Those Black Holes
I made my weekly trip to Watching America a little earlier than usual because I had yesterday afternoon off. As I expected, the "shoe" is still getting plenty of attention around the world, as well it should. The one entry at the site which grabbed my attention, however, was one which added a rather rich backdrop to the whole episode: Robert Fisk's December 8, 2008 column in the Belfast Telegraph. While most of the world's press is talking about a pair of shoes being tossed at George Bush, very few are talking about the secret prisons the US is running in Afghanistan. Certainly no US news outlet has had anything to say about them, and there are several reasons for that.
...It reminded me of how, back in the mid-1970s, a foreign editor on The Times used to keep a spinning globe on his desk as a sign of his global importance and would place the tip of his thumb on the scene of a catastrophe in order to dispatch his nearest reporter to the location. Thus he once sent my predecessor in Lebanon by road to a northern Turkish earthquake on the grounds that – despite a Syrian border crossing for which a visa took a week to negotiate – Beirut was only half a thumb from Trabzon. Ping. Welcome to Turkey.
I suspect this is pretty much how the Bush administration regarded Muslim south-west Asia. One bunch of Muslims in Dushanbe was pretty much the same as another in Kabul or the Emirates. After all, Dushanbe boasts a French air force squadron flying close air support to the Brits in Afghanistan's Helmand province while Dubai welcomes the Royal Navy, the French air force and successive US secretaries of state. Those pesky Muslims are just about covered by a finger and thumb. Why bother with the detail? ...
Just look how we've forgotten the CIA's secret prisons. In Afghanistan, a Fisk source who has never – ever – been wrong, tells me that there are at least 20 of these torture centres still active in the country, six in Zabol province alone. ...
As Ruth pointed out in her post earlier today, the current administration has managed to screw up even this "good war" (probably an oxymoron under any circumstance, but certainly one given the nature of the Bush administration). Complicating the tragedy unfolding in Afghanistan is that President Elect Obama has made it clear that, while he wants to end the war in Iraq, he wants to increase troop levels in Afghanistan. Apparently the illusion of victory in Afghanistan has seduced Mr. Obama in much the same way that the illusion of victory in Iraq seduced George W. Bush, and that is not exactly the kind of change we hoped for.
The really despicable part of our operations in Afghanistan are those "black prisons" Mr. Fisk mentions. While I don't pretend to know how many of those black holes actually exist, I think even one is too many, whether in Afghanistan, Pakistan, or any other nation on earth. It smacks too much of those Latin American dictatorships of the last century where thousands of those countries' citizens simply "disappeared." The fact that an agency of our government is engaging in this kind of behavior is a mark of deep shame on our nation and goes a long way towards explaining the animosity of the people in the Middle East and elsewhere towards the US.
Will Mr. Obama recognize the CIA's activity of kidnapping, detaining, torturing for what it is, criminal behavior? Or will he accept the flimsy rationalizations of the out-going administration that it is a necessary part of keeping this country safe from the very terrorists we are creating in those prisons? Unless pressure is brought to bear on the new administration, I suspect Mr. Obama will opt for the latter.
But such pressure will be difficult to engender without bringing the information of the very existence of those prisons to the public, and, as I noted at the start, our vaunted free press doesn't seem to be interested in the issue. A trip to Guantanamo Bay is a much easier trip to make, and a much safer one. And that means we have our work cut out for us. We're going to have to turn up the heat on the press as well.
I have a hunch it's going to be a very busy eight years.
...It reminded me of how, back in the mid-1970s, a foreign editor on The Times used to keep a spinning globe on his desk as a sign of his global importance and would place the tip of his thumb on the scene of a catastrophe in order to dispatch his nearest reporter to the location. Thus he once sent my predecessor in Lebanon by road to a northern Turkish earthquake on the grounds that – despite a Syrian border crossing for which a visa took a week to negotiate – Beirut was only half a thumb from Trabzon. Ping. Welcome to Turkey.
I suspect this is pretty much how the Bush administration regarded Muslim south-west Asia. One bunch of Muslims in Dushanbe was pretty much the same as another in Kabul or the Emirates. After all, Dushanbe boasts a French air force squadron flying close air support to the Brits in Afghanistan's Helmand province while Dubai welcomes the Royal Navy, the French air force and successive US secretaries of state. Those pesky Muslims are just about covered by a finger and thumb. Why bother with the detail? ...
Just look how we've forgotten the CIA's secret prisons. In Afghanistan, a Fisk source who has never – ever – been wrong, tells me that there are at least 20 of these torture centres still active in the country, six in Zabol province alone. ...
As Ruth pointed out in her post earlier today, the current administration has managed to screw up even this "good war" (probably an oxymoron under any circumstance, but certainly one given the nature of the Bush administration). Complicating the tragedy unfolding in Afghanistan is that President Elect Obama has made it clear that, while he wants to end the war in Iraq, he wants to increase troop levels in Afghanistan. Apparently the illusion of victory in Afghanistan has seduced Mr. Obama in much the same way that the illusion of victory in Iraq seduced George W. Bush, and that is not exactly the kind of change we hoped for.
The really despicable part of our operations in Afghanistan are those "black prisons" Mr. Fisk mentions. While I don't pretend to know how many of those black holes actually exist, I think even one is too many, whether in Afghanistan, Pakistan, or any other nation on earth. It smacks too much of those Latin American dictatorships of the last century where thousands of those countries' citizens simply "disappeared." The fact that an agency of our government is engaging in this kind of behavior is a mark of deep shame on our nation and goes a long way towards explaining the animosity of the people in the Middle East and elsewhere towards the US.
Will Mr. Obama recognize the CIA's activity of kidnapping, detaining, torturing for what it is, criminal behavior? Or will he accept the flimsy rationalizations of the out-going administration that it is a necessary part of keeping this country safe from the very terrorists we are creating in those prisons? Unless pressure is brought to bear on the new administration, I suspect Mr. Obama will opt for the latter.
But such pressure will be difficult to engender without bringing the information of the very existence of those prisons to the public, and, as I noted at the start, our vaunted free press doesn't seem to be interested in the issue. A trip to Guantanamo Bay is a much easier trip to make, and a much safer one. And that means we have our work cut out for us. We're going to have to turn up the heat on the press as well.
I have a hunch it's going to be a very busy eight years.
Labels: Afghanistan, CIA, Free Press, Middle East
posted by Diane at 8:45 AM
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