My Drive West

If you hang around long enough in Guatemala, a nation the size of Tennessee, your sense of distance gets a little warped. You start to think it’s normal for coast-to-coast trips to take only a couple of hours, and for trips to the capital to take no more than four. You just get used to it.

So as Nicole bid me farewell from her home in Des Moines, I didn’t blink an eye when she offhandedly asked, “So, you’ll probably be in Oregon tomorrow morning, right?”

I said, “Yeah, probably.” And I kind of meant it.

People, I have made this trip before. Eight times by airplane, twice by car, and one time on a bus that was stopped by the fuzz so they could arrest a passenger on a manslaughter charge. So how in the world did I forget how huge this country is?

And monotonous. In Guatemala, you’ll go from rainforest to mountain pass to desert and back to rainforest in the course of a few hours. Here, a few hours brings you from Iowa to Iowa to Iowa, and then just when you think there can’t possibly be any more Iowa you cross over into Nebraska, which - let’s be honest here - is really just another Iowa. Nine days later you cross over into eastern Wyoming, which, again! It’s just Iowa! Jiminy Christmas!

Finally something changes mid Wyoming. One by one, all the friendly cars you’ve been caravanning with slip discreetly onto exits. Soon, it’s just you and a few semis, and they’re starting to get scarce too. And all the distant towns that you could see from the highway in the Iowas have vanished, and now there’s just nothing. It’s an incredibly lonely, please-don’t-fail-me-now-little-car sort of feeling.

As befits a journey through the Midwest, I was listening to The World is Flat, by Thomas Friedman. It’s a delightful tale about how everyone else in the world is going to take the cool jobs and so those of us in the U.S. are going to be stuck selling coffee to each other, except none of us will be able to afford coffee. So, I spent most of my trip freaking out about my current unemployment and also my lack of a science degree.

I also spent a lot of time eating Fig Newtons. I tell you what, outside of the car I really never eat those things, but if I’m on a road trip I can’t keep my hands off them. It’s the strangest thing.

So that was the Midwest. Let’s skip forward a few hundred miles.

I entered the Reno at about 7 on Saturday evening and spent the next 3 hours trying to find a cheap hotel that didn’t look like a likely setting for my physical or financial ruin. I pulled into a lot of parking lots and then promptly wheeled right out of them again, my Spidey-senses tingling. I could just tell that some of these places have seen their share of chalk outlines. Gave me the willies.

Eventually I found a delightful chateau with a view of the highway. It shared a parking lot with a Denny’s. Hard to do better than that, I say.

The next day, I did nothing except eat microwave burritos and watch football. Somewhere therein lays proof of my manhood.

Of course I did secure sustenance at Denny’s as well. And while mowing down a Grand Slam I had a lovely conversation regarding American foreign policy with a mining expert. And I mean expert. Get a load of this title: Newmont Professor of Extractive Mineral Process Engineering at the Mackay School of Earth Sciences and Engineering Department of Mining Engineering.

Good lolly. I don’t even have a business card. (Self-esteem dropping, dropping….)

Somehow I escaped Reno without losing a nickel, and by mid-morning on Monday the 22nd of January I descended into the mighty Sacramento Valley. What a warm, beautiful, open place. Every time I encounter it, I feel like Littlefoot when he first peers into the Great Valley. For those of you not catching that Land Before Time reference, just know that the Great Valley is “…a land of lush vegetation where the dinosaurs can thrive and live in peace.”

Yeah, it’s that good.

My home, of course, is in another beautiful valley to the north, and to get there you have to drive past Mt. Shasta and then up the south side of the Siskiyou range. So that’s what I did.

Liberty and Security

I’ve always had this unsettling feeling about the people we have locked up down in Guantanamo. But I didn’t know a whole lot about their situation. These were my basic questions: How did we grab these guys in the first place? Do we really have the right to hold them forever without charging them? And if we don’t charge and prosecute them, how do we know they’re really bad guys?

Then along comes this post on BoingBoing.net which gave me a chance to take a closer look. I found some disturbing answers to my questions...

How did we grab these guys in the first place?

