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THE ROAD TO GUANTANAMO
A young man’s contemporary Calvary
BY ANGIE TODD—Special
for Granma International—
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BACK in September 2001, Asif Iqbal left the UK
Midlands town of Tipton for his father’s house in
Pakistan to meet his future bride. Once there, he
contacted his friends Shafiq, Ruhel and Monir back
home in England to join him in Karachi and they did.
The four of them – certain religious and cultural
practices aside – were typical of their generation
of British youth: into fashion, food, travel and
adventure, having had their minor brushes with the
police but touchingly innocent of global political
realities.
Their unforeseen Calvary, which took them from
Pakistan to Afghanistan, and three of the four to
the US Guantánamo Naval Base purpose-built prison
camp for Muslim “terrorists” on expropriated Cuban
land, until their release in March 2004, is the
subject of UK director Michael Winterbottom’s
drama-documentary The Road to Guantánamo, in
which Shafiq, Asif and Ruhel retrace their steps and
give their own account of their experience (although
some of it had to be filmed in Iran given the
dangerous situation in Afghanistan).
When
they arrived, Asif’s (Bengali) friends stayed in a
mosque in Karachi because the hotels were expensive.
By then it was October and, in the wake of the
terrorist attacks on the Twin Towers and the
Pentagon, the US forces were threatening to bombard
Afghanistan, the alleged retreat of Bin Laden, chief
of the Al Qaeda group. In the mosque an imam was
exhorting Muslims to help the people there and, as
much in a spirit of adventure as anything else – and
doubts as to any real attack – they decided to go.
Asif: “We jumped on the bus and off we went.”
That
decision took them into a real nightmare that
started with the bombing of Kandalahar: “terrifying
like out of the movies.” They fled the city with its
inhabitants and ended up in Kunduz, a Taliban
stronghold in “the middle of nowhere,” trapped by
bombings. In a mass panic prompted by the US-backed
Northern Alliance approaching the town they fled
with its inhabitants, losing Monir in the process.
They never saw him again.
Abandoned on the outskirts of Kundir¼ they
eventually found themselves back in a destroyed
town; the documentary shows Ruhel with his fashion
GAP sweat top stumbling over the wounded and dead
while survivors dig graves for them in the arid
mountain landscape.
Separated in the chaos and narrowly escaping death
at the hands of Northern Alliance thugs, the three
were handed into US custody on December 30, 2001. At
that point Asif commented “the Americans them all
right.” But he and Shafiq were flown hooded and
cuffed to Kandalahar and from there to Guantánamo,
later to be joined by Ruhel, where the real torture
began. Shackles and chains, broiling sun, insults,
commands to move, move and you’re dead;
interrogations “You’re Al Qaeda” “Where’s Bin
Laden?” from the US military, CIA, FBI, MI5;
attempts to turn them against each other; solitary
confinement for weeks on end; physical abuse; an
agonizing moment with a representative from the
British embassy who asks “How are you?” and, on
seeing tears of relief, coldly snaps: “I’m not
interested in your emotional state, just your
physical one.”
With
hindsight, Shafik comments on what is happening in
the world: “not a nice place.” Within his religion
he is praying more.
And
Asif comments that it was like the film Back to
the Future and, simply, referring to what must
have seemed a potentially endless ordeal: “it either
destroys you or makes you stronger.” He returned to
Lahore to firework celebrations and finally, his
marriage.
The
film was shown during the last Cuban Film Festival
and subsequently on Cuban television on the
Roundtable Information program, in the presence of
Iqbal himself and co-director Matt Whitecross, whose
parents were detained in the 1970’s during the
dictatorship, giving him a strong connection with
the film’s content.
Asif
Iqbal was courageous enough to come back to Cuba as
part of an international protest against this
concentration camp where 470 prisoners, including
minors, are still being detained without evidence or
due process, a reality justified by Bush on the
grounds that “they don’t share the same values that
we share.” Asif’s last words in the documentary
were: ”I want to start stepping forward instead of
looking back.” But he also affirmed here in Cuba
that not one day goes past without him thinking of
the other detainees in that hell hole; the
desperation, the suicides.
He
still looks young, wearing a Chelsea football shirt,
but with a new seriousness and maturity. Asked how
he survived he said that he “made Guantánamo his
home.”
And
as to what was the worst: “the whole experience of
people going mad.”
He
concluded: “Having been born in the UK and seeing
the U.S. as the ‘goodies’ I would like to say that
the famous liberty does not exist.”
A tremendously humane film, and a salute to the
enduring humanity of its real protagonists. |
