Arnon Grunberg
Cuba - Guantánamo Bay

At Guantánamo There Is No Why

"Are there actually prisoners here who claim not to be Muslims?" my colleague from The Daily Telegraph asks.
We're in a bus, on our way to the prison camps at Guantánamo Bay ("Gitmo"). Three journalists, an American Army captain and staff sergeant, and me.
"Good question," Captain Byer says. From now on all our questions will be grouped according to good and not-so-good.
Anyone who asks a good question is told: good question. Anyone who asks a not-so-good question is told nothing. He simply receives an answer, or what passes for an answer around here. As Primo Levi, under very different conditions and in a completely different place, once heard a guard say: "Es gibt hier kein Warum."
"Well, we don't serve a whole lot of kosher meals," Captain Byer says.
Laughter. Everyone does a lot of laughing. We do our best to keep things lighthearted.
Damien from The Daily Telegraph comments sparingly: "There's not a whole lot of difference between kosher and halal."
Before actually entering the camps, we receive a briefing in a kind of improvised living room. Complete with Power Point presentation. Sergeant Erik Saar, who worked as an interpreter in the prison camps at Gitmo and wrote an informative book, Inside the Wire, about his experiences there, noted that the American Army is wild about Power Point presentations. The American Army is not the only one.
"We comply with the Geneva Convention as closely as possible," Captain Byer says after opening his laptop.
The air conditioning is running full blast.
The enemy combatants ("ECs") here are not officially prisoners of war, and are therefore never referred to as prisoners, only as detainees. War is also a matter of semantics. As is torture.
In actual practice, what this means is that the Geneva Convention is complied with à la carte. The daintiest morsels are selected from it.
"In 2000 we had only ten Arabic speakers here for questioning," Captain Byer says. "Everyone comes down here. The FBI, the CIA, you name it. But all the different organization work together, and share all information."
In actual practice, that cooperation is perhaps less than unanimous. The first reports of the rough treatment of prisoners during interrogations were brought out by FBI personnel, among others, who considered such treatment to be counterproductive.
There is still a fair amount of competition between the various American intelligence services.
Captain Byer speaks of The Manchester Document. That "handbook" for Islamic militants, jihadis, was unearthed in Manchester in the year 2000. Among other things, it advises imprisoned militants to complain of torture and ill-treatment, and to consider going on hunger strike.
The American Army uses this document to support its argument that complaints from prisoners, rumors of torture and hunger strikes are themselves all tactical elements of the enemy's psychological warfare.
"It's freezing in here," comments Michelle from the Toronto Star. "Could we turn down the airco a little?"
Captain Byer shakes his head. "We like it like this," he says. "In the new camps with air conditioning, the detainees complain about the cold too. Of course, they're used to the tropics. So we hand out long-sleeved robes."
The captain leans over his laptop and goes on with the Power Point presentation.
A lawyer I'd run into close to our sleeping quarters referred to the way journalists are trotted around Gitmo as "the Disneyland Tour".
"And, of course, there was the uprising at Camp 4," the captain says in a voice that's sounding increasingly weary.
You have prison camps one through six; together they form Camp Delta. Camp X-Ray, the one with the open cages, hasn't been used for a while.
The uprising last May at Camp 4 - which was barely reported on in the Dutch media - lasted eight minutes and actually started in Camp 1, where a detainee had been found lying unconscious. The unconscious detainee had taken an overdose of medicine.
The uprising soon spread to Camp 4. Camp 4 was, and still is, inhabited by detainees who are compliant. In other words: tamed. You can recognize them by the color of their robes: white.
Detainees who are not quite as tame have beige robes. And the detainees who are still wild go dressed in orange. Within the space of about three months, a detainee can clamber up from completely undomesticated to extremely well-domesticated.
The uprising began in the recreation area, which is actually more of a recreation cage. The detainees had hung a sheet in front of the video camera.
Then they swabbed the floor with a mixture of poop, urine and soap.
When there are problems with the detainees, the camp calls in the Initial Reaction Force (IRF), also known as the Quick Reaction Force.
Erik Saar describes the IRF in his book as a five-man squad, without firearms - none of the guards here carry firearms - but equipped with shields and other implements, who enter cells to restrain detainees. Sometimes the IRF accidentally breaks a detainee's arm.
The IRF used to practice on fellow soldiers. One time, one of the soldiers they were practicing on was hurt so badly that he had to be flown for treatment to a hospital on the mainland. These days the IRF no longer practices on colleagues.
The floor of the recreation cage was slick as could be, causing the members of the IRF to slip and fall.
Then reinforcements were called in. Later we hear that the rebellious detainees were also fired on with rubber bullets.
This uprising, brief as it was, led to a change in the approach to detainees. The leaders at Gitmo came to the conclusion that there is no terrorist for whom medium security is sufficient. This had a particularly profound impact on Camp 6, which was originally built as a medium-security prison.
Strangely enough, none of the detainees who have taken an overdose of medicine - there have been two of them, as it turned out - had put in a request for those medicines themselves.
"So how did they get them?" I ask. "Is there corruption among the guards?"
Captain Byer loses his patience for the first time. "Let's cut the crap!" he shouts. He hisses like a cat. "I'm so sick and tired of all these questions. I can't take any more of this."
I feel sorry for Captain Byer.
Today, more than nine months after the uprising, and after the three suicides last June, it remains unclear exactly how the detainees got hold of the medicine.
The official comment is: "The investigation is ongoing."
Every camp, every prison, has a black market. The black market at Gitmo remains hidden from our view.
Captain Byer pulls himself together. "Anyone who misbehaves loses his privileges," he states.
We know what he means: it's the same everywhere. It is upon that rule that society is built.