Category Archives: Analysis

Erdogan’s myth-making fancy dress show

AFP reports: They have been mocked for looking like extras from a low-budget historical drama and criticised for having only the most tenuous connection with reality.

But the 16 costumed warriors included by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in the honour guard for visiting dignitaries and representing various Turkic empires going back over two millennia serve a serious purpose.

Commentators say Erdogan wants to impress on his own public, and outsiders, that Turkey is a great power with a heritage that goes well beyond the modern republic founded in 1923 to the Ottoman and earlier great empires.

“The president has been mobilising these elements of the past,” said Ilter Turan, professor of political science at Istanbul Bilgi University, pointing to a plan by Erdogan to make Ottoman Turkish language lessons compulsory in schools.

“This symbolism appears part of this package,” he told AFP.

The figures represent the 16 purported states of Turkic history from the Xiongnu confederation in today’s Mongolia in the 2nd century BC to the Ottoman empire, taking in the Mughal empire, Timurid empire and a host of lesser-known states along the way.

The problem is that such an idea of simple historical continuity, linking states from the early days of nomadic Turkic peoples in southern Siberia to their migration into Anatolia and Europe, has never been widely accepted. [Continue reading…]

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Yemen government resigns

PRI reports: Omeisy says the presence of rebel soldiers, and the occasional shelling, have made more of an impact on Western media than on Sana’a residents. “Everybody’s armed in Yemen,” he says. “You go down the street even — before the conflict — and everybody’s basically armed. Shooting in the air is actually quite common.”

And there’s been plenty of military movement in the capital over the past year. “When things like this happen — when they say, like, ‘Now the Houthis are moving into Sana’a,’ the media tends to exaggerate. For us who live here in Yemen, this is not actually big news,’ Omeisy says.

Yemen’s government, under President Hadi, has also made little headway in improving living conditions. “What we’ve seen is a deterioration of the situation overall — the electricity, the unavailability of gasoline, cooking gas, oil and the security [problem with al-Qaeda]. What Yemenis need to see is change.” [Continue reading…]

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Nigeria’s prospects for defeating Boko Haram look bleak

The Guardian reports: Nigeria’s current military strategy for defeating Boko Horam is unlikely to succeed, analysts have warned, with the international community largely powerless to defeat the increasingly rampant Islamist group.

Corruption inside the Nigerian army, unpaid wages, and mutinies among troops have all facilitated Boko Haram’s rise, they said. On Sunday the sect, which has killed thousands in its bid to carve out an Islamic state in northern Nigeria, kidnapped about 80 people in neighbouring Cameroon. The victims of this latest cross-border attack included many children. The Cameroon army subsequently managed to free 20 of the hostages.

Dr Marc-Antoine Pérouse de Montclos, an associate fellow at Chatham House’s Africa programme, said Nigeria’s president, Goodluck Jonathan, had been manifestly unable to halt Boko Haram’s advance. The opposition leader, Gen Muhammadu Buhari, who is seeking to unseat Jonathan in the election on 14 February, may be better able to overhaul the country’s dysfunctional military, he suggested. [Continue reading…]

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Secret journal allegedly shows Ross Ulbricht planned a Silk Road bank

Andy Greenberg reports: Silk Road, for its more than two and a half years online, was an unprecedented online narcotics emporium. But according to a journal found on the laptop of its alleged creator Ross Ulbricht, Ulbricht wanted it to be even more: a “brand” that extended from communications tools to banking.

In Ulbricht’s trial Wednesday, prosecutor Timothy Howard read aloud from a journal that was found on the defendant’s Samsung 700z laptop, which was seized at the time of his arrest in a San Francisco library in October, 2013. The journal, which goes back at least as far as 2010, seems to provide the most detailed look yet at Ulbricht’s plans for his libertarian contraband market. And the journal reveals that before his arrest, Ulbricht had allegedly planned to create chat software, a currency exchange, and more, all under the “Silk Road brand.”

The young Texan had allegedly planned to expand the Silk Road into a “brand people can come to trust and rely on,” according to a 2011 passage from the journal. “Silk Road chat, Silk Road exchange, Silk Road credit union, Silk Road market, Silk Road everything!” [Continue reading…]

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Angry tweets and heart disease

Tom Jacobs writes: Why does one community have higher levels of heart disease than another? Some of the reasons are obvious, such as income and education levels or local eating and exercise norms.

