The Prisoners at Guantanamo Bay

On October 5th, the Watson Institute for International Studies broadcast a day-long series of discussion panels entitled “Guantanamo: How Should We Respond?” The various speakers at the event provided a fairly direct, if perhaps rather shortsighted, answer to this question: we should either shut the place down immediately, or else bring it entirely within the framework of United States law. And we should be very, very ashamed of ourselves.

To call the event extremely biased would be something of an understatement. The speakers at the event, wishing to galvanize support for change, made a concerted effort to foster discontent with Guantanamo – that is, with the prison itself, the treatment of those held there, and the administration in charge. However, for a set of problems that are so critically important, a fair and objective treatment is necessary. On controversial issues such as holding prisoners, judging their guilt, and extracting information, it must be understood that the United States has a variety of compelling interests with regards to suspected and known terrorists. While there have certainly been mistakes in the administration’s Guantanamo policy, very few of the event’s speakers elaborated beyond tear-jerk stories. Such anger-mongering and appeals to emotion obscure the many reasons that Guantanamo functions the way that it does, and, given a need for the prison to remain functional, cannot lead to constructive change.

Improperly held (innocent) prisoners:
The first major concern that I would like to address are the prisoners at Guantanamo that simply should not be there. The exact number of these is uncertain, but the fact is that they exist, and the reason is simple: bad policy. Following the collapse of the Taliban, military officials dispersed thousands of leaflets over Afghanistan and Pakistan. These informed their readers that the United States would pay thousands of dollars for information leading to the arrest of Taliban and Al-Qaida militants. Basic economics predict what happened next: hundreds of Afghans and Pakistanis were rounded up for the bounty, often by members of enemy tribes. As one might expect, many of these individuals were not the Islamic fundamentalists that their captors claimed. However, the United States has been reluctant to release these prisoners, as there is no way to know the truth about them.

The solution to this problem is quite straightforward. Having studied the Taliban’s structure, we know that many of their “soldiers” were actually forced conscripts – victims of circumstance. Many of our “weak” cases (that is, those who were most likely captured only for the bounty, and against whom we have only circumstantial evidence) are such conscripts. Others are suspected of having, at worst, only loose ties to the enemy. These individuals have no credible intelligence to speak of, and, indeed, have great incentive to fabricate intelligence to earn better treatment. Releasing these prisoners would eliminate many of the strongest arguments against Guantanamo, and would create good will around the world. Of course, some of the released prisoners would take up arms and return to the battlefield. Frankly, however, such militants would more easily be sentenced by our soldiers than in our courtrooms.