TotalAnarchy
03-15-2002, 11:41 PM
Death camp of forgotten prisoners
By Dexter Filkinsin Shibarghan in Afghanistan
On most days, lunchtime at the Jowzjan jail opens with a macabre display of the sick and dying Taliban prisoners, carried from their cells and laid in the dirt for a few moments of fresh air and sun.
Splayed in silence atop baby blue blankets, the men appear dead. But then a limb moves or a groan rises, and the guards understand that a prisoner is well enough to be hauled back inside when lunchtime is done.
"Every 15 days or so one of them dies," said the warden, General Jura Beg. "We don't have enough food for them any more. We don't have medicine."
So unfolds the fate of the 3000 Taliban prisoners brought to Shibarghan during the US campaign in Afghanistan. Most were captured in Kunduz, where thousands of Taliban and al-Qaeda soldiers threatened to fight to the death but surrendered instead.
At the time, there was talk of handing the men over to the United Nations. There were promises, by Afghans, that the prisoners would be treated decently.
Today, nearly four months later, such talk has died away.
With the war still smouldering and Afghan
istan led by a fledgling interim administration, few people of consequence appear to have time for the prisoners now.
The Americans were at the jail in the beginning, photographing and tagging the inmates, trying to select the worst ones.
They took about 100 to Guantanamo, the US base in Cuba. The Uzbek Government took at least 10 of its citizens.
The warden, in a traditional act of mercy, freed about 250, most of them either very old or very sick, before the Muslim Eid al-Adha holiday last month.
The remaining prisoners, all of them Afghan or Pakistani, appear to have been largely forgotten.
"Everyone thinks: Maybe today, maybe tomorrow," said Makhsood Khan, a 26-year-old Pakistani captured at Kunduz.
"We count the days."
Standing outside his cell the other day, Khan reeked of the narrow cell he shares with about 50 of his unbathed brethren, who pressed their faces against the barred door to listen in silence.
Khan, like so many of those captured with the Taliban, portrayed himself as a largely innocent man, tumbled about by historical currents he could neither resist nor comprehend.
Shortly after the September11 attacks, Khan said, he was enlisted by his cousin, Nasir Ahmed, a journalist for a militant newspaper, to join him on a trip to Afghanistan. His cousin needed a photographer.
Khan, an illiterate car mechanic from Islamabad, the Pakistani capital, said he had seen in his cousin's invitation a way to fulfil his duty to be a good Muslim.
"I was a photographer for the jihad," Khan said. "Jihad has many aspects: fighting, newspapers and taking photographs."
Khan, and the roughly 800 Pakistanis imprisoned at Shibarghan, face an especially uncertain future. As foreigners who took part in a civil war, they will have to depend not just on the persistence of their own government to get them out but also on the mercy of the victors to let them go.
Some Afghan officials have talked of putting the men on trial in Afghanistan, or of turning them over to Pakistan, once the Taliban's chief patron.
General Beg, a friend of Abdul Rashid Dostum, the Uzbek warlord who controls the prison, said no decision had been made on the prisoners' fate.
"No-one from the government has visited here," he said.
From his office overlooking the prison yard, General Beg sighed like a man who had long ago given up. He has 3000 men in 40 cells, in a prison designed to hold about 800.
He had had to reduce food rations for the prisoners, he said, because of government cuts.
Lacking medicine, the handful of doctors available are able to do little more than provide comfort for those who have fallen ill.
The drinking water, the general said, came from a nearby stream.
"It is full of rubbish."
A tour of the prison grounds seemed to confirm General Beg's bleak assessment.
In January, a team from Physicians for Human Rights, which is based in Boston, found an epidemic of dysentery and jaundice, the latter indicative, the group said, of hepatitis A.
The group said the conditions at Jowzjan were in "grave violation of international standards for the treatment of prisoners" and called on the United States to ensure that conditions improved.
Exactly how many prisoners have died at the jail seems a mystery.
General Beg estimated that "six or seven" had died within the prison walls, most of them from diseases they had brought into the jail. Physicians for Human Rights quoted prison officials as saying in January that "many, many prisoners had already died", mainly from dysentery, some from pneumonia.
