SIkander

by M. Salahuddin Khan

  As Sikander and his fellow prisoners were taken off the airplane, he could hardly feel anything. Almost dragged into a waiting vehicle, Sikander was driven from the airfield to the north side of the sprawling base. He couldn’t tell how many other prisoners he was with. When the vehicle came to a halt, he was again hauled, this time in the direction of Camp X-ray’s perimeter towards a building. Eventually, the goggles, facemask, earmuffs, and mittens were removed and he took several moments to get used to the light shining brightly in the room into which he had been deposited. The shackles, belly chain, and manacles remained. He looked around and saw that he was among about thirty other people.

  “Face the front!” came an order over a loudspeaker, repeated successively in Arabic, Urdu, Farsi, and finally, Pashto. “Remove all your clothes. You are being prepared for admission into Camp X-ray,” The message continued in multiple languages. After it had finished playing, several guards came into the room. Each worked with one prisoner and releasing only a single restraint at a time as needed, enabled his respective charge to undress.

  With the undressing complete, one of the guards waved his rifle toward another room to their left, ushering the prisoners into it, while barking out “This is a place where there is no law. We’re the law. If you obey our law, you’ll be treated well. If not, you’ll be punished and dealt with severely!” A fellow officer translated.

  Trudging into the room, Sikander was accosted by a powerful chemical smell, possibly a disinfectant as far as he could tell, which gave way to the rush of water over his naked body. After five minutes, the shower was turned off and a guard appeared with thin cotton towels. Sikander was handed one in which to wrap himself. He was then taken to yet another room where one after another he and other detainees were each given a small pile of things to carry. Among them was a vermilion jumpsuit.

  As he followed the train of men carrying these items, a soldier called him over, indicating that another body cavity search was to take place. When the search was complete, the soldier gestured toward the jumpsuit.

  “Put it on,” he commanded as he pointed Sikander toward a cubicle with no door where he assisted Sikander to dress, again, following the usual procedure with the restraints. After putting on the uniform, Sikander was taken to see a physician, who gave him a simple medical examination that included measuring his height and weight, checking for lice, drawing blood, and taking DNA samples. Lastly, a full dental examination was performed. With the admission procedures complete, Sikander was finally led to an isolation cell where he was to stay for thirty days without contact with anyone. Sikander was now firmly under the control of JTF-160’s MPs.

  With the Geneva Conventions ruled inapplicable by the Bush administration, the MPs of JTF-160 worked with standard operating procedures that were continually evolving. These included starting any internment with thirty days of isolation. By contrast, the Geneva Conventions stipulated that solitary confinement was to be used exclusively for prisoners committing a qualifying infraction.

  Alone with his dark thoughts for those seemingly endless days, Sikander learned the nature of solitary confinement and why the Geneva Conventions were so vocal about its use.

  Paralysis had become the norm for life in Hayatabad. Sikander’s absence had seen to that, and although he could not be forgotten by any means, everyone tried to work through it as best they could. Abdul Majeed and Saleem were introduced to the workings of Javelin and began to help in sales and warehousing. Jamil did an admirable job managing things under the circumstances and got to know both young men. It rankled with him, however, that the two of them had been a part of the cause of the troubles. He would often take them back to the Zarghooni Masjid to listen to more enlightened Sunni speakers who were clearly not in the pro-Taliban camp. Neither did they subscribe to some of the austere, harsh interpretations of Islam that had come to be associated with the Taliban.

  Saleem became particularly interested in the teachings at the madrassah nearby and quickly acquired a sense of the depth of Islamic knowledge and learning that was possible. He gained new insights into how life could be expressed in much richer terms than the simple lists of “do’s and don’ts” characteristic of the Taliban way of thinking. His mentors instilled in him a stronger focus on having a spiritual core set of beliefs and convictions that could be used to inform behavior. The pursuit of these began to engage him increasingly as time went by.