But as epidemiologists have long argued, other likely factors are more ephemeral. Among them: how angry or content the residents tend to feel, and whether the environment fosters a sense of social connectedness.

Measuring such things is tough, but newly published research reports telling indicators can be found in bursts of 140 characters or less. Examining data on a county-by-county basis, it finds a strong connection between two seemingly disparate factors: deaths caused by the narrowing and hardening of coronary arteries and the language residents use on their Twitter accounts. [Continue reading…]

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Don’t restart Europe’s wars of religion

Pankaj Mishra writes: On Jan. 7, the day jihadists attacked the satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo and a Jewish supermarket in France, I was in a small village in Anatolia, Turkey. I had barely registered the horrifying news when a friend forwarded me a tweet from New York Times columnist Roger Cohen. “The entire free world,” it read, “should respond, ruthlessly.”

For a few seconds I was pulled back into the Cold War when Turkey, a NATO member, was technically part of the “free world.” Even back then the category was porous: Ronald Reagan included in it the jihadists fighting the Soviet army in Afghanistan.

The words seem more anachronistic a quarter century later. Our complex and often bewildering political landscape is only superficially similar to the world we knew then. Devout Anatolian masses rising from poverty have transformed Turkey politically and economically. I did not dare show Charlie Hebdo’s cartoons to the local villagers who pass my house several times every day en route to the mosque next door, let alone argue that the magazine had the right to publish them.

There is no disagreement, except from fanatics, about the viciousness of the murderers, and the need to bring their associates to justice. But the aftermath of the attacks revealed strikingly different ways of looking at the broader issues around them: Our views on free speech, secularism, and the nature of religious hurt turn out to be shaped by particular historical and socioeconomic circumstances. [Continue reading…]

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French PM says ‘apartheid’ is leaving minorities on the fringe

The New York Times reports: Prime Minister Manuel Valls of France on Tuesday cited a deep divide in the country, likening it to a state of “territorial, social, ethnic apartheid” that has left part of the population on the cultural fringe.

Mr. Valls, often regarded as the most popular politician in the leftist government of President François Hollande, has been known for his outspokenness and tough stance on radical Islam. A day after the end of the attacks in the Paris area that left 17 people dead at the hands of three Muslim extremists from France, Mr. Valls spoke of waging a war “against terrorism, against jihadism, against radical Islam, against everything that is aimed at breaking fraternity, freedom, solidarity.”

But during a traditional New Year’s speech on Tuesday, Mr. Valls acknowledged that France had a deeply rooted problem that, he implied, had resulted in a divided society.

“These last few days have emphasized many of the evils which have undermined our country from within, or challenges we have to face,” he said. “To that, we must add all the divisions, the tensions that have been brewing for too long and that we mention sporadically.”

“A territorial, social, ethnic apartheid has spread across our country,” he said.

Mr. Valls avoided singling out Muslims, but it was clear that his remarks were a response to the terrorist attacks this month and addressed growing concerns about the situation of “two Frances” that, he said, has relegated the poor and heavily immigrant population to ghetto-like suburbs of Paris, where many Muslims from North African backgrounds live. [Continue reading…]

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Does anyone control Yemen?

The New York Times: Houthi rebel militiamen seized control of the palace of Yemen’s president and clashed with guards outside his residence on Tuesday in an escalation of the violent crisis that has gripped the capital for days, raising fears of a coup in one of the Arab world’s most impoverished and insecure states.

The president, Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi, viewed by the United States as a crucial counterterrorism ally, was believed to be in the capital, but his exact whereabouts was unknown. He made no public statements as the fighting escalated, though Houthi leaders insisted that he was safe and in his home.

The Soufan Group: It has taken decades of deteriorating politics and security for Yemen to reach its current level of crisis, though now the costs might come not just in the form of the suffering of the Yemeni people but also in regional instability and the proliferation of international terrorism. While the causes of Yemen’s crisis are intensely local—having to do with longstanding issues of corruption, tribal and North-South differences, and a constitution in need of amending — it is being amplified both by meddling regional actors and a menacing terrorist group with international reach.

The move by Houthi rebels to seize control of the presidential palace in Sana’a is a warning to President Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi to meet the conditions of Abdul Malik al-Houthi, head of the Houthi movement Ansar Allah. In his January 20 televised speech regarding the fighting in Sana’a, al-Houthi accused Hadi of “covering for corruption.” He claimed that the Yemeni president “refused to order the army to fight against al-Qaeda.” Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) is based in Yemen and is the terror network’s most capable and operationally active affiliate, despite a relatively robust U.S. counterterrorism drone program that seeks to keep the group off balance. Going further, al-Houthi accused the Hadi administration of providing weapons to AQAP.