The New York Times
Honour is when you keep your promises to your enemies, not just your friends.
By Dexter Filkinsin Shibarghan in Afghanistan
On most days, lunchtime at the Jowzjan jail opens with a macabre display of the sick and dying Taliban prisoners, carried from their cells and laid in the dirt for a few moments of fresh air and sun.
Splayed in silence atop baby blue blankets, the men appear dead. But then a limb moves or a groan rises, and the guards understand that a prisoner is well enough to be hauled back inside when lunchtime is done.
"Every 15 days or so one of them dies," said the warden, General Jura Beg. "We don't have enough food for them any more. We don't have medicine."
So unfolds the fate of the 3000 Taliban prisoners brought to Shibarghan during the US campaign in Afghanistan. Most were captured in Kunduz, where thousands of Taliban and al-Qaeda soldiers threatened to fight to the death but surrendered instead.
At the time, there was talk of handing the men over to the United Nations. There were promises, by Afghans, that the prisoners would be treated decently.
Today, nearly four months later, such talk has died away.
With the war still smouldering and Afghan
istan led by a fledgling interim administration, few people of consequence appear to have time for the prisoners now.
The Americans were at the jail in the beginning, photographing and tagging the inmates, trying to select the worst ones.
They took about 100 to Guantanamo, the US base in Cuba. The Uzbek Government took at least 10 of its citizens.
The warden, in a traditional act of mercy, freed about 250, most of them either very old or very sick, before the Muslim Eid al-Adha holiday last month.
The remaining prisoners, all of them Afghan or Pakistani, appear to have been largely forgotten.
"Everyone thinks: Maybe today, maybe tomorrow," said Makhsood Khan, a 26-year-old Pakistani captured at Kunduz.
"We count the days."
Standing outside his cell the other day, Khan reeked of the narrow cell he shares with about 50 of his unbathed brethren, who pressed their faces against the barred door to listen in silence.
Khan, like so many of those captured with the Taliban, portrayed himself as a largely innocent man, tumbled about by historical currents he could neither resist nor comprehend.
Shortly after the September11 attacks, Khan said, he was enlisted by his cousin, Nasir Ahmed, a journalist for a militant newspaper, to join him on a trip to Afghanistan. His cousin needed a photographer.
Khan, an illiterate car mechanic from Islamabad, the Pakistani capital, said he had seen in his cousin's invitation a way to fulfil his duty to be a good Muslim.
"I was a photographer for the jihad," Khan said. "Jihad has many aspects: fighting, newspapers and taking photographs."
Khan, and the roughly 800 Pakistanis imprisoned at Shibarghan, face an especially uncertain future. As foreigners who took part in a civil war, they will have to depend not just on the persistence of their own government to get them out but also on the mercy of the victors to let them go.
Some Afghan officials have talked of putting the men on trial in Afghanistan, or of turning them over to Pakistan, once the Taliban's chief patron.
General Beg, a friend of Abdul Rashid Dostum, the Uzbek warlord who controls the prison, said no decision had been made on the prisoners' fate.
"No-one from the government has visited here," he said.
From his office overlooking the prison yard, General Beg sighed like a man who had long ago given up. He has 3000 men in 40 cells, in a prison designed to hold about 800.
He had had to reduce food rations for the prisoners, he said, because of government cuts.
Lacking medicine, the handful of doctors available are able to do little more than provide comfort for those who have fallen ill.
The drinking water, the general said, came from a nearby stream.
"It is full of rubbish."
A tour of the prison grounds seemed to confirm General Beg's bleak assessment.
In January, a team from Physicians for Human Rights, which is based in Boston, found an epidemic of dysentery and jaundice, the latter indicative, the group said, of hepatitis A.
The group said the conditions at Jowzjan were in "grave violation of international standards for the treatment of prisoners" and called on the United States to ensure that conditions improved.
Exactly how many prisoners have died at the jail seems a mystery.
General Beg estimated that "six or seven" had died within the prison walls, most of them from diseases they had brought into the jail. Physicians for Human Rights quoted prison officials as saying in January that "many, many prisoners had already died", mainly from dysentery, some from pneumonia.
The New York Times
Honour is when you keep your promises to your enemies, not just your friends.