When Barack Obama was first elected president of the United States, he pledged to finally shut down Guantánamo Bay prison, which had opened for business after 9/11 under the George W. Bush Administration. Obama, along with many Americans, expressed revulsion at the torture that went on there and vowed to erase it, or at least embark on the process that would heal the nation of its self-created demons.
He recognised that the prison was an error, truly unbecoming of a great power that upheld law and order. Yet, the president majestically failed to put an end to the trauma that, over time, added insult to injury.
While he acknowledged that the prison held alleged criminals who needed to be brought to justice, the then popular head-of-state did not insist on applying the law, and he did not introduce a transparent legal system to adjudicate as necessary. This, above all else, will most likely go down in history as one of Obama’s greatest mistakes and though he still has time to redeem himself, few believe that this White House might be willing to get to the bottom of the ugly US rendition and torture programmes that continue to hang like a Damocles sword over Washington.
Beyond the urgency to come clean, we now have a first hand perspective in Guantánamo Diary, a book written by a still imprisoned detainee, Mohamedou Ould Slahi, who describes in detail the humiliation he was subjected to as well as the torture he endured, both of which began in his native Mauritania more than 13 years ago and progressed through Jordan and Afghanistan before he was brought to Guantánamo in August 2002.
Like all other prisoners, he was stripped of his identity and, in his case, became prisoner number 760. Even worse, while he was never prosecuted, Slahi was actually cleared for release by a military judge in 2010, though he lingered in prison with no prospects for release anytime soon because he wishes to resettle in Canada that has yet to express its readiness to welcome him.
The diary was serialised in various newspapers around the world and has now been published as a book. It is difficult to read as it describes how Slahi, a human being, was subjected to sleep deprivation, death threats, sexual humiliation and “anal feeding”, a technique that is medically referred to as proctoclysis (or rectoclysis), which is a procedure that is supposed to rehydrate one’s rectum and prevent starvation. This is not feeding in the proper sense of the word, of course, since food is digested in the stomach and absorbed by the body through the small intestines, before the refuse enters the colon for disposal. To claim anything else is too vulgar and unbecoming of those who behave according to high moral values but that is what went on.
Beyond such mendacity, the ultimate intimations that Slahi’s torturers subjected him to was to threaten to go after his family, especially his mother that, in most civilised cultures, would draw strong reactions. Yet, this discussion, which Slahi excels in, speaks volumes about how American soldiers, presumably disciplined and impeccably trained, opted to obey egregious orders to treat human beings who were never charged with any crime in illegal ways, even to the extent of threatening to rape one’s sister or mother. This is presumably because they were persuaded, or convinced themselves, that this is necessary to extract confessions.
‘Beacon of freedom’
This was not what the American founding fathers intended when they proclaimed “democracy” for a young nation that stood as a beacon of freedom on the proverbial hill and even if the “spreading of democracy” bit was mostly an ideal that seldom applied in reality, it was nevertheless intended to maintain checks and balances on the mighty and powerful so that they would not coerce underlings to throw morality out the window and behave in the most egregious way possible.
Over the decades and centuries, most decision makers went along with this imperfect but largely functional system in place, pretended that the ideological framework meant something and almost always remained true to the ultimate message that freedom and liberty were not simple slogans. Until 2001, when democracy openly gave way to the far more narrowly defined constitutional republic that somehow managed to incorporate liberty and tyranny with ease, which placed national security interests above all else.
Of course, it is important not to generalise given the gap between liberty and tyranny, even if an honest assessment must take to task those who abuse our values and the institutions that are supposed to ensure freedom while banishing state-sponsored crimes. At a time when the world is preoccupied with barbarism emanating from Daesh (the so-called Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant) that readily chops heads off, it behoves us to remember similar historical developments practised by absolute rulers.
Raphael’s gilded Spanish altarpiece at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London shows how human beings were carved into little pieces in the name of security centuries ago too, further illustrating man’s inhumanity to man.
Still, what the Slahi diary demonstrates is that the Obama administration was not only an accessory to the Bush facts on the ground in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere, but also that some form of torture continued after 2008. Plus there was an excessive reliance on drones that have killed many innocent human beings in Yemen and elsewhere. The treatment that Slahi and many other Guantánamo prisoners were subjected to cannot be overlooked. It cannot be dismissed or condoned in any way, shape, or form.
What it affirms, however, is how victims can stand taller than their torturers.
Credit: Dr Joseph A. Kechichian is the author of the forthcoming Iffat Al Thunayan: An Arabian Queen, London: Sussex Academic Press, 2015.