The Houthis are demanding changes to the current constitutional amendments under consideration. They oppose dividing the country into six administrative regions, and demand grouping the country into two regions—north and south—that allow them to solidify the gains they have made since the 2011 ouster of long-time Yemeni leader Ali Abdullah Salah. In his speech, al-Houthi demanded action against systemic corruption, pressure against AQAP in the Ma’rib Governorate, and quicker action to amend the constitution and preserve the goals of the Peace and National Partnership Agreement signed in September 2014 that expands Houthi political power.

New Atlanticist: During Yemen’s gradual slump into disorder, US policy has continued to focus on military action — attacking AQAP personnel with missiles fired from drone aircraft, and supporting Yemeni government counterterrorism forces, [Danya] Greenfield said in an interview. But it has not given enough attention or resources to address the broader failings of the transition government. Yemen has failed to implement steps agreed on in the National Dialogue, allowing increasingly frustrated Yemenis to be drawn in by AQAP militants, the Shiite Houthi rebels, and southern secessionists, according to Greenfield, the deputy director of the Atlantic Council’s Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East.

“We’re not accurately diagnosing the problem and therefore not prescribing the right solution or the right kind of assistance strategy that would really respond to the needs on the ground,” Greenfield said. Her comments updated an Atlantic Council report she co-authored in October with former US Ambassador to Yemen Barbara Bodine. “Any US strategy to counter terrorists needs to address the pervasive lack of economic opportunity, structural unemployment, cronyism, and the inequitable distribution of state resources,” Greenfield and Bodine wrote.

Recently, “the US approach underestimated the threat of the Houthi movement, which poses a much broader security dilemma for Yemeni citizens and the Yemeni government,” Greenfield said in the interview January 20.

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Leaked intelligence report warns of ISIS sleeper cells throughout Turkey

IHS Jane’s Intelligence Weekly reports: A leaked intelligence report by the Turkish national police raised an “urgent” alarm about potential terrorist attacks in the country linked with the Islamic State.

The report warned about the presence of “sleeper cells” throughout the country – particularly in the cities of Adana, Aksaray, Ankara, Gaziantep, Istanbul, Kilis, Konya, Mersin, and Sanliurfa – comprising around 3,000 people with direct links to the insurgent group. This leak comes in the aftermath of a suicide bomb attack on 6 January, which was revealed to have been undertaken by a woman who crossed into Turkey from Syria (see Turkey: 9 January 2015: Reported identification of Russian as Istanbul suicide bomber indicates evolving Islamist threat in Turkey; DHKP-C threat persists). Furthermore, in a press conference last week, Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavusoglu revealed the government’s concerns about the possible return of at least 700 Turkish citizens currently fighting for the Islamic State. Many of these fighters, having crossed the border into Syria illegally, have made it difficult for the security forces to detect and arrest them on their return.

Despite Western pressure, Turkey has not yet permitted the US-led coalition to use the Incirlik air base in southeastern Turkey, let alone directly participate in airstrikes. A decision to do so would risk Islamic State retaliation on Turkish targets. For its part, the Islamic State has an interest in avoiding any action which would put at risk its current use of Turkish territory to support its operations in Syria and Iraq. [Continue reading…]

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While ISIS publicizes its brutality, Saudi Arabia prefers to be discrete

Middle East Eye reports: The Islamic State (IS) and Saudi Arabia prescribe near-identical punishments for a host of crimes, according to documents circulated by the militant group.

IS published a list of crimes and their punishments on 16 December 2014 to serve “as an explanation and as a warning” to those living in territory under their control in large parts of Iraq and Syria.

The document lists hadd crimes, which are considered to be “against the rights of God,” and includes fixed punishments for theft, adultery, slander and banditry.

Crimes deemed hadd and their punishments are derived from the Quran and the hadith, the collected teachings and sayings of the Prophet Muhammad. However, with the exception of Saudi Arabia, and IS-controlled areas, they are rarely applied. [Continue reading…]

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Inequality among women is rising much faster than inequality among men

Alison Wolf writes: Feminist cries for action have seen a resurgence of late, notably in calls for quotas on company boards. Large numbers of very successful women feel that life is profoundly sexist and unfair. Feminism has always and inevitably been driven by the educated and well-connected, but today’s feminists are also obsessed with their own elite, metropolitan lives. This is deeply depressing. It is also having a pernicious effect on politicians and policy-making.

