mousovi is a physician from the Afghan city of Gardez, where he was 
arrested by U.S. troops 2 1/2 years ago. He tells us that he had 
returned to Afghanistan in August 2003, after 12 years of exile in Iran, 
to help rebuild his wathan , his homeland. He believes that someone 
turned him in to U.S. forces just to collect up to $25,000 being offered 
to anyone who gave up a Talib or al-Qaeda member.

As I translate from Pashto, Mousovi hesitantly describes life since his 
arrest. Transported to Bagram air base near Kabul in eastern 
Afghanistan, he was thrown -- blindfolded, hooded and gagged -- into a 3 
1/2 -by-7-foot shed. He says he was beaten regularly by Americans in 
civilian clothing, deprived of sleep by tape-recordings of sirens that 
blared day and night. He describes being dragged around by a rope, 
subjected to extremes of heat and cold. He says he barely slept for an 
entire month.

He doesn't know why he was brought to Guantanamo Bay. He had hoped he 
would be freed at his military hearing in December 2004. Instead, he was 
accused of associating with the Taliban and of funneling money to 
anti-coalition insurgents. When he asked for evidence, he was told it 
was classified. And so he sits in prison, far from his wife and three 
children. More than anyone, he misses his 11-year-old daughter, Hajar. 
When he talks about her, his eyes fill with tears and his head droops.

I don't know exactly what I had expected coming to Guantanamo Bay, but 
it wasn't this weary, sorrowful man. The government says he is a 
terrorist and a monster, but when I look at him, I see simply what he 
says he is -- a physician who wanted to build a clinic in his native land.

A guard knocks at the door, signaling time's up. Mousovi signs a 
document agreeing to have Peter represent him in filing a petition for 
habeas corpus before U.S. civilian courts. "I pray to Allah," he says, 
holding his palms together, "for sabar." Patience. He stands up as Peter 
and I say goodbye. When I glance back after we walk out, he is still 
standing, gazing after us.

It was Google that got me to Gitmo.

My interest in the U.S. military base in Cuba was sparked by an 
international law class I took last year at the University of Miami. I 
decided I wanted to become involved in what is going on there. So I 
Googled the names of the attorneys on the landmark 2004 Supreme Court 
case Rasul v. Bush, which held that the U.S. court system had authority 
to decide whether non-U.S. citizens held at Guantanamo Bay were being 
rightfully imprisoned. Then I started bombarding them with calls and 
e-mails expressing my desire as a law student, a journalist and a 
Pashtun to help, both on the legal end and as an interpreter.

The very existence of the military detention camp at Guantanamo Bay 
seemed an affront to what the United States stands for. How could our 
government deny the prisoners there the right to a fair hearing? I 
didn't know whether they were innocent or guilty -- but I figured they 
should be entitled to the same protections as any alleged rapist or 
murderer.

Maybe part of my interest had to do with my heritage. My Pashtun parents 
are doctors who met in medical school in Peshawar, a city in northwest 
Pakistan near the Afghan border. They came to the United States to 
continue their medical educations. I was born in America in 1978, but I 
grew up speaking Pashto at home, and am a practicing Muslim. I've always 
felt the pull of my heritage, and the tragedy of the Afghan people, 
whose country has been overrun so many times throughout history.

As an American, I felt the pain of Sept. 11, and I understood the need 
to invade Afghanistan and destroy the Taliban and al-Qaeda. But I also 
felt the suffering of the Afghans as their country was bombed. And when 
hundreds of men were rounded up and thrust into a black hole of 
detention, many with seemingly no proof that they had any terrorist 
connections, I felt that my own country had taken a wrong turn.

The attorneys I e-mailed eventually put me in touch with Peter Ryan at 
Dechert LLP, which represents 15 Afghan detainees. After a rigorous 
six-month background check for a security clearance, off I went in 
January on my first trip to the base.

I've now been down a total of nine times. And each time, I'm struck by 
the ordinariness of Guantanamo Bay, the startling disconnect between the 
beauty of the surroundings and the evil they mask.

I expected a stern, forbidding place. Instead I found sunshine and 
smiling young soldiers, boozy nighttime barbecues and beaches that call 
to you for a midnight swim. I've also found loss and tears. Over three 
months, I've interpreted at dozens of meetings with detainees and heard 
many stories -- of betrayal and mistaken identity, of beatings and 
torture, of loneliness and hopelessness.