“We” didn’t grab them. Defense Department data shows that off all that Guantanamo detainees, 86% were arrested by the Pakistanis or the Afghani Northern Alliance and then handed over to the U.S. Why is this disturbing? Because Pakistan was (and remains) under huge pressure from the U.S. to arrest Al-Queda. Wouldn’t Pakistan be tempted to just sweep up a bunch of people (innocent and otherwise) and tell the U.S. that they were all Al-Qaeda? And the Northern Alliance was a coalition of many different groups who have a history of jealousy and rivalry. What better way to eliminate your rival than to hand him over to the U.S.?

Add on top of that the fact that the US was offering up to $5,000 per detainee as a bounty. That’s a lot of incentive to bring in truckloads of detainees… and almost no incentive to take the time to make sure you get the right man. According to Pakistan’s President Musharraf, “We have earned bounties totaling millions of dollars.” (Link)

So, who do we think these detainees are?

Some are probably very, very bad men. But others…

"A substantial number of the detainees appear to be either low-level militants or simply innocents in the wrong place at the wrong time" (2002 CIA report)

"Officials of the Department of Defense acknowledge that the military's initial screening of the prisoners for possible shipment to Guantanamo was flawed" (CIA report.)

"Sometimes we just didn't get the right folks" (Brigadier General Jay Hood.)

“Detainees include: men who were arrested in Bosnia and have been cleared of wrongdoing by Bosnian courts; an Afghan who opposed the Taliban and joined the transitional government but was turned over to US forces by a rival clan; and more than a dozen Chinese Uighurs who have been slated for release but cannot be returned to China because they will likely be tortured. They have nowhere else to go and have been refused asylum in the US” (Human Rights Watch.)

Do we really have the right to hold detainees forever without charging them?

Pretty much.

“…After the Supreme Court ruled that detainees could challenge the lawfulness of their detention in courts, the Bush administration pushed legislation through Congress that revokes that right. The same legislation strips detainees of the right to challenge their treatment, even if they have been tortured, and even after they have been released.”

Technically, each detainee was given a hearing at a Combatant Status Review Tribunal, and that, according to the Department of Defense, counts as due process. But it doesn’t sound like it to me. In the tribunals, the government relied mostly on secret evidence that the detainee was not allowed to see. Often the detainee was never even told what they had allegedly done to be classified as an “enemy combatant.” Coerced statements – even if they were obtained by torture - were used against them. Detainees could not be represented by lawyers. In most cases they were not allowed to bring evidence or witnesses to aid their story. All they could do was testify on their own behalf. (Link)

So how do we know they’re really bad guys?

Here’s where the story of Adel Hamad comes in. It seems like he’s just a good guy who was doing humanitarian work in hospitals in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Five years ago he was arrested in the middle of the night by Pakistani intelligence officials. He's been in U.S. custody ever since. At his Tribunal, he was accused of three things:

1) The hospital he worked for may support "terrorist ideals."

This is conceivable, but the president of the hospital and the people who fund it have not been arrested. Adel’s job was to buy food for the hospital and write vouchers. If the hospital is a hotbed for terrorists, why would you arrest Adel and no one else?

2) In the course of his work with refugees, Adel Hamad may have come into contact with Al-Qaeda or Taliban members.

His hospital colleagues insist that Hamad never spoke about politics, that there was no anti-American activity at the hospital and that Hamad did not have contacts outside the hospital grounds. But, of course, Adel couldn’t present them as witnesses.

Anyway, the logic seems really weak. Consider this: Mohamed Atta was in the U.S. for over a year before the attacks on September 11. During that time, how many people did he “come into contact with”? Should the guy who taught him to fly go to Guantanamo? How about the man who sold him his Pontiac? The woman who sold him groceries? His landlord in Coral Springs, Florida? Everyone at the Gold Health Club that he attended in Lilburn, Georgia?

3) Adel Hamad is an Enemy Combatant

This is a strange one. The Tribunal is using this as a reason to keep him in custody… but at the same time no one has alleged anything that would make him an enemy combatant. There are no allegations that he engaged in terrorism, acts supporting terrorists, violence against the United States or any belligerent act. One voice of dissent during Adel’s Tribunal was an Army Major who said, “…the supporting allegations do not even qualify him as an enemy combatant.”

