The Occasional Dissident

“What this tells us is, at the end of the day, there are individuals, that if released, will again return to terrorist activities.”

- Bryan Whitman, Pentagon spokesman (“Pentagon: Some Gitmo detainees rejoin fight,” Associated Press on MSNBC.com, May 26, 2009)

 

Dear citizens, you are perhaps familiar with a fundamentally different NIMBY—NOT in my backyard!  We face, collectively, myriad challenges that require sacrifice on the part of some of our citizens.  And, we all agree that we should not be those citizens called upon to sacrifice.  “More nuclear power to resolve our energy challenges and avert the effects of global warming?”  “Sure!”  “Where shall we put the waste?”  “Somewhere else!”  “This city needs another waste water treatment plant.”  “Over there, please.”  “More taxes are required to balance the budget.”  “Get them from the… (insert “obscenely wealthy” or “lazy poor”).  I am taxed too much already!”  The impulse is understandable. Perhaps no one has an over-riding need for a close-by nuclear waste dump or a compelling interest in living within olfactory range of not-yet-reclaimed water.  None of us requires that our wallets be lightened.  However, that impulse, NIMBY, should not be allowed full rein when doing so subverts our interests.  There are times when our reflexes are wrong—times when a counter-intuitive action better serves us.  Take, for instance, the very real and pressing need we have to welcome former Guantanamo prisoners, especially those who may be terrorists, into our backyards.

 

The reasons for welcoming former Guantanamo prisoners into our towns and cities are more numerous than you may think.  Fidelity to our Constitution and our founding principles comes immediately to mind.  The Rule of Law separates us from less secure nations, and that same rule of law now is threatened by injustice.  As Dr. King put it so well “injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”   A litany of arguments, external criticisms, and domestic court rulings all cast doubt on the legality and call attention to the injustice of our actions in Guantanamo.  Our actions threaten our reputation and leadership internationally and our freedoms and security at home.

 

There is also, of course, the humanitarian concern.  We are holding people, whom we now know to be innocent of wrong doing, merely because we cannot return them to their homes and cannot find a third country to accept them.  The tragic case of seventeen Uighurs figures prominently here.  Whatever the final outcome for these men, we have done them wrong and, worse still, delayed treating them justly, because we refuse to allow them into welcoming communities here in the United States.  We are incarcerating these innocent men only because we fear to treat them as Justice demands we treat innocent men.  The United States Supreme Court will look at this case soon if our government will not take action first (“The clock is ticking,” Washington Post, October 21, 2009).  The prospects for our government in a review by the Supreme Court are dim.  However, while ordering the release of these prisoners helps them and our democratic values, the orders—to the dismay of Justice and innocent prisoners—are not often effective.

 

Of the 38 habeas corpus cases adjudicated to date, detainees have prevailed in 30.  Yet 20 men who’ve been ordered released by federal judges remain behind Guantanamo’s wire because the United States has been unable to find suitable homes for them (“The Meaning of Freedom,” Washington Post, September 29, 2009).

 

There also is, as the quote above hints, a practical reason for bringing Guantanamo detainees to the United States.  While some countries have agreed to take limited numbers of our detainees to ease the effects of our mistakes or to see Justice served, many are unwilling to do so or are unwilling to accept more.  Why, they wonder, should they accept the former prisoners we dare not accept ourselves?  Why, they wonder, should they help shoulder a burden we unnecessarily accumulated?  Were we to bring some of these detainees into the United States, we may find that our allies and friends across the globe are more willing to lend a hand.  In certain cases, this may place innocent men closer to their families and to familiar cultures even if they dare not venture home. 

 

Dear citizens, we have a couple reasons—more selfish than those already listed—that also argue for bringing detainees here.  First, there is respect for the maxim “keep your friends close and your enemies closer.”  And, closely related to this, there is the usefulness of these prisoners in protecting us from terrorist attacks if we settle them here. 

 

The Associated Press article mentioned at the top of this essay relates to a Pentagon study of the actions of detainees freed from “Gitmo.”  According to this reporting, the Pentagon believes that “five percent of Guantanamo Bay detainees have participated in terrorist activities since their release” and that “an additional 9 percent are believed to have joined—or rejoined—the fight against the U.S. and its allies.”  We can read this as a worst-case scenario, but we should also read these numbers in reverse.  That is, we should note how many of the detainees who were released are not thought to have fought or resumed fighting against us—somewhere around five hundred of the 543 released. The story gives us a range of numbers to consider.

 

As of April 7, the latest data available, 74 of approximately 540 detainees that have been released have since taken up the fight, or are at least suspected of doing so.  The Pentagon says it has fingerprints, DNA, photos or reliable intelligence to link 27 detainees to the war [on terror] since their release. 

