Posted on 01/22/2002 5:06:54 AM PST by Grig
The National Post's Stewart Bell reported from Afghanistan during the U.S. bombing of al-Qaeda and Taliban forces. Yesterday he was the only Canadian among a group of foreign reporters granted access to the U.S. detention site at Guantanamo Bay. His report:
The Taliban and al-Qaeda prisoners held at the U.S. military base here on Cuba's southern coast are being guarded partly by female Military Police officers, a shocking role reversal for Afghan fighters unaccustomed to taking orders from women.
During the Taliban's five years in power, women were banned from showing their faces, working or going to school. They were at times raped and murdered by marauding Taliban troops, and were executed with a gunshot to the head for such crimes as adultery.
But at Guantanamo Bay, where 144 captives from Afghanistan are being detained under tight security, fighters who defended a regime that systematically trampled on women's rights now find themselves forced to obey female guards.
"In their country they probably ran their women," said Private Cortney Sletten, a U.S. Army MP from Minnesota assigned to guard duty at Camp X-Ray, where the detainees are kept behind barbed-wire fences and watched by snipers in towers.
"Now they're getting the other side of it," she said.
The prisoners have many reasons to feel culture shock on arrival at Guantanamo: the tropical Caribbean climate, ever-present U.S. flags and the McDonald's restaurant their bus passes on its way to Camp X-Ray. But the biggest shock may well be the sight of women in camouflage uniforms, giving them orders that cannot be ignored.
This may be the first time some of the prisoners have seen women in such dominant roles -- but they appear to be learning fast.
"It's 'yes miss, no miss, may I please miss'," said Private Jodi Smith, 30, a Camp X-Ray guard from San Antonio, Tex.
Whether the deployment of female guards was done deliberately to tweak the prisoners or was simply a matter of circumstance is not clear. But the symbolism is hard to miss.
Twenty-four hours a day, the captives are at the mercy of guards such as Pte. Sletten.
The captives have little privacy. When a prisoner wants to use the bathroom or take a shower, he must ask a guard to escort him.
Before a prisoner can leave his cell, he must kneel as guards put handcuffs on his wrists and leg irons on his ankles. The guards keep hold of the prisoners' arms whenever they are outside their cells.
The Taliban was a religious movement that emerged from Afghan refugee camps in Pakistan during the early 1990s. Its followers were radicalized Muslim men, many of them orphaned by war, who had little exposure to women, and little regard for their place in the world. As a result, when the Taliban seized power in 1996, the hardline religious leadership placed severe restrictions on women, all but confining them to their homes.
Despite this record, the prisoners appear to have quickly adapted to their combat-ready female guards. "I have not had any problems with them at all. None," Pte. Smith said. "If it does [upset the prisoners to take orders from women], they don't show any sign of it."
Said Pte. Sletten: "They know there's consequences if they don't treat me the same as everybody else."
The guards say they do not let their views about the Taliban regime and its treatment of women influence their work. Those opinions are "left at the gate," Pte. Smith said. "When I go in to work I can't let my personal feelings affect my job."
But she calls the Taliban's treatment of women abhorrent. "I personally feel it's wrong. I understand it's a cultural thing but I was raised in a home where we were taught a woman can be anything she wants to be."
Another 34 detainees arrived at Guantanamo Bay from Kandahar on Sunday. A third were suffering combat wounds, mostly gunshot and shrapnel injuries that doctors on the base said appeared to be six to eight weeks old. One prisoner had to be carried off the plane.
The men are in their 20s and 30s, the military said. Their nationalities were unknown, but six Algerian al-Qaeda members arrested in the Balkans were said to have been on the flight -- the first time prisoners from outside Afghanistan have been taken to the prison camp.
A U.S. Marines spokesman said two of the prisoners had to be sedated during the flight when they began yelling and thrashing.
Red Cross officials are monitoring conditions at the camp following complaints from human rights groups that the prisoners are being subjected to inhumane treatment. Citizens of more than 10 nations are now housed at the camp, which will eventually hold 1,000.
Keep the bagels coming!
What the hell is the matter with people and their deference to "cultural things"?!? There's no "my personal opinion" about it. It's wrong, dammit! Wrong, Wrong, WRONG!
This is like throwing a cat into a washtub! Their flesh must be crawwwwwling!!!
I hope she's wearing thigh-high siletto-heeled black leather boots and carrying a riding crop when she makes them say this.
If I were a female guard holding onto one of these prisoners, I would make it a point to learn to whisper to them in Arabic: "I'm having really bad menstrual cramps today, so keep your mouth shut because I'm in no mood to take any sh!t from YOU."
The point is, to these Muslims, menstruating women are unclean. They consider being touched by a menstruating woman is a major abomination -- at least that's what I've come to understand.
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