  Seeing such a change in Saleem, and at the encouragement of Fatima, Abdul Majeed followed suit and soon the men began providing opinions about Islam that resonated with most of the rest of the family’s thinking. They could discuss knowledgeably the importance of education to both men and women. They learned about the relative empowerment of women that was originally a cornerstone of Islam in contrast with many of the pre-Islamic misogynistic tendencies that had resurfaced in much of the Muslim world centuries after the initial spread of Islam. Saleem so excelled in his ability to read and understand the “tafsir” that he enlisted in a program of learning to become an ‘alim.

  By early February, the tensions between India and Pakistan that had flared up at the end of 2001 had subsided to a simmer, much to the relief of a Bush administration that was looking for Pakistan’s undivided focus to support its own campaign in Afghanistan. President Musharraf’s attention was a little more available to be directed toward other matters.

  As the month rolled on, Rabia received no word regarding Sikander. However, on the weekend of February 22, as she and Sofie were watching over the children in the lounge, they heard the slamming of car doors. It was Sameena and Wasim.

  “Ammee! Rabia! I have some news!” called out Sameena.

  “What?” asked Rabia anxiously, not daring to hope.

  “Rabia, President Musharraf conferred with Abba-jan and asked for more detail but especially a photograph. The more recent the better.”

  “I don’t have a recent—wait!” Rabia exclaimed, her heart quickening. “I remember him putting on a suit and tie for a company photograph back in August for the Pakistan Day celebrations!”

  “Get it.” Sameena urged.

  “Jamil bhai! Jamil bhai!” Rabia called. Jamil was in his bedroom.

  “Coming!” he yelled, quickly putting on his qamees before hurrying downstairs.

  Rabia struggled to remain calm. “Jamil bhai, we’ve been asked to provide a photograph of Sikander.” A new radiance came over her. Something concrete was being done. It was only a photo, but it was surely a step in the right direction.

  “You have to go to the office and find the staff photograph that Sikander had taken on Pakistan Day. You were in it too, remember?”

  “I do remember,” Jamil said as he turned to hurry back upstairs. “No need for the office though. It’s in my room.” The photograph was retrieved and given to Wasim, who assured the family he would do all he could to pursue the matter with President Musharraf.

  After the thirty-day period of isolation, Sikander was placed in a modular cell that resembled an open cage. Its walls were constructed of chain-link wire, the top was wood and metal, and the floor was concrete. Offering no privacy, the cage was open to the elements. Indeed, spiders and scorpions were free to come and go. The detainees were each in their own subunit of the overall cage structure and every day, they would be let out for a few minutes of walking exercise. Sikander had occupied the cell for a few days when JTF-170’s interrogators got round to him. The same answers about personal details, history, siblings, parents, schooling, and so on were among the many things that Sikander had to repeat. He didn’t realize it at the time, but under the joint task force, several different agencies had reasons to interrogate him.

  Sikander had really only one thing to hide; Saleem and Abdul Majeed were indeed Taliban members. He had convinced himself that his captors were interested in hardcore al-Qaeda and Taliban leadership and not two misguided young men. Neither of them was interested in al-Qaeda’s Salafist views, and they had certainly never harbored animosity
to America after their direct experience of American assistance during the Soviet occupation. Their interaction with al-Qaeda had been entirely indirect, through second-hand experiences.

  As far as Sikander knew, the Taliban as a whole had never pursued a rabidly anti-American agenda. To the contrary, the Pakistanis and the Americans had helped them into power. The State Department had been warm toward their ascendancy. It struck Sikander as especially ironic that the Pashtunwali code and its immutable sense of obligation to protect al-Qaeda leaders as guests had cost the Taliban their country and turned them into criminals.

  But captives such as himself were now considered below the rank of criminal. Being designated neither a lawful combatant nor alleged criminal meant that detainees such as Sikander were to be afforded neither the protections of the Geneva Conventions nor habeas corpus rights. It was the system’s way of either saying “we’re incapable of making mistakes” or else “the wrongful loss of a few people’s liberties are worth the rightful preservation of those of the many.”

