US-run camp gives Afghan teens warm impressions of Americans

[NoName]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/...163436,00.html
(via lgf)

Asadullah strives to make his point, switching to English lest there be any mistaking him. "I am lucky I went there, and now I miss it. Cuba was great," said the 14-year-old, knotting his brow in the effort to make sure he is understood.

Not that Asadullah saw much of the Caribbean island. During his 14-month stay, he went to the beach only a couple of times - a shame, as he loved to snorkel. And though he learned a few words of Spanish, Asadullah had zero contact with the locals.

He spent a typical day watching movies, going to class and playing football. He was fascinated to learn about the solar system, and now enjoys reciting the names of the planets, starting with Earth. Less diverting were the twice-monthly interrogations about his knowledge of al-Qaida and the Taliban. But, as Asadullah's answer was always the same - "I don't know anything about these people" - these sessions were merely a bore: an inevitably tedious consequence, Asadullah suggests with a shrug, of being held captive in Guantanamo Bay.

On January 29, Asadullah and two other juvenile prisoners were returned home to Afghanistan. The three boys are not sure of their ages. But, according to the estimate of the Red Cross, Asadullah is the youngest, aged 12 at the time of his arrest. The second youngest, Naqibullah, was arrested with him, aged perhaps 13, while the third boy, Mohammed Ismail, was a child at the time of his separate arrest, but probably isn't now.

Tracked down to his remote village in south-eastern Afghanistan, Naqibullah has memories of Guantanamo that are almost identical to Asadullah's. Prison life was good, he said shyly, nervous to be receiving a foreigner to his family's mud-fortress home.

The food in the camp was delicious, the teaching was excellent, and his warders were kind. "Americans are good people, they were always friendly, I don't have anything against them," he said. "If my father didn't need me, I would want to live in America." Asadullah is even more sure of this.

"Americans are great people, better than anyone else," he said, when found at his elder brother's tiny fruit and nut shop in a muddy backstreet of Kabul. "Americans are polite and friendly when you speak to them. They are not rude like Afghans. If I could be anywhere, I would be in America. I would like to be a doctor, an engineer _ or an American soldier." [...]

After five months, Naqibullah wrote home for the first time. Taking this first letter, written on Red Cross notepaper, from his pocket, he now reads it aloud. "My greetings to beloved family, to my beloved father, to my beloved uncles, to my beloved cousins, to my beloved brothers. I am in good health and happy. I am in Cuba, in a special room, but it is not like a jail. Don't worry about me. I am learning English, Pashto and Arabic." The next two lines of the letter were scrubbed out by the Guantanamo censor. Asadullah said he couldn't for the life of him remember what they said.

Despite their gentle treatment, the boys were homesick. "I was very sad because I missed my family so much," said Asadullah. "I was always asking, 'When can I go home? What day? What month?' They said, 'You'll go home soon', but they never said when."

Meanwhile, the boys' parents were suffering agonies. In Khoja Angur, Asadullah's village, the boy's mother describes how she cried "every night thinking about my son."

Covered entirely by a sheet of turquoise silk, she speaks through a male relative while the Guardian's translator stares respectfully at his feet. So conservative is Asadullah's society that his mother's name is a family secret. "I prayed to God, I asked, 'Where is my son?'," she continued. "He was just a boy, much too young to disappear on his own." Asadullah was gone for seven months before his parents discovered his whereabouts. For the first two months, his uncles and cousins were afraid to tell his elderly father, Abdul Rahman, that he was missing, believing the shock might kill him. Almost the entire male population of Khoja Angur, a fortified mud-village, snowbound and ringed by icy peaks, downed tools and went searching for the boy. "They went to Bagram, but the Americans said they didn't know anything about him," said Abdul Rahman, white-bearded and heavy-breathing. "They went to Logar and Gardez, even to Kandahar, but no one knew about him."

I am not denying that this raises serious questions as to why we would take prisoner a 12 year old boy, take him to Guantanamo, hold him for 14 months, and apparently not notify his family for several months. I thought the story was interesting, though.

[2pac Shakur]

That camp sounds great.
I'm gonna volunteer... NoName's family to go there for a few years.

[NoName]

Originally Posted by 2pac Shakur

That camp sounds great.
I'm gonna volunteer... NoName's family to go there for a few years.

Well, their Pashto has been getting a little rusty, maybe that would be a good idea.

[2pac Shakur]

Originally Posted by NoName

Well, their Pashto has been getting a little rusty, maybe that would be a good idea.

Yea. I bet it's sweet there.
Those chain link fences and forced feedings prove we are the good guys.
Make sure to sign up for one of the classes on baking cookies.

[Snageye]

I wonder what kind of movies he was shown. Maybe this one

************************************************** ******
Prisoner of War (1954) Genre: War (more)

Plot Summary: An American army officer, troubled by reports of brutality, volunteers to investigate conditions inside North Korean POW camps...

Cast overview, first billed only:
Ronald Reagan .... Webb Sloane
Steve Forrest .... Cpl. Joseph Robert Stanton
Dewey Martin .... Jesse Treadman
...
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