Take the 30% Club – the campaign for at least 30% of board members in large public companies to be female. This has attracted huge publicity and traction. Top women campaign for it, politicians line up to sing the importance of such “diversity”. It is received wisdom that this policy is good for women in general, and important to them – and also good for the benighted companies themselves.

This is simplistic, and it is nonsense. A number of countries have introduced quotas for large public companies; but only one, to date, has enacted major sanctions for miscreants, and has a good many years’ experience with quotas. That is Norway, where 40% representation is required and enforced.

And the result? The policy has done nothing whatsoever for the female labour market generally. It has had no impact on female pay and promotion prospects in the companies concerned. It has had no positive impact on company profits either: replacing privileged men with privileged women doesn’t seem to pay any “diversity” benefits. [Continue reading…]

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NSA: Where more finds less

Mattathias Schwartz writes: Almost every major terrorist attack on Western soil in the past fifteen years has been committed by people who were already known to law enforcement. One of the gunmen in the attack on Charlie Hebdo, in Paris, had been sent to prison for recruiting jihadist fighters. The other had reportedly studied in Yemen with Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the underwear bomber, who was arrested and interrogated by the F.B.I. in 2009. The leader of the 7/7 London suicide bombings, in 2005, had been observed by British intelligence meeting with a suspected terrorist, though MI5 later said that the bombers were “not on our radar.” The men who planned the Mumbai attacks, in 2008, were under electronic surveillance by the United States, the United Kingdom, and India, and one had been an informant for the Drug Enforcement Administration. One of the brothers accused of bombing the Boston Marathon was the subject of an F.B.I. threat assessment and a warning from Russian intelligence.

In each of these cases, the authorities were not wanting for data. What they failed to do was appreciate the significance of the data they already had. [Continue reading…]

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U.S. signals policy shift on how to end war in Syria

The New York Times reports: American support for a pair of diplomatic initiatives in Syria underscores the shifting views of how to end the civil war there and the West’s quiet retreat from its demand that the country’s president, Bashar al-Assad, step down immediately.

The Obama administration maintains that a lasting political solution requires Mr. Assad’s exit. But facing military stalemate, well-armed jihadists and the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, the United States is going along with international diplomatic efforts that could lead to more gradual change in Syria.

That shift comes along with other American actions that Mr. Assad’s supporters and opponents take as proof Washington now believes that if Mr. Assad is ousted, there will be nothing to check the spreading chaos and extremism. American planes now bomb the Islamic State group’s militants in Syria, sharing skies with Syrian jets. American officials assure Mr. Assad, through Iraqi intermediaries, that Syria’s military is not their target. The United States still trains and equips Syrian insurgents, but now mainly to fight the Islamic State, not the government.

Now, the United States and other Western countries have publicly welcomed initiatives — one from the United Nations and one from Russia — that postpone any revival of the United States-backed Geneva framework, which called for a wholesale transfer of power to a “transitional governing body.” The last Geneva talks failed a year ago amid vehement disagreement over whether that body could include Mr. Assad.

One of the new concepts is a United Nations proposal to “freeze” the fighting on the ground, first in the strategic crossroads city of Aleppo. The other is an initiative from Russia, Mr. Assad’s most powerful supporter, to try to spur talks between the warring sides in Moscow in late January. Diplomats and others briefed on the plans say one Russian vision is of power-sharing between Mr. Assad’s government and some opposition figures, and perhaps parliamentary elections that would precede any change in the presidency.

But the diplomatic proposals face serious challenges, relying on the leader of a rump state who is propped up by foreign powers and hemmed in by a growing and effective extremist force that wants to build a caliphate. Many of America’s allies in the Syrian opposition reject the plans, and there is little indication that Mr. Assad or his main allies, Russia and Iran, feel any need to compromise. The American-backed Free Syrian Army is on the ropes in northern Syria, once its stronghold, and insurgents disagree among themselves over military and political strategy.

And perhaps most of all, the Islamic State controls half of Syria’s territory, though mostly desert, and it has managed to strengthen its grip even as the United States and its allies try to oust it from neighboring Iraq. [Continue reading…]

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Alawite dissident: If there was just one viable alternative, Assad would lose all popular support

Syria Direct: As sons of Alawite and Druze families continue to come home in coffins year after year, members of Bashar al-Assad’s sect and other pro-regime minorities have begun to express their discontent over the war’s human toll.

