Friday, June 8, 2012 by The Guardian/UK
Killing Another #2 and the Perpetually Self-Defeating 'War on Terror'
Behind the killing by drone strike of al-Qaida's Abu Yahya al-Libi lies a story of the senseless brutality by which the US makes its enemies
"A man for all seasons … He's a warrior. He's a poet. He's a scholar. He's a pundit. He's a military commander. And he's a very charismatic, young, brash rising star within …"Abu Yahya al-Libi in 2008. Following his escape from Bagram, he assumed a leadership role in al-Qaida. (Photograph: Reuters)
This statement could easily be construed as praise, even admiration, for the possessor of such qualities – until one reads who and what it's referring to: "… al-Qaida,
and I think he has become the heir apparent to Osama bin Laden in terms
of taking over the entire global jihadist movement." So says Jarret
Brachman, a former CIA analyst and Westpoint research director,
regarding Abu Yahya al-Libi, who was reportedly killed in a US drone-strike in Waziristan this week.
Last September, on a visit to Libya,
I met with a rebel military commander who told me that his country
wanted "a good relationship with the Americans". That man was Abu
Yahya's brother.
I couldn't help wondering at the time, just two weeks after the fall
of Tripoli, whether he'd shared his views with his brother, who I knew
was regarded by the US as a high-ranking of member of al-Qaida. This was
a bizarre paradox: the people I'd come to see, including Sami al-Saadi and Abdel Hakim Belhadj, had been, along with their families, victims of rendition to Gaddafi's Libya
instigated by the British government. Yet, now, the cause of these men
and that of the duplicitous nations that had facilitated their rendition
and torture did, at least for the short term, coincide.
During my stay in the Libyan capital, I visited the notorious Abu Salim prison,
where both al-Saadi – who lost two brothers in the infamous 1996
prison-massacre – and Belhadj had been held. Spray-painted on one of the
doors by rebels who had broken free from the prison were the words in
Arabic: "Life [imprisonment] in Guantánamo is not even a day in Abu
Salim." Perhaps that was an exaggeration, but I have also met Libyan former Guantánamo prisoners, who were held in both prisons, and they were not objecting tot his assessment.
"Killing with drones may have the short-term
effect of eliminating a few obscure enemies. But with all the civilian
casualties, the strategy is generating still more hostility, at a time
when everyone admits that the war – on the ground, and for hearts and
minds – is being lost."
I was also shown the cell and final abode of a rendition victim whose
tortured testimony was used by the US to justify the invasion of Iraq.
Ibn al-Sheikh al-Libi's "confession, which asserted al-Qaida was in
partnership with Saddam Hussain in obtaining WMD, was cited by US
Secretary of State Colin Powell in 2003 as a source of credible
information in his presentation to the UN security council, preceding
Operation Iraqi Freedom. But there were no WMDs in Iraq and al-Qaida
only materialised there afterwards, and as a direct result of
the invasion. A year later, Ibn al-Sheikh retracted his statement; after
being bounced around Egypt, Mauritania, Morocco, Jordan, Afghanistan and perhaps Poland, he was returned to Libya where he was found dead in his cell in 2009.
Ibn al-Sheikh's testimony had been taken during interrogations in
Mubarak's Egypt, where he'd been sent by the CIA – in a coffin. Prior to
that, he was held at the Bagram internment facility, which is where I
first learned heard about him after the CIA threatened me with his fate
if I didn't cooperate.
Abu Yahya al-Libi was also held in Bagram from 2002, until his dramatic escape in 2005.
I was there in 2002, but I did not see him or any of the other three
who escaped with him. However, after my release, I did see an interview
on the al-Arabiyya news channel, in which Aby Yahya not only described
the escape in detail, but also the conditions in Bagram and his
experience as a captive of the US.
Having spent so long in Bagram, I found it hard to believe that they
had escaped; I saw one man beaten to death during an escape attempt. I
also recalled how the CIA had told me that they would "fake" an escape
for me if I agreed to work for them, which would springboard me into
al-Qaida automatically. But after having heard the detail in which Abu
Yahya described the escape, and his actions thereafter, I believe it was
genuine. And coupled with his knowledge and the qualities Brachman
alludes to above, the escape is precisely what took him to the
leadership of al-Qaida. Hardly anyone had heard of him before that.
I've always maintained that Bagram was much worse than Guantánamo; I
was looking forward to the latter after being in the former for almost a
year. Being punched and kicked, shackled naked to other prisoners and
dragged to communal showers, forcibly shaved, hands chained to the tops
of cage doors and left suspended were just some of the daily occurrences
we all witnessed or experienced. The worst for me was hearing the
screams of a woman who I had thought for a time was my own wife.
Mercifully, it wasn't, but I am convinced it was someone's wife, mother,
daughter or sister; and Abu Yahya and his comrades did more than hear a
woman.
Of all the abuses he describes in his account, the presence of a
woman and her humiliation and degradation were the most inflammatory to
all the prisoners – and they would never forget it. He describes how she
was regularly stripped naked and manhandled by male guards, and how she
used to scream incessantly in isolation for two years. He said
prisoners protested her treatment, going on hunger strike, feeling
ashamed they could do nothing to help. He described her in detail: a
Pakistani mother – torn away from her children – in her mid-thirties,
who had begun to lose her mind. Her number, he said, was 650.
After their escape, which was notably downplayed by the media at the
time, Abu Yahya and his comrades all became fighters with al-Qaida and
joined the war against the US. He was the last of the four, as one was later captured, another killed in Iraq and the other killed by a drone strike in Afghanistan.
In 2007, I interviewed another so-called al-Qaida leader in the making: Anwar al-Awlaki had been imprisoned in Yemen
and interrogated by US agents. Something traumatic, which he was not
prepared to discuss with me, had happened during the encounter with the
Americans; and not long after, he went from condemning the September 11
attacks to becoming a regional commander of al-Qaida in the Arabian
Peninsula, before also being killed by a US drone strike.
Abu Yahya and al-Awlaki, I believe, were both creations of the US-led "war on terror". There were opportunities
in the case of the latter to enter into a meaningful dialogue to create
understanding, while the former, who also spoke of the decent US
soldiers he met, could have been given humane treatment, instead of yet
another excuse to hate America.
Killing with drones may have the short-term effect of eliminating a
few obscure enemies. But with all the civilian casualties, the strategy
is generating still more hostility, at a time when everyone admits that
the war – on the ground, and for hearts and minds – is being lost.
© 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited
