Hours after the terrorist attacks on September 11 2001, which killed nearly 3,000 people in New York, Virginia and Pennsylvania, then US president George W Bush reassured his country and the world: “America was targeted for attack because we’re the brightest beacon for freedom and opportunity in the world, and no one will keep that light from shining.”
He also promised an emphatic but just response: “I have directed the full resources of our intelligence and law enforcement communities to find those responsible and bring them to justice.”
That commitment has since shaped the world, particularly the Middle East, though in some ways for the worst. It has brought America some victories, but also many defeats, as the country hastily embarked on missions that undermined human rights norms and international law — areas in which it had long been a historic advocate.
Nowhere were American values undermined more starkly than in Guantanamo Bay, a detention facility on a US naval base in Cuba. The base was ostensibly built to make the US and the world safer. Thanks to its partial repurposing as an opaque prison where dozens were held on murky charges, it manifestly did not. Experts on the facility, such as Hina Shamsi, director of the ACLU’s National Security Project, instead call it "a global symbol of American injustice, torture, and abuse of power”.
Two decades ago today, on January 11, 2002, it received its first detainees. Since then, it has been the extrajudicial, out-of-sight prison for almost 800 men. They were branded "enemy combatants" and stripped of most of their rights as prisoners. It is still open, currently holding 39 inmates. In November, the US heard the first public account of torture at the facility after the September 11 attacks by a detainee, Pakistani citizen Majid Khan. His treatment is not the only instance of illegal practices at “Gitmo”, as the prison is often known, but his case offers an example of the sort of nuance a brutal place such as Guantanamo could never entertain. While he had pled guilty to helping Al Qaeda in 2002, he subsequently rejected terrorism, expressed remorse and said his crimes were committed while vulnerable after the death of his mother. Seven senior US military officials have since backed clemency for him.
Cases such as Mr Khan’s have brought a steady stream of international condemnation, and in recent years there have been hopes Guantanamo would close. Former US president Barack Obama promised to but failed. President Joe Biden pledges the same, but has so far made no meaningful moves.
The biggest reason to close it is not to keep campaign promises and prevent national embarrassment, however. It is to end the this example of America betraying the international rules-based order, painstakingly built up throughout the latter half of the 20th century. It took so long to create and is so precious because it flies in the face of “normal” wartime instincts. History has shown how rare it is to treat enemy combatants, civilians, refugees and prisoners in war with dignity. But after the horror of the Second World War, a diplomatic, multilateral movement led by the US managed to draw up protections to do so.
What took decades to achieve was dashed in months not just at Guantanamo, but also Abu Ghraib, an Iraqi prison where American soldiers degraded and tortured prisoners. Since then, a rising number of countries have reneged on international commitments to protect the most vulnerable. It is worth asking whether so many in the international community would tolerate the conditions and limbo so many refugees find themselves in today if precursors to the breakdown in respect for international law such as Guantanamo had never happened.
And regardless of all the moral arguments against it, there is still the fact that Guantanamo simply did not work. The grimmest irony in the facility’s history is playing out in Afghanistan. A number of its former inmates will be watching today’s anniversary as senior members of the Taliban’s new government in Kabul.
The US, therefore, owes it to the world to act on its promises to close the facility. Two decades on, the case for doing so is only getting stronger.
The five pillars of Islam
The five pillars of Islam
The Voice of Hind Rajab
Starring: Saja Kilani, Clara Khoury, Motaz Malhees
Director: Kaouther Ben Hania
Rating: 4/5
Farage on Muslim Brotherhood
Nigel Farage told Reform's annual conference that the party will proscribe the Muslim Brotherhood if he becomes Prime Minister.
"We will stop dangerous organisations with links to terrorism operating in our country," he said. "Quite why we've been so gutless about this – both Labour and Conservative – I don't know.
“All across the Middle East, countries have banned and proscribed the Muslim Brotherhood as a dangerous organisation. We will do the very same.”