Alawites in the Latakia village of Basnada exchanged fire with regime forces late last year following the burial of a local soldier, demanding that the regime stop sending their young men off to the front, reported pro-opposition news channel al-Aan TV.

This month, a group of Druze stormed a regime recruitment station in Salhkad in Swuyada province and forcibly removed a young man arrested for avoiding military recruitment, reported pro-opposition All4Syria. Similar incidents have occurred in Swuyada as far back as December 2013, when a group of elders broke into a military barracks and removed 450 young men wanted for military service, according to All4Syria.

“Every family has suffered the death of sons, the widowing of daughters, ” Abu Muhammed al-Latakani, the alias of an Alawite writer from Latakia now residing in Damascus tells Syria Direct’s Ghardinia Ashour.

“The rope of misery is growing tighter around their necks without them seeing a convincing reason for the war.”

But the possibility of an uprising against the president is “a dream,” the writer says, because hardline Islamist militias such as Jabhat a-Nusra and the Islamic State “constantly remind the vast majority [of Alawites] that they will eliminate them entirely.”

Q: Seeing as you belong to a specific sect, does this mean that your political point of view is predetermined?

Personally I don’t belong to any sect. Rather, I think that sects are a cover that hides the truth: people don’t have a role in their destinies.

Sectarian interests monopolize, control and take away from people their role [in determining their fate] and the scope of their real actions. Nothing remains for them except for these vertical, divine choices that they call on to replace their earthly failures.

When people take control of their own roles, and their leaders are born of their aspirations and express their interests and strive to ensure their honor and to be of service to them, then the people will rip up these repugnant sectarian covers.

As far as I’m concerned, seeing as I was born in that province and to this group, yes my political point of view is predetermined as long as the Syrian street doesn’t know any alternative powers. I mean, alternative to the criminal and degenerate parties that divide up the land. Reality is my choice, until powers come about that include, and mend, and build bridges. [Continue reading…]

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For Syrian refugees in Yemen the future has become fearfully uncertain

Middle East Eye reports: When Abu Saleh [a pseudonym] sits down to talk about why Syria’s unremitting civil war forced him to seek refuge in Yemen, he stops every few minutes to scroll through photos on his phone.

“See here,” he said, pointing to a snapshot of six young men, their grins and embrace of one another discernible even through the phone’s cracked screen. “All dead.” More photos follow. More loved ones lost to Syria’s spiraling violence.

Abu Saleh then returns to explain why Jordan is too expensive, in Turkey he doesn’t speak the language, the welcome for refugees in Egypt has grown painfully thin, uncertainty has long loomed in Iraq and when he briefly found himself in Lebanon, Hezbollah tried to recruit him.

Syria’s neighbouring countries – whose infrastructure and social fabric have been buckling under the strain of hosting the majority of the more than three million refugees that have fled Syria’s bloody civil war – did not seem like options for him. But neither did remaining in Syria.

The 25-year-old former soldier feared persecution after he fled Bashar al-Assad’s army when he received orders to fire at protests in early 2011 challenging the government’s rule. This was all before Syria came to be called the worst humanitarian crisis in the world today.

Abu Saleh fled to Yemen two years ago to escape the fate of his friends in the photos.

Yemen’s low cost of living, ease of obtaining entry and relative stability at the time of his arrival offered Abu Saleh – like many of the Syrians who have found their way to the southern Gulf nation – a potentially ephemeral retreat from the bombs of his home country. [Continue reading…]

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Escape to Syria of Charlie Hebdo suspect shows Turkey’s role as jihadi highway

McClatchy reports: For the wife of the gunman accused of killing four people at a kosher super market in Paris 10 days ago, the escape from questioning about complicity in the Charlie Hebdo terror attacks was relatively easy.

Once Hayat Boumeddiene, 26, got to Turkey, she followed the path of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of other European jihadi volunteers before her – into the self-declared Islamic State.

Aided by smugglers in the Turkish border town of Akcakale, and several companions, she walked through a disused border crossing on Jan. 8 and into the Syrian town of Tal Abyad, which has been an Islamic State stronghold for months.

She would have passed a guard shack on the old road between Alcakale and Tal Abyad, but if Turkish border guards took any notice, they made no effort to stop her, according to a Turkish security official, who spoke anonymously because speaking on the record was not allowed.

