Mahvish Khan's My Guantanamo Diary is a compelling read. During her time at law school a few years ago, stories were being leaked out of Gitmo about abuse against prisoners. Wanting to know if she could do anything at all to help, she contacted Dechert, an international law firm which was handling several cases. Being of Afghani descent (her parents fled to the U.S. by way of Iran when things started changing in the late 70s), and growing up in Michigan, she spoke Pashto and was able to gain clearance from the government to work as a translator alongside Dechert's attorneys.
After the first few trips to Cuba, Mahvish then traveled to Peshawar (located near the Afghan border in northwest Pakistan), then by road to Kabul (!) to gather evidence and testimony to prove the innocence of detainees. Most of the prisoners are falsely accused of working for al-Qaeda, and conveniently enough when the prisoners give names of witnesses who can testify on their behalf, these people are mysteriously "unavailable" or the case is simply left alone, with the prisoner remaining without hope of a proper trial, let alone release.
Aside from the fact that the U.S. government had carefully calculated how to get people into Gitmo's cells, it had been assisted in large part by the Pakistani government, specifically the ISI. In addition to randomly capturing people from parts of Afghanistan, corrupt Pakistani officials complied with the U.S. in order to gain access to the bounties which were promised for the capture of al-Qaeda operatives. In this case, anyone with malicious intent toward another could easily turn them in to the U.S. authorities for money. This was also a convenient way for the Pakistani government to take care of any political opponents, or anyone who was against them (please google Badr Zaman and Abdul Rahim Muslim Dost).
Reading about the different kinds of torture was hard, but I feel that even though I can't do what Mahvish did, I can at least respect these human beings by reading about their experiences.
One of the craziest parts of the book is when she describes downtown Kabul, which is teeming with rich Europeans & Americans, buying land and vacationing. Apparently the Intercontinental Hotel there has rooms with a host of amenities, with the same prices you'd find at nice hotels in the States. It's something that I can't wrap my head around. We know now that the formula in Iraq was "instigated political instability + war = economic profit". But the fact that people travel there for enjoyment, while the people of Afghanistan can't buy food for their children or survive the freezing nights makes me question what the real mission of the American government truly is. Can this government rightly condemn "terrorists", when it is itself calculating torture and selling war to rich white people?
The book comes out soon, but here is the link to Ms. Khan's WaPo article, which functions as a summary to her book: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/29/AR2006042900145_pf.html
