Nameless, faceless, abandoned for 13-years: Letter from Guantánamo, April 2020

If anyone has the spine, heart and conscience to “like” this post, then please be courteous taking a few minutes of your precious time to actually read it and move it forward by “sharing”. We, the invisible Human Rights Defenders, and Asadullah Haroon, the invisible Guantánamo prisoner and indefensible unconscionable collateral damage of the Bush “War on Terror”, thank you.

We clearly cannot count on our leaders to demand justice, as they are unquestioningly spineless capitalists only ever looking out for their vested interests and elitist backsides. So we’re forced to demand them to action justice.

Asadullah Haroon is also an inconsequential “nobody” to his own government in Afghanistan. His freedom after 13-years of torture and injustice, much less his life, is trivial, if at all on their radar of to-dos, in the pursuit of international interests for the Afghan leadership, as another US puppet regime.

Demanding justice and freedom for relentless injustices perpetrated by global leaders, primarily the United States and United Kingdom, during this senseless cataclysmic so-called “War on Terror” is up to us, global sheeple. It is up to us to demand an end to the infamous #WarOnTerror that has murdered millions of innocent people and imprisoned hundreds of innocent people, first and foremost, in the Middle East.

Asadullah Haroon Gul | A new letter from a Guantanamo prisoner

This is the letter from Asadullah Haroon Gul, a Guantanamo prisoner who has been there for 13 years. The letter was written in April 2020.

“Guantanamo is almost invisible to the world; the prisoners held here have completely disappeared from the world. We are nameless, faceless and are reduced to a “serial number” as if we were a hardware and no longer humans. A name makes a person unique and unique. Serial numbers are just lifeless objects. I’m no. 3148. It’s easy to someone with the name no. 3148 to treat unfairly. A number has no dignity.

I am Asadullah Haroon, an Afghan citizen from Nangarhar. My wife waits every year for the news that her husband comes home. My infant baby, Mariam, is now a teenager.

So far 23 of us “nobody numbers” are left here in Guantanamo. No one is Afghan but me, so there is no one who speaks Pashto or Dari and I’m afraid of losing my language. At least no. 1094 [Saifullah Paracha], No. 1460 and No. 1461 from Pakistan and we can talk to each other some Urdu. No. 1460 was tortured so heavily that he would rather be alone in another prison block with his sad thoughts.

Among the prisoners who are “no danger” (NVDs) are currently still: No. 27, No. 28, No. 38, No. 63, No. 242, No. 244, No. 309, No. 569, No. 682, No. 685, No. 694, No. 708, No. 841, No. 893, No. 1016, No. 1017, No. 1453, No. 1457 and No. 1463.

The highest level was when 760 prisoners “no danger” (NVDs) were in Guantanamo. The largest group of them were the Afghans, because there were 219 Afghan prisoners among the NVDs.

So far 218 Afghan prisoners have been released among the NVDs and only one left – me.

Some people will think I have to be guilty of a crime because I’ve been here for 13 years, although I’m being held here without charge and without a court ruling.

But then biased people thought everyone here was a “terrorist”. We are prisoners of a war that has long been over. (…) The only way to commit crimes in a war is to do what the US did when they purposely killed civilians and tortured prisoners of war – like me.

When the faceless and numbered men told their stories, the world started to understand what terrible mistakes were made when so many people were swept away from their country and were taken half the world to this prison in Cuba. (…)

There was the number. 1009, Haji Nusrat Khan, a 80-year-old man from Sarobi, [Afghanistan], who was brought to Guantanamo with a stretcher. He was paralyzed by a stroke and became bedridden. “Look at my white beard. The Americans took me away from my house and my country – with a white beard,” he said.

“I did nothing at all. I didn’t even speak a word against the Americans.”
He, like all the rest, was never convicted. His old age did not protect him from being exposed to humiliation countless times. He was beaten, injured and naked in front of female soldiers.

At an event, the soldier tied him very firmly to a wooden board and left him lying there on the floor for some time. At some point one of the soldiers finally checked on him and he asked him how he was doing. When the translator translated these words into English, Nusrat started laughing. “You must be an idiot to ask me something like that,” he said. “I am a paralyzed man and you tied me up like a dog on the floor. Look at me. How do you think I’m doing?”

Shortly after Nusrat was released, he died in his home in Sarobi.
(…)
Then there was still no. 1021, Chaman Gul, who was constantly worried about his elderly mother.

And no. 560, Afghan Wali Mohammad, who tried to cover up his pain with his humor.

Then there was no. 1002, an Afghan school teacher Abdul Matin who was accused of owning a Casio watch. And the list goes on.

After years of abuse, 218 of the 219 Afghans were released because they did not pose a danger to anyone, although there is no doubt that some are now suffering from deep depression due to their experiences.

That means the USA has released 99,5 % of Afghan NVDs. Only I’m left. I’m number 3148, Asad Haroon, and I saw the others go home. Trying to keep myself busy so I don’t go crazy.

