Despite grim predictions by a small group of anti-war activists in West Marin, the war against al Qaeda and the Taliban is finding success far faster than anyone could have predicted. The cliché that if the Soviets and British couldn’t defeat Afghan forces so we won’t be able to either has turned out to be a gross misreading of history.
Unlike the British and the Soviets, the allies in this conflict include most of the tribes that previously fought outsiders. For now most Afghans consider the Taliban the outsiders – both because of the brutality they visited on Afghan citizens and because their numbers include many foreigners, including Arabs, Uzbeks, Chechens, and at least one American.
This week’s news that John Walker of Fairfax is among the Taliban who have been captured is as boggling for us in West Marin as it must be tragic for his parents. Is he guilty of treason? Was he merely Osama bin Laden’s naive house servant who poured the tea? Did he ever even meet bin Laden? How our legal system and military deals with him is going to be fascinating.
It’s also worrisome, given the brutality federal agents have demonstrated against Middle Eastern residents of the US (including Jews from Israel) since the Sept. 11 attacks. Hundreds of foreigners are now in federal custody with no charges filed against them.
Some have been taken into custody merely because their family names are the same as those of suspected terrorists. In the Dec. 10 Newsweek, a Texas radiologist from Saudi Arabia, Dr. Al-Badr Al-Hazmi, tells how he was taken into custody Sept. 12 with no reason given and then subjected to a brutal interrogation by federal agents who repeatedly kicked him in the small of his back. Twelve days later he was released with no charges filed. It seems that much of his problem stemmed from his name, but as the doctor explained, Al-Hazmi is a common name in Saudi Arabia. "It’s a big tribe," he told Newsweek. "It’s like John Smith in the US."
Worse yet is the story told by a Pakistani student, Hasnain Javed, who is living with an aunt in Houston and had planned to study computer technology at Queensborough College. When the Border Patrol found that his visa had expired, federal agents pulled him off a bus to New York and threw him in a Mississippi jail where "several inmates beat him severely, breaking one of his teeth, fracturing a couple of ribs, and rupturing his eardrum," reported Newsweek.
He was stripped naked by jeering inmates, who called him bin Laden and beat him some more. When guards finally showed up, they merely watched the beating for awhile before intervening. He was later released on $5,000 bail.
As some FBI agents have argued, these tactics are counterproductive. If people really are likely suspects, good law enforcement involves monitoring their activities and seeing where they lead. A general roundup and brutal interrogation of Middle Eastern young men in this country erases any possible leads, these agents complain.
And if we proceed with President George W. Bush’s and Attorney General John Ashcroft’s plans for trying suspects secretly in military tribunals, the Administration may turn American citizens and the rest of our allies against an otherwise righteous war. Already, 58 percent of Americans have told pollsters they want suspects tried in public, and foreign allies have balked at extraditing suspected terrorists to the United States if they are going to be tried in secret.
For the moment, the US has the moral high ground in the war against terrorism. However, Christian fundamentalist Ashcroft is starting to sound like Islamic fundamentalist Nooruddin Turabi, the Taliban’s barbaric Minister of Justice.
Most of us want Middle Eastern residents of the US to be afforded American legal protections. If they are not, we will have a replay of the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II – a shameful episode in an otherwise noble war.