Word: pakistani
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...been a long time since anyone in this oasis village near the Afghan border had received a letter from America. So, quite a crowd gathered when the Pakistani postman strolled into the dusty courtyard of Mohamed Azeem's house and delivered the letter. Azeem didn't know anyone in America. The envelope had a pretty stamp depicting Mt. McKinley, and an unusual return address: Detainee, JBC, 160 Camp X- Ray. Even more mysterious, the missive bore the name of Azeem's son, Issa Khan, given up for dead months ago by his family...
...After visiting Guant?namo twice and interrogating the prisoners themselves, officials from Islamabad contend that only eight of the 58 Pakistani detainees had genuine links with al-Qaeda. Most, they say, were wannabe jihadis who were recruited from Pakistani mosques and crossed the frontier last October to join the Taliban after the war began. Their average age is between 20 and 22. "They broke down and cried when they saw us," says one Pakistani official. In Guant?namo, the Pakistani envoys say they asked the American jailors: "Why did you waste your time and money bringing them to Cuba when you could...
...Mixed in with genuine terrorists are a 16-year-old boy, two 90-year-old Afghans ("They look 110," remarked one of the camp's few visitors), a Sudanese TV cameraman from the al-Jazeera network, and scores of hapless Pakistani youths who heeded the cry of jihad and found themselves abandoned and robbed on the battlefield by their fleeing Taliban brethren. Others were packed off to Guant?namo because they failed to pay extortion money to a Kandahar city secret policeman?a supposed American ally?who then denounced them as Osama bin Laden's henchmen...
...Guant?namo has, in fact, turned out to be a windfall for America's Afghan confederates. According to Pakistani detainees, the U.S. military paid the Northern Alliance $5,000 for each captive who confessed to being a Taliban and $20,000 for each purported al-Qaeda fighter. With that incentive, the prisoners claim, the allied commanders grabbed any Pakistani wandering dazed around the battlefield, then extracted confessions by force...
...first, Guant?namo wardens kept the Arab and Pakistani prisoners in adjacent cages. But they were segregated when shouting matches broke out, with each group blaming the other for its misfortune. The Arabs harangued the Pakistanis for allowing the U.S. to launch its attack against Afghanistan; the Pakistani prisoners yelled back that if the Arabs hadn't used Afghanistan as a terrorist base, the Americans would have left everyone alone...