Sometimes I wonder if my government has completely forgotten me – I’ve never been visited by an Afghan MP. I’m worried that my countrymen don’t care about me. I’m a nobody – I admit that. I was taken away from my home country of Afghanistan many years ago and taken to this terrible place, and I was forgotten. I see the others being released and although I am happy for them and their families, it only deepens my darkness.

While the prisoners are released every day through the peace agreement [in Afghanistan] and some of them also let them go home for a certain time] to help their families during this time of crisis because of the [Corona]- virus, I imagine everyone Day the same question: Will I ever be able to see my wife and daughter again? Will my respected father and my beloved mother still be alive even if I should come home?”

End of the letter.

May Allah ‎ﷻ release him and all the Muslims

If anyone, especially and specifically the American and British people, has not yet figured out that the unrelenting “War on Terror” is anything but about so-called “Terrorism” is absolutely deluding themselves.

If ever there was any truth to the media-spin of calculated US deep state 9/11 propaganda, shoved down our throats for the past 19-years, as to the indefensible plot for the “War on Terror”, it was US slighted pride that anyone, especially Muslims, dared to ‘mess’ with the great US empire on its own soil.

The bitter reality is that if the Bush administration cared at all for the approximately 3,000 people killed on 9/11, it was a minute cursory sentiment.

If 9/11 was in fact not a sinister hegemonic stratagem that completely rewrote every person’s way of life, civil rights and human rights globally, either way, it unquestioningly paved the way for US expansionism of ruthless megalomaniac tyranny throughout the world.

A powerplay legacy enthusiastically and with bloodthirsty relish enveloped through the warmongering, relentless sanctions-enforcing, regime-changing Obama years and now by the diabolical sociopathic Trump administration, who are not satisfied with anything less than puppet regimes at the absolute mercy and control of ‘Trump’ empire.

With the cowardly and paralyzed, utterly dependent on US goodwill, United Nations as impotent, and corrupt, as ever and an absolute lie to its dogma at basically its inception. Whether it’s the heinous betrayal of Palestine or the gross negligence and unforgivable treachery of admitting the warmongering rogue regime and illegal ‘State of Israel’ to membership on 11 May 1949, with Israel dictating the rules from before day one and disregarding every UN Resolution to date.

Last but not least, US crony and BFF, the UK, including individual members of Parliament, led and controlled by capitalism, austerity and thriving inequality be damned, who have, and continue to, profiteered from the “War on Terror” quite substantially with their devious clandestine arms deals. Tony Blair, whose devoted complicity and staunch backing for the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, made millions in blood-money.

A number of EU countries, whose greed and fear of US backlash is always greater than their alleged democratic creed, fell right in line with US demands of their participation in the “War on Terror”. Publicly, of course, it’s the well-rehearsed and carefully composed propaganda for the sheeple to fall in line.

Recent history speaks for itself. As well as, that one or two EU countries themselves still hold onto their empire-delusional pasts. Counting on reaping the profits for aiding and abetting US perpetrated wars, regime-changes and established puppet dictatorships. They are all traitors to their countries and humanity, flouting international laws, and nothing more than US lackeys.

In conclusion, Western Democracy at work in the 21st century, with a “War on Terror” that is anything but about “terror”, but that has murdered millions of human beings, incarcerated and tortured hundreds of innocent Gitmo prisoners for over a decade, caused an unprecedented Refugee Crisis, encouraged and escalated dictatorship totalitarianism, unscrupuously decimates every person’s civil liberties and human rights, enforced executive and police powers for mass surveillance and police state actions of police harassment and indefinite detention, ever-increasingly alarming racism and violence, and the blowback creations of  bona fide “terrorist” fundamentalists/extremists courtesy the driver of world imperial hegemony, neoliberalism and warmongering, the US empire.

The “War on Terror” is a brutal hoax to control all of us, destabilize our confidence and security, and sabotage our human solidarity by deliberately encouraging and inciting doubts, suspicions and racism, ie divide and rule, to silence our voices.

It’s way past time to make our voices deafeningly loud to demand the end of this farcical unjustifiable “War on Terror”, end mass surveillance and invasion of privacy for all of us and police harassment and indefinite detention of children and innocent people, and demand freedom, justice and reparations for the egregious injustices, torture, violence and abuse executed upon the innocent prisoners of Guantánamo.

It’s way past time to hold the United States and its so-called NATO allies accountable for relentless War Crimes, Genocide, Ethnic Cleansing, Crime of Aggression and Crimes against Humanity globally.

It’s way past time that corporate media stop the scaremongering lies and propaganda, stand with their fellow humans and speak out in solidarity for humanity in justice and truth.

In this writer’s humble opinion, it’s the way to save us, our humanity, to implement justice and equality, to grow, motivate and cement our human solidarity, and to move forward on the urgency to commit ourselves to work hard, like our lives depend on it, to save our home, our planet, our future.

In closing, our public outcry is 13-years overdue to demand the release of an innocent young Afghan man, husband, father and son, Asadullah Haroon, from Guantánamo immediately!

#FREEAsadullahHaroon! #AllLivesMatter!