Discovering the New U.S. Guantanamo in Afghanistan

There is a Guantanamo prison here in Afghanistan. It is not called Guantanamo but the Black Jail. Local Afghans have given it the name of the Black Jail or Tour Jail. It is said that people are detained here for indefinite periods for no reason and without any food or water. This jail is located at the very heart of America’s war zone in Afghanistan. The 16-page report that the Open Society Foundation (OSF) has released about this place describes abuse of the innocent detainees who are tortured in this facility by the U.S. forces.

Immediately after its release, American officials denied the report; however, they said that they would conduct an investigation. A Pentagon spokesperson added that the American military forces in Afghanistan did not operate any secret prisons. This spokesperson said that any prison that was set up would be with the permission of the international authorities, and efforts are made to coordinate the issue with the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) to avoid allegations! The spokesperson said that she had looked at the Open Society Report, and it would be duly reviewed.

The OSF report states that released documents about the prison at Bagram are different from the Black Jail in its neighborhood next to the U.S. military base. In fact, the U.S. speaks about the facility in Bagram, which is an ordinary prison. Nevertheless, although built in this neighborhood, the Black Jail, according to — and mentioned by — the OSF, is an unknown facility that the U.S. government has hidden from the public.

However, the Afghans know that such a prison does exist and is run like the facility at Guantanamo.

According to documents provided by the OSF, the detainees have been confined to very cold isolation cells. Poisonous and inadequate food, insufficient meals of poor quality, dirty bedding, lack of natural light, denying inmates of permission to observe religious duties, restrictions on physical exercise, confinement of inmates to an environment with no possibility of moving their limbs and denying officials from the ICRC access to the facility and its inmates are among the evil acts mentioned in this 16-page report. Some of the released detainees say that they were in detention this year.

Jonathan Horowitz, one of the human rights experts, says this jail, and the incidents therein, existed during the time of the Obama administration; and this administration — which took office with the promise of closing down the Guantanamo prison — is now facing similar allegations. According to him, the Black Jail was built by the Joint Special Operations Command and U.S. Department of Defense Intelligence Agency. The violations committed in the Black Jail by the military are clearly inconsistent with the Geneva Convention — in particular, Article III, in which torture, cruel punishments, violation of human dignity and degrading behavior against prisoners have been condemned.

According to Horowitz, American conceit toward international laws results in such tragic events, but the Pentagon has said that the detainees have always been treated humanely.

The U.S. government has a black record of managing prisons and inmates, and especially since 9/11, under false pretexts, it has extended this record to Muslims and immigrants. After 9/11, abusive actions by the Europeans, the spread of racism within the police and security forces in the U.S. and its encouragement by the administration resulted in the creation of terrible detention facilities such as the one at Guantanamo.

In 2001, after the Afghanistan occupation, the Guantanamo facility was created under the command of the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, and people accused of being connected to terrorist activities from outside the U.S. territory were transferred there.

On Jan. 22, 2009 — his second day in office — Barack Obama, the new U.S. president, ordered the closing of the Guantanamo prison, as well as the secret CIA prisons. He called them a black chapter in American history. Currently, the place is used for the Haitian refugees who lost their homes in the earthquake.

Within the U.S., there has been legal debate on the violation of the inmates’ rights as well, and [this] indicates a breach of the laws in this regard. Inmates’ basic rights are not observed in jails. Many instances of inmate rape by the prison staff have been reported and recorded. In the last eight years, the incidence of inmate rape by the staff has risen to twice its previous rate. More than 90 percent of the staff has a criminal record for rape. Forty percent of these have other allegations in their records. (The Washington Post, Sept. 11, 2009).* On July 24, The New York Times reported that, according to the statistics compiled from 63,000 inmates by the Federal government, more than 4.5 percent have been raped at least once. Based on this, it is estimated that in this period 63,000 inmates have been raped. (The New York Times, July 24, 2009)**

The president who came to power on the slogan “close Guantanamo” is now facing similar allegations. There is no doubt that the governmental system in the U.S. is designed in a way that whoever becomes president must obey orders, and it is not surprising if a Republican does these actions. However, when the colored-skinned president of the U.S. acts as he does, one has to ring the knell of international laws and accept the fact that the laws have two interpretations: one that is just and another which is American.

*Editor’s Note: The two preceding sentences, accurately translated, contain erroneous information. According to The Washington Post article dated Sept. 11, 2009: “Of the 90 staff members prosecuted for sexual abuse of inmates, nearly 40 percent were also convicted of other crimes,” according to authorities.

**Editor’s Note: The New York Times article is referring to a 2007 study by the Bureau of Justice Statistics, which found that 4.5 percent of the 63,000 surveyed had been raped at least once in the year prior to the survey. According to the study, “Extrapolated to the national prison population, an estimated 60,500 State and Federal prisoners were sexually abused during that 12-month period.”