The Road to Guantanamo

Asif Iqbal, a British Muslim detained for three years after being arrested in Afghanistan, recounts his misadventures in The Road to Guantanamo. Along with the other two members of the so-called Tipton Three, he had gone to Pakistan for a wedding in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 and, once there, decided to go to Afghanistan to help with the refugee crisis.

The Northern Alliance had captured and mistreated Asif and his friends, and he recalls feeling an intense sense of relief upon being turned over to the American Armed Forces. Now, Asif had no love lost for American policy, but he still knew what America stands for. "Oh, Americans, they're all right," he thought. Of course, Asif was wrong.

The three years that followed, spent largely in the infamous Guantanamo Bay base in Cuba, were filled with cruel degradation and torture. Asif, Ruhal Ahmed and Shafiq Rasul were guilty of no crime, but because they were Muslims and they had been found in Afghanistan, American and British intelligence agencies simply assume that they must know something. What begins as an unfortunate misunderstanding escalates into an elaborate and tragic farce. When an interrogator orders Shafiq to give up Osama bin Laden's location, he almost has to laugh even though he's in pain and terrified. The notion that this kid can be of any help to the American intelligence community is laughable on its face.



Michael Winterbottom's harrowing film alternates between footage of the Tipton Three recounting their own experiences with expertly-shot re-enactment footage. The balance works well, giving the film authenticity but also raw, visceral power. Talking head interviews with these guys about what happened would be compelling, but Winterbottom's intentionally trying to provoke a response. He wants to show the people of America and Great Britain what's being done in their name, and he wants us to feel it, and just giving us more interviews would be pulling punches.

Instead, he gives us a chance to get to know Asif, Ruhal and Shafiq on their travels in the weeks before their arrest. (They are portrayed in the dramatic footage by Afran Usman, Farhad Harun and Riz Ahmed.) In Pakistan so Asif can be married, these old friends treat the trip as a sort of last weekend together before entering their adult lives. (They are joined by a fourth friend, Monir, who disappeared in the chaos of a war zone.)

The friends goof around Karachi for a while and then wander into a mosque, where an imam is talking about the aftermath of the American bombing in Afghanistan.

So they do a very silly thing and pay some guys to sneak them across the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. They say they want to help, but they probably also yearned for adventure and were curious as to what they'd find. These are idealistic and fairly devout young Muslims, but Winterbottom makes it clear still that this was not the wisest decision, nor was it carried out with sane or proper planning.

But certainly the punishment did not fit the crime. The Northern Alliance finds them in Afghanistan and ships them around the country in the back of pick-up trucks along with fleets of other prisoners. Many die from the intense heat or from dehydration. Unfortunately, things do not improve once they are handed over to the British forces in the country.

Before long, the friends find themselves in Guantanamo. Their story sounds a bit suspicious. Devout Muslims, British Nationals, who found themselves lost, wandering around Taliban-controlled villages in Afghanistan in the midst of a battle against invading American ground forces.

Wave after wave of cruel interrogations follow. Odd accustaions are made - video-taped meetings with Osama bin Laden, shadowy connections to supposed 9/11 mastermind Mohammad Atta - and eventually withdrawn. Some of the techniques used against these guys would certainly seem to qualify as torture. Binding their hands and feet, chaining them to the floor, flashing bright lights on and off in their face and playing death metal and hideously loud volumes for hours at a time doesn't sound very pleasant. Nor the intense, bitter cold nights spent outside with nothing but a thin blanket. Nor the bans on speaking, moving around and praying. Nor the constant verbal abuse and humiliation.

But these guys stories are illuminating for reasons beyond the legal and moral ramifications of their treatment. They exemplify the exact cross-section of the Muslim population that we should have appealed to after 9/11 but which we actually turned violently against us. Moderates. Muslims who understood that their faith was not incompatible with secular, Western society. Isn't that the message we in the West would like to get across to the people of the Muslim world?

Asif, Rahul and Shariq were devout. They took their Pakistani and Muslim roots seriously. And yet they did not hate or resent Western civilization. Far from it. Asif went to Pakistan to get married, not to move there forever. He wanted to start his life in Birmingham, where he had grown up. He speaks English. When he's in his cell fantasizing about a nice, hearty meal, he's dreaming of Stuffed-Crust Pizzas from Pizza Hut. When we arrest him and torture him and forbid him to face Mecca and say a prayer a few times a day, we let him know that our government has declared war on his people and his way of life. And we send every other like-minded individual out there the same message.

A Muslim from England could watch Road to Guantanamo and quite reasonably think, "hey, this happened to those guys...it could happen to me..." He'd be absolutely right. Intentionally or not, our governments have declared war on suspicious Muslims because they're dark and suspicious. Because a few people from their part of the world attacked us five years ago or some such thing, I can't even remember why any more. Why on Earth would any of them ever trust us again?