Ghosts of Guantanamo haunt Afghanistan’s future

A total of 220 Afghans have been held at the Guantanamo Bay US detention camp, the largest number of detainees from any country. While the majority of the prisoners have been released, the camp remains open and continues to affect the conflict in Afghanistan — casting a shadow over the battlefield and the negotiating table.

Former Guantanamo detainees and civil society activists call for the closure of the detention camp in Cuba at a protest outside the US embassy in Kabul on January 23, 2016. Courtesy Fazelminallah QazizaiShow less

KABUL // When Ahmad Khandan returned to Afghanistan after being held as a prisoner at the US detention camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, he barely recognised his family. He now had a young son, Bilal, whom he had never met and his brother, Qadir, had grown a beard. His mother and sister had both died in the intervening years and he was convinced it was “because of the sorrow and sadness” caused by his ordeal.

"I didn't feel the happiness of freedom," he told The National.

After 9/11 and the October 2001 US-led invasion of Afghanistan, the US began to transfer prisoners to Guantanamo Bay in January 2002. They were classified as “enemy combatants” and initially denied any protection under the Geneva Conventions.

A total of 220 Afghans have since been held there, the largest number of detainees from any country. While the majority of the prisoners have been released, the camp remains open and continues to affect the conflict in Afghanistan — casting a shadow over the battlefield and the negotiating table.

In May 2014 insurgents from a group known as the Haqqani network freed a captured American soldier, Bowe Bergdahl, in exchange for five Taliban prisoners held at Guantanamo.

The five men were flown to Qatar, where they were required to remain for a year as a condition of their release. Their travel ban was later extended as talks over their future continued.

Other former detainees have become high-profile associates of ISIL’s Afghanistan branch. One, Mullah Abdul Rauf, pledged allegiance to the group before he was killed in a drone strike in the southern province of Helmand last year. A second, Abdul Rahim Muslim Dost, has given his support to ISIL’s self-declared caliphate.

But apart from the more prominent examples of Guantanamo’s continued impact on Afghanistan, the camp also haunts many of the less well-known former prisoners, leaving psychological scars they say will never heal.

To these men, Guantanamo is a symbol of American abuse of power and the ongoing war is proof that it has fuelled radicalism in their country.

Mr Khandan was among a small number of former detainees and civil society activists who called for the closure of Guantanamo at a protest outside the US embassy in Kabul last month.

“The important members of the Taliban were released in a deal and are now based in Qatar,” he said. “But the poor and innocent are still in jail.”

In early 2009 the US president Barack Obama signed an order to close Guantanamo within a year. Having faced persistent opposition from Congress, he is still believed to want to shut the camp before stepping down from office in January next year.

Since Guantanamo was first opened, 779 prisoners have been held there. Of the 91 who remain, eight are Afghans.

According to US government documents, Mr Khandan was detained in Khost, eastern Afghanistan, in September 2002. He was transferred to Bagram airbase, north of Kabul, before eventually being sent to Guantanamo on February 6, 2003. He was given the internment serial number 831.

The US assessed Mr Khandan as a prisoner of “medium intelligence value” who had links to a local Al Qaeda “bomb-making cell” and the Taliban.

Part of the evidence used against him was that he worked in a hospital run by the mujaheddin party Hizb-e-Islami during the war against the Soviets and their Afghan allies — a cause backed by Washington.

Mr Khandan denied any involvement with terrorism or the post-2001 insurgency and was eventually transferred back to Afghanistan on October 11, 2006.

Returning to his home in Khost, he opened a private school to replace the family-run pharmacy business that had collapsed while he was away. But he told The National he was soon rearrested by American forces and again taken to Bagram, where he was held for several years, until February 2014.

During this time he suffered another bereavement when his wife died. He again blamed himself — convinced his plight had caused her health to deteriorate. She was in her late 30s and “died because of me”, he said.

With seven children to feed, Mr Khandan recently remarried and is still struggling to put his life back together.

The US documents on his detention in Guantanamo identify him by the name Khandan Kadir Khushal, born on January 1, 1969.

They recount him condemning 9/11 to a review board examining his case. “Children were orphaned and I feel like my children were orphaned,” he is recorded as saying.

The former detainees protesting outside the US embassy last month also wanted to highlight alleged abuses at Bagram prison, north of Kabul, where two Afghans were killed while in US custody in 2002.

The prison at Bagram is now under Afghan government control and is often formally referred to as the Parwan detention facility, but the treatment of detainees there still generates controversy. The Afghan president, Ashraf Ghani recently signed a decree that allows for the indefinite detention of terrorist suspects without trial.

The Taliban, meanwhile, have continued to demand the release of unspecified prisoners as a confidence-building measure prior to any meaningful peace talks.

Sharifullah Shirzad was arrested in January 2003 and held at Bagram and Guantanamo before finally being freed in December 2009. Speaking during the protest, he described the anger and bewilderment he felt when he was told he was about to be released.

“I asked them ‘what about the last seven years? Why did you arrest me?’ They said ‘we don’t know but we know now that you are innocent and you can go back home’.”