Guantanamo Bay languishes in limbo as world moves on from 9/11

In July 2003, Saifullah Paracha left Pakistan for a business trip in Thailand; it would take him over 19 years to return home. What awaited him in Bangkok was not a work meeting, but an elaborate sting organised by American authorities who suspected Paracha of being a member of the terrorist group al-Qaeda.

Detention and interrogations followed as did a journey to the American detention camp of Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. It was from there that the now 75-year-old prisoner was recently released, never having been charged with any crime; nearly two decades of his life have been lost.

The War on Terror may have faded from the memory of many, but some of its weapons remain. Heading the list of remnants is the detention camp at Guantanamo Bay. The camp epitomises the decision by the Bush Administration to militarise counter-terrorism in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks on 11 September 2001 and to operate, in the words of Vice President Dick Cheney, ‘through … the dark side’.

Cheney’s ‘dark side’ included ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’, which President Barack Obama later referred to as ‘torture’, ‘black prison sites’, ‘targeted killings’, and imprisonments and interrogations at Guantanamo Bay, a tiny bit of Cuba leased to the United States since 1903. It was selected as a means, unsuccessfully as it would turn out, of avoiding American courts and became the destination of hundreds of prisoners from January 2002 until 2007, including Paracha, Moazzam Begg from Birmingham, and Mohamedou Ould Slahi whose story would become a BAFTA-nominated film. At its peak, the total reached 780 detainees; to date, 732 have been released without charge.

From the nearly 800 imprisoned, the number has dwindled to 35. Of that figure, three have been convicted by military commissions and nine are in the process of going through the military commission system. Among that final number is Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged originator of the idea for the 9/11 attacks. Captured in 2003, the CIA extensively tortured Mohammed including by waterboarding him 183 times. The torturing of Mohammed has complicated his being tried by a US military commission; nearly 20 years after being taken into custody, the main proceedings against him have yet to begin.

Opening the detention camp at Guantanamo Bay has proven easier than shutting the facility down. Fourteen years ago, while running for president, Barack Obama promised to close the detention camp at Guantanamo Bay. He issued an executive order in 2009 on his second day in office that called for it to close within a year. That deadline passed unfulfilled. Nearly eight years later, his administration made one final effort at closing, with a high-profile announcement at the White House in 2016. The detention camp remained by the time Donald Trump became president; he vowed to not only keep it open, but to send more detainees to Cuba; only the first promise was fulfilled.

Obama failed because Congress, and that included both Republicans and Democrats, blocked the closing of the camp. The political optics of moving some prisoners to the mainland United States to be tried in civilian courts, as had occurred in terrorism cases prior to 9/11, proved politically toxic. Congress passed laws prohibiting the transfer of prisoners to the United States.

For now, and the foreseeable future, Guantanamo Bay is in a state of limbo. Twenty-three detainees remain at the camp who can be transferred to other countries if ones can be found to accept them. For those alleged to be connected to the 9/11 attacks, there is the laborious process of military commissions to determine their culpability. As 9/11 drifts back further into the past and waves of young people enter adulthood having been born after that horrific day, the Guantanamo Bay detention camp persists as a symbol of a counter-terrorism path chosen two decades earlier.