  From the authorities’ viewpoint, a detainee’s behavior in Guantanamo was defined by just two things, namely compliance and cooperation. Compliance meant the complete absence of defiance toward their captors. The mere hint of a failure to comply was grounds for punitive action. If a rule was broken, the offending prisoner was the subject of a beating by the Immediate Reaction Force, or IRF, whose personnel were typically assigned the duty in a roster so that all MPs were given a taste of it. To be “IRF’d” was the dreaded consequence of any failure in compliance. For punishment, MPs would typically engage in a number of styles of physical beatings but very loosely based on the standard operating procedures laid down for such disciplinary interventions. The degree of adherence to these procedures was largely down to the personalities of the individual MPs. Since failure to follow procedures was generally without consequence, those MPs inclined to indulge in sadistic pleasure took advantage of each IRF’ing occasion.

  One day, the group of detainees with whom Sikander was out on break was called back in. Sikander took longer than allowed to return to his cage. When he approached it, the IRF arrived in full riot gear. The first MP rushed him with his shield and forced him to the ground. He held Sikander’s head. The second and third came down with full force on his arms, and the fourth and fifth each took a leg, beating him and then shackling him. While his legs were pinned to the ground, they lifted up his torso then pushed him hard back down onto the ground. Regaining consciousness, he was made aware of his infraction and warned not to repeat it. It was an easy warning to heed.

  In his cage, recovering from his ordeal, Sikander’s thoughts drifted back to the numerous times leading up to his arrival in Guantanamo when he might have weighed the risks of escape differently. He began to fantasize about jumping out of the fourth story window from his room in Qunduz. He thought of feigning death and being buried in whatever grave had been used for the ill-fated Taliban prisoners who had died in the container on the journey from hell. He imagined what it might have been like if he had disguised himself as a medical staffer walking out of the prison hospital in Sheberghan, or if he had snatched at an unwary guard’s gun in Bagram.

  But of all the things Sikander had imagined up to this point, being captured and taken into custody by American forces had been, in his mind, the most likely to result in reasonable treatment.

  Americans! How different these people were from the humane, God-fearing people he’d come to learn about, people who had been of so much help during the Russian occupation. How far this seemed from the open society that his Aunt Zainab’s son, Salman, from Durham, North Carolina, had described, with his family vacations, his SUV, and his Yosemite photographs.

  As the days passed, Sikander could often hear the cries and screams of fellow inmates after having been subdued by the IRF MPs. It didn’t seem to matter if they were in a nonthreatening position; the MPs would do their worst anyway. They would also either withhold or give CIs—comfort items. Flip-flops, more clothing, less clothing—with a minimum being boxer shorts—even board games were handed out to highly compliant prisoners or taken away from less compliant ones.

  Achieving compliance was about breaking the detainee spirit. On the positive side, however, the detainees were given Qur’ans to read and were allowed to pray five times a day and were also allowed to re-grow their facial hair. The Qur’ans were, generally speaking, treated with respect. Each would be slung inside a facemask and left to hang from the bars of the cage to avoid being defiled by contact with the ground. Sikander did, however, hear of occasions where MPs had abused Qur’ans in despicable ways.

  If being given the IRF treatment for a failure of compliance was bad, the kind of treatment meted out for a failure of cooperation in interrogations was generally worse. In mid-February, not long after the first round of interrogations, Sikander was again taken for questioning. He had been deprived of sleep for the last twenty hours when finally he was brought into a light-filled interrogation room. A male U.S. Army interrogator, a female U.S. Navy interrogator, and two MPs were there.

  Captain James A. Mahler, Jr., was the lead interrogator. He had a gaunt face and what remained of his hair after the customary “high-and-tight” cut, capped his head in a short and curly crest. He wore rimless glasses and his thin mouth with barely visible lips betrayed no hint of ever having smiled. Sikander could nonetheless sense that this man had put himself in a state that required discarding some of his own humanity—a state that, among other things, permitted him to operate with a perversion of cause-and-effect as it related to detainees. His logic allowed that mere internment in Guantanamo was its own evidence of guilt. For Mahler, Sikander was yet another personification of al-Qaeda, a bad guy that had to be despised for what his kind had done in New York a few months earlier. He was one of the “worst of the worst.” He had to be. He was in Guantanamo.