 

We can conclude, then, that most of the detainees released in the United States will be uninterested in doing harm to us.  But, we must examine this just a bit further with a hypothetical situation regarding those who might wish to harm us.  Imagine a Pashtun (or Tajik or Uighur or Saudi or Yemeni) released in, say, Afghanistan.  He is surrounded by people who speak his language or has access to protected communities who do.  He has ready access to a plethora of weapons—not rifles or shotguns, mind you, but AK-47’s and rocket-propelled grenades with launchers, mortars, and many, many things that will go “boom” under a passing military patrol or convoy.  That is, someone bent on committing a violent act against our allies or us or another target will find the means and support to do so.  Washington Post reporter Craig Whitlock provides a recent report that shows this is more than mere speculation.

 

In August, Pakistani officials arrested a group of 12 foreigners headed to North Waziristan, a tribal region near the Afghan border where many of the [Taliban and al Qaeda] camps are located.  Among those arrested were four Swedes, including Mehdi Ghezali, a former inmate of the U.S. military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba (“Flow of terrorist recruits increasing,” Washington Post October 19, 2009). 

 

From the more alarmist of our two perspectives, Ghezali is merely one of many treading the same path to committing violence against the United States.  Among the five percent of former detainees the Pentagon is fairly certain have engaged in “terrorist” activities since their release (all of whom were released overseas), some involvement is rather more serious.

 

Abdullah Ghulam Rasoul, formerly Guantanamo prisoner No. 008, was among 13 Afghan prisoners released to the Afghan government in December 2007.  Rasoul is now known as Mullah Abdullah Zakir, a nom de guerre that Pentagon and intelligence officials say is used by a Taliban leader who is in charge of operations against U.S. and Afghan forces in southern Afghanistan (“Officials: New Taliban chief once at Gitmo.” MSNBC.com, March 10, 2009).

 

Now, imagine that Rasoul had been released to a small apartment in a neighborhood in, say, Arlington, Virginia—my backyard.  There are, to be sure, at least a few people who speak his language and understand his culture.  (I occasionally eat at a nearby Afghan restaurant, for example.)  In other parts of the country there are perhaps none.  But, even if that person (our hypothetical Rasoul) had evil intent and found people who understood him and might cooperate with him, the means are far, far harder to gather.  I will grant that a reprise of the Holocaust Museum attack—a tragic event even at that scale—could perhaps be conducted if a weapon could be acquired through legal or illegal means.  But to do more, say, to repeat Timothy McVeigh’s attack, or, as seems to have happened in Rasoul’s actual case, to become a warlord killing American troops, would be very, very difficult.  That small portion of Guantanamo Bay detainees who have joined or returned to the fight have, to their advantage, residence outside the United States.  Besides the help in their immediate vicinity, their physical separation makes it harder for us to track their whereabouts and their activities.  Their physical separation makes them more lethal to others and to us. 

 

A former detainee would have a much harder time attacking us from inside the United States because we would be watching that person much more closely.  Indeed, it is hard to imagine a court would refuse to allow surveillance of a person initially picked up, and later long held, because of suspicion that the individual was a threat to us.  A close connection to law enforcement could also be argued as a necessity for the former prisoner.  Simply put, that person’s life is in danger here in the United States.  For his own protection, he must remain within a modest radius, so that a “freedom-loving American” with the right to bear arms does not take it upon himself to eliminate the perceived threat.  This close and cooperative surveillance, part of a program that might combine elements of our witness protection and material witness programs, provides the second selfish benefit to us.

 

Dear citizens, I wager that you were alarmed to learn that a terrorism suspect, Najibullah Zazi, was recently arrested while allegedly planning to carry backpacks full of explosives onto commuter trains (“U.S. Officials Say Zazi Had Links To Bin Laden’s Afghan Lieutenant,” Brett Blackledge, Washington Post, October 15, 2009).  Anyone who remembers the attacks in London on July 7, 2005, surely shuddered at the idea.  Take comfort.  The person was arrested because he was found out.  The as yet less well-developed story surrounding the arrest of Tarek Mehanna shows that the Zazi arrest was not a fluke (“Massachusetts man arrested on terror charges,” Spencer Hsu, Washington Post, October 22, 2009).  Travel to al Qaeda training camps almost invariably raises suspicion, we should imagine.  Still, we must allow that since this plot was hatched here, others may exist outside our knowledge.  How do we find them?  Well, we could bait a trap.  That is, we could place about 160 former detainees—people al Qaeda elements or sympathizers in this country may see as kindred spirits or possible collaborators—here, where those criminal elements will have access to them.  Al Qaeda’s leaders are likely to order their followers to seek out former detainees—detainees we will be watching.  Every former prisoner released here should be told that the FBI will conduct “sting” operations repeatedly to try to draw them into conspiracies to attack the United States.  And, those sting operations must be conducted.  Should a former detainee join in, then we at last have legal grounds for a trial and lawful incarceration.  More likely, this will dissuade them from acting against our interests and will make them eager to turn in anyone who solicits their help in planning a terrorist attack lest they both end up in prison.  The presence of these former prisoners may protect us against internal threats. 