By the time French police identified Boumeddiene as one of the suspects in a terrorism onslaught that cost 17 people their lives and that France is calling its equivalent of 9/11, she was beyond their reach. The other three suspects, her husband, Amedy Coulibaly, who is believed to have killed a policewoman in addition to the four at the supermarket, and Said and Cherif Kouachi, blamed for the deaths of 12 at the Charlie Hebdo offices, would die in shootouts with police.

The Algerian-born Boumeddiene is not the first foreigner to cross into Islamic State territory from Akcakale and the surrounding region. But her escape focuses fresh attention on what is a sore point between Turkey and its European neighbors – the ease with which disaffected European youth are able to cross into Islamic State territory from Turkey and join the jihad.

Turkey insists it is taking steps to stop the flow of recruits to the Islamic State. But visits by a McClatchy reporter to Akcakale and three nearby villages found that a foreigner can easily cross into Syria. Smugglers’ fees are a pittance, as little as $30, and daylight crossings are common. Official efforts to discourage crossings to Syria appeared non-existent. [Continue reading…]

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North Korean defectors are crucial — but sometimes unreliable — witnesses

Anna Fifield writes: Always get a second source. It’s one of the fundamental rules of journalism.

But what do you do if the first source is an escapee from one of the most brutal prison camps on the planet, a camp so brutal that only one person is known to have escaped from it?

That was the conundrum facing Blaine Harden, the former Washington Post journalist who wrote Escape from Camp 14 about Shin Dong-hyuk, who said he was born in the North Korean total control camp, forced to watch his mother and brother be executed there, tortured there, and eventually escaped.

Now, Shin has admitted that he left out some key parts of the story – like the fact that he spent most of his childhood across the Taedong river in Camp 18, a less draconian prison (although in North Korea, that’s a matter of degree). But, he says, the torture he described to Harden all happened, just in a different place and at a different time. [Continue reading…]

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From Gitmo to an American supermax, the horrors of solitary confinement

Ted Conover writes: I first visited the prison camp at Guantánamo Bay in April 2003. The “war on terror” prisoners, most of them captured in Afghanistan, had begun to arrive 15 months earlier. They were first locked up in Camp X-Ray, an outdoor prison that looked like a kennel complex for very large dogs. (The police dogs at Camp X-Ray, in fact, had their own cages—the ones without a funnel in the corner for urine.) By the time I arrived, Camp X-Ray had been replaced by Camp Delta; the wire cages had given way to what looked like a heavy-duty, high-security trailer park. The prison cells at Camp Delta were made of shipping containers, sliced in half the long way so that a corridor could be added down the middle, then re-assembled into a kind of grim double-wide. Windows were cut out and fitted with heavy mesh; bugs could penetrate, but not the ubiquitous banana rats, and at least the prisoners didn’t get soaked when it rained.

The prison population peaked that year at 684. But even as the count began to decline, a feeling of permanence took hold. By 2006, Camps 5 and 6 had been built. These were the real thing, copies of high-security facilities in Indiana and Michigan, with electronically controlled gates, central video monitoring of each cell, one-way glass everywhere, and cramped exercise pens. Camps 5 and 6 are where almost all of the remaining prisoners are now kept.

Throughout modern history, governments have used islands for imprisonment or exile. South Africa had Robben Island. Russia had Sakhalin Island. France had Devil’s Island. Guantánamo’s location does not set it apart—nor does the use of physical torture, or the prevalence of hunger strikes, or the nefarious reputation. What is new about Guantánamo has become clear only recently. Rear Admiral Richard W. Butler, who headed up the prison camp until last July, unwittingly alluded to it during my most recent visit earlier in the year. “Twelve years ago,” he said, gesturing to his desk chair, “none of us thought that anybody would still be sitting here today.”

The Bush Doctrine redefined war as something that might go on forever. It created a permanent state of exception, in which extraordinary means were permitted to pursue terrorists (wherever they may be) and to detain suspects (for any length of time). What this has meant for prisoners at Guantánamo is, on one level, well known: without prospect of trial or tribunal, their sentences are effectively open-ended. On another level, what this has meant has never been fully acknowledged. Many of the Guantánamo prisoners are being held in solitary confinement, a difficult condition under the best of circumstances, and psychologically excruciating when no concluding point is specified. Two centuries ago, America was a pioneer in the use of punitive isolation. Now it is pioneering a refinement: the use of solitary without end. [Continue reading…]

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