I've listened to Wali Mohammed protest that he was just a businessman 
trying to get along in Taliban-run Afghanistan. I've watched Chaman Gul, 
crouched in his 7-by-8-foot cage, weep for fear that his family will 
forget him. I've marveled at the pluck and wit of Taj Mohammad, a 
27-year-old uneducated goat herder who has taught himself fluent English 
while in Cuba.

No matter the age or background of the detainee, our meetings always 
leave me feeling helpless. These men show me the human face of the war 
on terrorism. They've been systematically dehumanized, cast as mere 
numbers in prison-camp fashion. But to me, they've become almost like 
friends, or brothers or fathers. I can honestly say that I don't believe 
any of our clients are guilty of crimes against the United States. No 
doubt some men here are, but not the men I've met.

I wish we could just hand our clients the freedom they desperately 
crave, but so far, we haven't been able to, though three of Dechert's 
clients were released at the military's discretion before any of us ever 
even went to the prison. Still, our work with those who remain seems to 
give them what they need to persevere -- a thread of hope.

The trip to Gitmo begins at the commuter terminal of Florida's Fort 
Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport. With the exception of one 
corporate law firm that has become known for making a grand entrance in 
a chartered private jet, the attorneys doing habeas work at Guantanamo 
Bay fly the puddle-jumper Lynx Air or Air Sunshine.

At the airline counter, you're asked to show clearance documentation 
from the Defense Department. Passengers are then weighed for optimum 
weight distribution on the tiny propeller planes. The 10-seat cabin is 
so small you can't stand up straight. There are no bathrooms, either, so 
everybody hits the restroom several times before boarding.

The flight from Fort Lauderdale takes three hours because you have to go 
around the island to avoid Cuban airspace. Upon arrival, we're greeted 
by armed U.S. Army personnel who direct us to customs, which consists of 
a couple of brown tables where more Army boys rifle through our bags.

The base is divided into two areas -- the leeward side and the windward 
side -- by the 2 1/2 -mile-wide Guantanamo Bay. The main base is on the 
windward side, which is where the detention camps are built. Habeas 
counsel are lodged on the leeward side, at the combined bachelor 
quarters, or CBQ, for $20 a day.

There is cable TV, a phone, dial-up Internet, a small kitchen and maid 
service. Each room has four twin beds. On my first trip, I debated 
whether to sleep in a different bed each night.

Gitmo is a strange place, but soon after arriving, you find yourself 
adjusting to its clockwork military rhythm. Every morning begins at 
7:30. It's usually bright and sunny. The Jamaican gardener, Bartley, is 
always yelling something or other. Everyone meets at the concrete tables 
at the front of the CBQ to wait for the bus, which leaves at exactly 
7:41 a.m. It takes us to the ferry and pulls in at 7:51 a.m., just as 
the ferry is docking. At precisely 8:20 a.m., we're dropped off on the 
windward side, where we're always greeted by one of three military 
escorts who hand out our habeas badges. Next stop is Starbucks and the 
food court to pick up food for the detainees and to have breakfast. Then 
on to Camp Echo, the special section of the base where meetings with 
detainees are held.

The only part of the Gitmo experience that doesn't run with military 
precision are these meetings. More often than not, there's a delay in 
bringing the prisoners over to Camp Echo. Once, we had to wait five 
hours on the bus. This frustrates the attorneys, given the weeks of work 
they've spent preparing. Not to mention that the ice cream we bring 
turns to soup.

As we leave our meeting with Mousovi, I pull the heavy shawl off my 
head. Primo, our military escort, is standing outside the fenced 
compound, taking deep drags off a Marlboro Red. We pile onto the bus, 
and Peter picks up a large manila envelope, seals his stack of 
handwritten notes inside and writes "1154" on the outside. The notes 
will be sent to Washington for classification review.

Primo drives us and another group of attorneys to the Navy Exchange. 
Adjacent to this large supermarket are a Subway, a gift shop and ATMs. 
Across the street there's a KFC and a McDonald's. At the exchange, we 
pick up a stack of porterhouse steaks, charcoal, potatoes, chips, lots 
of beer and assorted wines. Everyone barbecues for dinner, because other 
than the Clipper Club, a small greasy spoon that serves fried hot dogs 
and pizza, there's nothing to eat where we're based.

Over steak dinner, I comment on how nice our military escorts are. They 
joke and laugh with us. Primo gives me pointers on shooting pool in the 
CBQ lobby. Everyone brings them beer and cigarettes. I think I had 
expected them to be more aloof, even hostile.

But Tom Wilner, a partner in the Washington office of Shearman & 
Sterling LLP, quickly retorts: "Yeah, they're nice. But this whole place 
is evil -- and the face of evil often appears friendly."