In any case, Adel Hamad was not captured on a battlefield. Instead he was arrested in the middle of the night from his own home. He had a valid passport and work visa and Pakistani intelligence found nothing incriminating in his place of residence.

So is Adel really a bad guy?

Who knows? Adel may, indeed, be an honest-to-god terrorist. But, for crying out loud, let’s see the evidence for it. And if there isn't any evidence, can we please let him go back to working in hospitals? We need more people working in hospitals.

So what should we make of this?

Well if you’re anything like me, a good, solid freak-out is in order. If you like a more restrained approach, you could spend an evening think about these two quotes.

"Honor-bound to defend freedom" - Guantanamo camp mission statement.

"He who trades liberty for security deserves neither and will lose both" - Thomas Jefferson.

If you're looking to read more, visit these sites:
Project Hamad - with many more details on Adel
Interesting report from a Seton Hall Professor of Law
UN calls for Guantanamo closure - BBC News

My Birthday Wish

As many of you know, my birthday is rapidly approaching. Now, just in case anyone is getting fancy ideas about birthday gifts and whatnot... here's what I REALLY, ACTUALLY DO WANT for my birthday.

Help the good people of Fatima, Guatemala, keep their kids in school and get fresh water into their homes.

Of course, if you weren't going to get me a present anyway (thanks for nothing, jerk) then disregard this. But, if you WERE going to, just donate your $10 to some people who could really use it. To do that, simply visit their project page, and find the donate now button on the left hand side.

That would make my birthday very happy indeed.

Project Page: http://laflibrary.typepad.com/fatima/
The Group's Photos: http://www.flickr.com/groups/fatima/pool/

And, just in case the cause doesn't motivate you on merits alone, here's a photo of a local child with her puppy. Look into her eyes, Scroogie. She's asking you to help her go to school. Why won't you help her go to school?

And If You Only Have Time For One Show...

Please listen to this broadcast, on the police archive that was recently discovered. Here is NPR's lead in:

In rural areas of Guatemala, work is under way to recover and identify remains from mass graves dug during the country's civil war. But in the country's capital city, thousands of people also disappeared. The answers to their fates may lie buried in a massive police archive — one that wasn't supposed to exist.

At a police compound in Guatemala City, each dark room overflows with documents, some as old as 100 years. The national police were believed to be responsible for so many atrocities during the civil war that their organization was dissolved and replaced by a new institution when the conflict ended.

Buried in this enormous, dingy compound are answers that the Guatemalan people have waited for for decades. The archive was discovered by accident, during an investigation of a munitions dump. For years, authorities denied these archives existed. The space and all it contained were left for the rodents and the bats.

The Project for the Recuperation of the National Police Historic Archives works under the Guatemalan government's human rights ombudsman, trying to build a digital library so that the information on these crumbling pages will last.

The papers in the archive span everything from immigration law to a notebook labeled "CIA correspondence." For now, investigators are focusing on 1975-85, the 10 bloodiest years of Guatemala's civil war. The 36-year conflict ended in 1996.

Gustavo Meoño, director of the police archive project, believes his team's investigation can help forensic teams single out victims of political killings. This prospect of identifying long-lost souls has made the police archives a source of hope for many Guatemalans. Meoño's group plans to issue a preliminary report in April.

[For a related NPR story, click here.]

Great NPR Series on Guatemala

NPR is running a great series on Guatemala entitled Unearthing the Future. They also have some short but interesting audio slideshows on the web to accompany their broadcasts.

The link to the main page of the series is here.

The direct links to the audio slideshows are below.
2.1.07 - Guatemala Project Builds Tech from the Ground Up
1.31.07 - Guatemalan Archives May Help Locate Missing
1.30.07 - Storm Victims' Remains Exhumed in Guatemala
1.29.07 - Group Works to Identify Remains in Guatemala

And, of course, there are links on the site that allow you to listen to the actual show for free. Just look for the listen button.