 

Among the 226 prisoners at Guantanamo, a sub-set of perhaps one hundred to 160 would require close supervision.  A smaller group, that includes the Uighurs, would require somewhat lesser supervision.  The remainder would be held in our court system until conviction or acquittal.  Those convicted would go to prison, of course, while those acquitted should join the closely watched group.  Of this potentially dangerous group (too dangerous to be release, we are told), the largest and apparently most troubling subset consists of Yemenis we would like to pass off to Saudi Arabia.  The Saudis doubt that is a good idea despite the success they have had in returning former Saudi detainees to peaceful and productive lives (“U.S. Sees Saudi Program As an Option for Detainees,” Sudarsan Raghavan and Peter Finn, Washington Post, October 14, 2009).  In the United States, the Yemenis would join a population of Yemeni-Americans that is a subset of seven percent of “other Arabs” from a larger Arab-American population that comprises 3.5 percent of the US population—a total that is something less, perhaps well less, than 760,000 (according to US Census data posted on the Arab American Institute web site).  That is to say, if this group of former detainees has potential allies who would aid them in doing harm to the United States, those allies are likely few in number.  I have no reason to suspect that Yemini-Americans or legal Yemeni immigrants are in any way less loyal to the United States than others, and I doubt that they are.  That there may be people in this country—from whatever background—who are so inclined, however, argues for the release of closely watched former detainees to lure threats out of hiding. 

 

But, not everyone is taking a calm, rational view of this challenge.  Even the trial and incarceration of convicted detainees is resisted.  In an August 21, 2009, Washington Post article, Kary Lydersen reports on the effects of a conversation between a tavern owner, Dave Munson, and United States Representative Peter Hoekstra (R-MI).  Lydersen quotes Munson’s response, “He told me about soft targets and safe zones, that if they came to this country they would have rights, visitors and friends would come who could be jihadists.”  Of course, we want “jihadists” to visit their allies in jail and to engage them in recorded conversations about terror plots.  But, are we unable to safely and effectively hold prisoners?  According to the U.S. Department of Justice, we had a national prison population of over 2.3 million inmates as of June 30, 2008.  Of the 2005 population, fully fifty-three percent were considered “violent.”  Holding violent people, who are lawfully convicted for threatening the safety and security of Americans, is what our prisons do.  To suggest that they cannot do that calls into question the legitimacy of our widely admired Justice system.  If the whole of the remaining population at Guantanamo Bay, all 226 or so, were to be tried and lawfully convicted by a court of law, it seems fairly certain that they could be absorbed by a system with the capacity to hold nearly 10,000 times as many inmates.  Munson, according to Lydersen, organized a town hall meeting on the subject.  The intention is clear, to cry loudly “Not in my backyard!”  This battle cry only preserves an untenable situation.  Happily, our Senate seems at last to have resisted the urge and has passed a bill to allow trials here (“Senate OKs transfer of Gitmo prisoners for trials,” MSNBC.Com, October 20, 2009).

 

Dear citizens, we have then three or perhaps four broad options for dealing with detainees in Guantanamo Bay prisons whose incarceration there every day diminishes our reputation as a nation that stands for Liberty and the Rule of Law.  We can continue to release to other countries those who cannot be convicted of crimes and hope for the best, all the while knowing that some will kill Americans overseas and attempt to launch external attacks against us here.  Perhaps some detainees can be allowed this option.  Other detainees, those for whom we have charges and evidence, must be brought here to stand trial.  Those lawfully convicted will be incarcerated.  Those acquitted must be closely watched and protected.  Joining them should be that troubling category of detainees that two successive administrations have claimed are “too dangerous” to release but for whom we lack evidence of actual crimes.  Holding them violates the most basic founding principles in American Democracy.  If these people truly wish to do us harm, make them try here, where the challenges are greater and where the chances of detection, arrest, trail, conviction, and incarceration are greatest.  And finally, we have detainees who even we believe are no threat and who are not suspected of committing any crimes.  They must be released into communities that will welcome, support, and watch them.  For them, and especially for us, we must demand that the release of these last two groups, and the trials of the first, occur necessarily in our backyards. 

 

- Alan Howe, October 2009