His words hit me hard. Tom is one of the most passionate lawyers working 
at Guantanamo Bay. He gets angry talking about the conditions under 
which the detainees live. Most are held in isolation in cells separated 
by thick steel mesh or concrete walls. Every man eats every meal alone 
in his small cell. The prisoners are allowed out of their cells three 
times a week for about 15 minutes to exercise, often in the middle of 
the night, so many don't see sunlight for months at a time.

Tom and his firm got involved representing 12 Kuwaiti detainees in March 
2002, after a group of families contacted him. At first, like most of 
the lawyers here, Tom took up the cause because of the legal principles 
at stake. But after he finally met the detainees in January 2005, his 
attitude changed. Suddenly he was fighting for real people. "Most of 
these guys," he says, "were totally innocent and simply swept up by 
mistake."

I think of Ali Shah Mousovi when he says that. Even the presiding 
officer at Mousovi's hearing declared that he found it "difficult to 
believe" that the United States had imprisoned Mousovi and flown him 
"all the way to Cuba." Yet here he sits.

One of the things Tom hates most is having to tell his clients that a 
close relative has died while they've been detained. But he has had to 
do so countless times: Fouad al-Rabiah's father and brother died; Omar 
Amin's father died; Nasser al-Mutairi's father died; Saad al-Azmi's 
father died; Khaled al-Mutairi's father died; Fawzi al-Odah's 
grandmother died.

"The way these men have been treated and what they've had to suffer 
makes me ashamed," Tom says. He and the other lawyers think it's a joke 
that the iguanas at Guantanamo Bay, which are protected by the U.S. 
Endangered Species Act, have more rights than the detainees.

Tonight, Tom is intense, going on about the face of evil, how so many of 
the perpetrators of some of the worst crimes in history were men who 
appeared perfectly ordinary, who were kind to children and dogs. I can't 
stop thinking about what he says.

After dinner, I take a 10-minute walk down a barren dirt road to a 
breathtaking secluded beach and drown everything out in the cool of the 
evening water. The waves keep rushing in and blending with the peaceful 
Cuban shore.

At 80, Haji Nusrat -- detainee No. 1009 -- is Guantanamo Bay's oldest 
prisoner. A stroke 15 years ago left him partly paralyzed. He cannot 
stand up without assistance and hobbles to the bathroom behind a walker. 
Despite his paralysis, his swollen legs and feet are tightly cuffed and 
shackled to the floor. He says that his shoes are too tight and that he 
needs new ones. He has asked for medical attention for the inflammation 
in his legs, but has not been taken to a hospital.

"They wait until you are almost dead," he says.

He has a long white beard and grayish-brown eyes that drift from Peter's 
face to mine as we explain his legal issues to him. In the middle of our 
meeting, he says to me: " Bachay ." My child. "Look at my white beard. 
They have brought me here with a white beard. I have done nothing at 
all. I have not said a single word against the Americans."

He comes from a small mountain village in Afghanistan and cannot read or 
write. He has 10 children and does not know if his wife is still alive 
-- he hasn't received any letters.

U.S. troops arrested Nusrat in 2003, a few days after he went to 
complain about the arrest of his son Izat, who is also detained at 
Guantanamo Bay. Nusrat is charged with being a commander of a terrorist 
organization in Afghanistan with ties to Osama bin Laden, and with 
possession of a cache of weapons. Izat, who appeared as a witness at his 
father's military hearing, maintained that the weapons in question were 
in a storehouse set up by the Afghan defense ministry, which he was paid 
to guard and maintain.

During our meeting, Nusrat's emotions range from anger to despair. In 
his desperation, he begins to promise Peter that he will make him famous 
if he helps him get home. "Everyone in Afghanistan will know your name," 
he says. "You will be a great, famous lawyer."

As I interpret, I feel a lump growing in my throat. Suddenly, I can't 
speak. Peter and Nusrat pause as the tears flood down my face and drip 
onto my shawl.

The old man looks at me. "You are a daughter to me," he says. "Think of 
me as a father." I nod, aligning and realigning pistachio shells on the 
table as I interpret.

As the meeting ends and we collect our things to go, the old man opens 
his arms to me and I embrace him. For several moments, he prays for me 
as Peter watches: "Insha'allah, God willing, you will find a home that 
makes you happy. Insha'allah, you will be a mother one day. . . . "

He lets me go and asks me to say dawa, prayers, for him. "Of course," I 
promise. "Every day."

And until the next time I see him, I will.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/29/AR2006042900145.html
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