It is 10 years since a ground-breaking report into the Muslim Brotherhood by Sir John Jenkins.
Among the former diplomat's findings was an assessment that “the use of extreme violence in the pursuit of the perfect Islamic society” has “never been institutionally disowned” by the movement.
The prime minister at the time, David Cameron, who commissioned the report, said membership or association with the Muslim Brotherhood was a "possible indicator of extremism" but it would not be banned.
HIJRA
Starring: Lamar Faden, Khairiah Nathmy, Nawaf Al-Dhufairy
Director: Shahad Ameen
Rating: 3/5
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The specs
Engine: 3.0-litre six-cylinder turbo
Power: 398hp from 5,250rpm
Torque: 580Nm at 1,900-4,800rpm
Transmission: Eight-speed auto
Fuel economy, combined: 6.5L/100km
On sale: December
Price: From Dh330,000 (estimate)
Conflict, drought, famine
Estimates of the number of deaths caused by the famine range from 400,000 to 1 million, according to a document prepared for the UK House of Lords in 2024.
It has been claimed that the policies of the Ethiopian government, which took control after deposing Emperor Haile Selassie in a military-led revolution in 1974, contributed to the scale of the famine.
Dr Miriam Bradley, senior lecturer in humanitarian studies at the University of Manchester, has argued that, by the early 1980s, “several government policies combined to cause, rather than prevent, a famine which lasted from 1983 to 1985. Mengistu’s government imposed Stalinist-model agricultural policies involving forced collectivisation and villagisation [relocation of communities into planned villages].
The West became aware of the catastrophe through a series of BBC News reports by journalist Michael Buerk in October 1984 describing a “biblical famine” and containing graphic images of thousands of people, including children, facing starvation.
Band Aid
Bob Geldof, singer with the Irish rock group The Boomtown Rats, formed Band Aid in response to the horrific images shown in the news broadcasts.
With Midge Ure of the band Ultravox, he wrote the hit charity single Do They Know it’s Christmas in December 1984, featuring a string of high-profile musicians.
Following the single’s success, the idea to stage a rock concert evolved.
Live Aid was a series of simultaneous concerts that took place at Wembley Stadium in London, John F Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia, the US, and at various other venues across the world.
The combined event was broadcast to an estimated worldwide audience of 1.5 billion.
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MATCH INFO
Who: UAE v USA
What: first T20 international
When: Friday, 2pm
Where: ICC Academy in Dubai
UAE v Gibraltar
What: International friendly
When: 7pm kick off
Where: Rugby Park, Dubai Sports City
Admission: Free
Online: The match will be broadcast live on Dubai Exiles’ Facebook page
UAE squad: Lucas Waddington (Dubai Exiles), Gio Fourie (Exiles), Craig Nutt (Abu Dhabi Harlequins), Phil Brady (Harlequins), Daniel Perry (Dubai Hurricanes), Esekaia Dranibota (Harlequins), Matt Mills (Exiles), Jaen Botes (Exiles), Kristian Stinson (Exiles), Murray Reason (Abu Dhabi Saracens), Dave Knight (Hurricanes), Ross Samson (Jebel Ali Dragons), DuRandt Gerber (Exiles), Saki Naisau (Dragons), Andrew Powell (Hurricanes), Emosi Vacanau (Harlequins), Niko Volavola (Dragons), Matt Richards (Dragons), Luke Stevenson (Harlequins), Josh Ives (Dubai Sports City Eagles), Sean Stevens (Saracens), Thinus Steyn (Exiles)
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Killing of Qassem Suleimani
Sholto Byrnes on Myanmar politics
Killing of Qassem Suleimani
Sheer grandeur
The Owo building is 14 storeys high, seven of which are below ground, with the 30,000 square feet of amenities located subterranean, including a 16-seat private cinema, seven lounges, a gym, games room, treatment suites and bicycle storage.
A clear distinction between the residences and the Raffles hotel with the amenities operated separately.