  With Sikander bound to his chair, Mahler didn’t offer the usual questions.

  “When did you last meet with Shareef?” he began.

  Sikander didn’t understand the question and supposed he may have misheard Mahler. “I… I didn’t hear the question,” he said in his sleepy stupor.

  Mahler peered over the top of his eyeglasses and made brief eye contact with the two MPs, while uttering the word “down.” Sikander immediately felt himself being lifted off the chair by his armpits. The MPs pushed their knees forcefully from behind into his own, causing his legs to buckle until his knees hit the ground. Pinned in place by the MP’s knees, his upper body was slammed against the floor. Sikander howled. After a short delay, the entire procedure was repeated until finally he was picked up again and dropped into his chair.

  “It will cost you this treatment if you fail to listen to my questions, Mr. Khan,” said Mahler softly. “When did you last meet with Shareef?” he repeated.

  “I…have…no…idea… who that is,” Sikander replied, grimacing as he gasped out each word.

  “Jehangir Mohammed Shareef. He’s an al-Kayda coordinator for west Peshawar,” replied Mahler.

  “Look…truly… I don’t know him.”

  “Okay, how about Qureishi? Atif Masood Qureishi? A lieutenant colonel in the ISI? When did you last meet with him?”

  “ISI? Sir, I only know one officer from the ISI. I last saw him in Qunduz airport in November before I was injured and captured. He had come from Pakistan to help recover ISI people who needed to be…to be picked up when Musharraf changed sides…”

  Mahler looked across to the Navy woman. She was a lieutenant in her mid-twenties. Sikander noted that in her own way she was beautiful, resembling Nicole Kidman, whom he had seen in several movies in Peshawar. She opened a folder, pulled out a picture, and handed it to Mahler. He examined it briefly before placing it in front of Sikander. As Sikander attempted to focus on it, Mahler resumed his questioning.

  “Do you know this man?” he asked. Pictured in a full dress Pakistan Army uniform, the man’s face was unmistakable.


  “Yes…yes I do. He’s the person I mentioned. Junaid. Captain Junaid is what I have always called him.”

  “Well, you should know he’s a lieutenant colonel in the ISI and his real name is Qureishi. Atif Masood Qureishi,” said Mahler. “When did you last see him?”

  “As I told you, I left him at the airfield at Qunduz when I went to sell the mules and buy food. He was the one I left my in-laws with. He…he… I’ve always known him as Junaid.”

  “Well, he’s working for al-Kayda, Mr. Khan. What does that make you? Huh?”

  “Al-Qae—I…I don’t know what to tell you,” pleaded Sikander, weary but alarmed. “He told me he was going to get his people out of Afghanistan and offered to help me get there too. So…so I could get my wife’s family across into Pakistan after the war started. He traveled with me, and then split off to recover his people. I went to my wife’s village. We met up again near Qunduz and he took charge of the family while I went into the city.”

  “Now that’s more the kind of talking we want from you, Mr. Khan. Lieutenant, see to it that Mr. Khan gets a toothbrush and flip-flops. When you cooperate we can treat you well,” said Mahler.

  “But you knew more than I did. How was this helpful?” Sikander was genuinely bewildered.

  “Never mind that, Mr. Khan. Now, tell us what you know about planned attacks. Tell us about al-Kayda people already in the United States. Tell us who’s in Pakistani training camps. Tell us what they’re planning, Mr. Khan,” demanded Mahler. His face grew more intense and his lips tightened as he bent down lower to approach Sikander’s eye level. Mahler’s ominous expression made breathing difficult for Sikander. Weighing his next utterance, he could come up with nothing that might satisfy his questioner.