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Mohamedou Ould SlahiA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
The US War on Terror was central to Slahi’s captivity at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp between 2002 and 2016. The US launched this counterterrorism operation under the George W. Bush administration in response to the 9/11 attacks and targeted terrorist organizations such as al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, the Middle East, and North Africa. The War on Terror was vaguely defined and global in scope. Thus, one of its results was the detention of hundreds of majority Arab Muslim men perceived as enemy combatants in US-linked secret prisons in third-party countries as well as the Guantanamo Bay prison. This detention bypassed the country’s legal framework under the guise of military necessity. At one point, Slahi was considered the most important detainee at Guantanamo even though the governments of Germany, Canada, and the US had no definitive evidence on him and he was never charged with any crime before or after his captivity.
The War on Terror was initially a logical expression of US foreign policy born out of the Cold War period. Whether propping up the puppet government in South Vietnam during the Vietnam War or funding the right-wing extremist Contras militants in Nicaragua, backing insurgents against US opponents or “uncooperative” foreign governments has historically been a staple of US foreign policy. In the spring of 1979, the US began working with the mujahideen insurgency in Afghanistan in anticipation of Soviet involvement in that country. In December 1979, the Soviet army entered Afghanistan upon the request of the secular Afghan government. Other countries such as Saudi Arabia and Pakistan also funded the insurgents. Following a decade of fighting in an unwinnable war, the Soviet Union began its withdrawal in 1989. In late 1991, the USSR dissolved, and Mohammad Najibullah’s government continued to fight on its own in what turned into a civil war.
The terrorist organization al-Qaeda—and other groups like the Taliban—began to emerge in Afghanistan in the 1990s. In addition to receiving financial backing from the Western establishment, those groups—the mujahideen in general and Osama bin Laden specifically—continued to receive glowing Western media coverage such as “Anti-Soviet warrior puts his army on the road to peace: The Saudi businessman [Osama bin Laden] who recruited mujahedin now uses them for large-scale building projects in Sudan” (Fisk, Robert. “Anti-Soviet Warrior Puts His Army on the Road to Peace: The Saudi Businessman Who Recruited Mujahedin Now Uses Them for Large-Scale Building Projects in Sudan.” The Guardian. 6 Dec. 1993). Thus, US foreign policy played a role in the rise of al-Qaeda.
In late 1990, 20-year-old Slahi traveled to Afghanistan for six weeks. He claims that he received training but didn’t participate in any fighting and that one of his trainers was an American. In hindsight, Slahi suggests, “This was all propaganda, and I completely fell for it […] What Afghanistan needed was not someone to give them bullets, give them weapons—they needed someone to reconcile them” (“The GLAS Hour – Meet the Author: Mohamedou Ould Slahi.” The Geneva Literary Aid Society. YouTube. 21 Apr. 2021).
Osama bin Laden became the most prominent terrorist leader of the 1990s. He made public statements targeting the US, its Western allies, and Israel for occupying what in his view were the holy sites of Islam. Some scholars describe this extremist ideology as political Islam, Islamic fundamentalism, or Islamism with an emphasis on the ideological “ism.” Others, however, suggest that political Islam has diverse expressions and that identifying political Islam with extremism in this way is harmful. After all, most of the terrorism stemming from organizations like al-Qaeda or Daesh (and their branches) is carried out on Muslim people themselves, as the 21st-century wars in Iraq, Syria, and Libya show. Indeed, the former view linking political Islam and radicalization downplays the local and global contexts ranging from sectarianism and socioeconomic problems to the history of colonialism in each given region.
Soon, bin Laden’s organization turned to violence. In 1998, US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania were targeted under the Bill Clinton administration. Then came the 9/11 attacks in the US. As a result, the US invaded Afghanistan for harboring terrorists. In 2003, the US also invaded Iraq, under the claim (now known to be false) that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction, creating a tacit connection between 9/11 and Iraq in the public eye. In addition, the US targeted non-state actors in other countries such as Yemen via drone strikes. In Afghanistan, the US eliminated several terrorist leaders, including Osama bin Laden, during the Barack Obama administration. However, in both Iraq and Afghanistan, the US objectives turned toward largely unsuccessful attempts at nation-building. The US wars in the Middle East and Central and South Asia in the early 21st century resulted in significant regional destabilization. According to a 2021 study by Brown University, these wars internally or externally displaced 38 million people (“Millions displaced by U.S. post 9/11 wars.” The Costs of War Project, Watson Institute, Brown University. 19 Aug. 2021).
In addition to mass-scale regional destabilization in the Middle East, North Africa, and Central and South Asia, the War on Terror led to the use of extrajudicial measures, including elaborate torture methods, under the umbrella of military necessity in the US jurisdiction at Guantanamo Bay. Since 2002, the US has imprisoned approximately 780 men at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp, describing them as enemy combatants. The indefinite US lease on Guantanamo Bay in Cuba arose out of the Spanish American War (1898), in which the US forced Cuba, Spain’s former colony, into an unequal relationship through the Platt Amendment in exchange for nominal independence, though the latter didn’t prevent the US from repeatedly invading Cuba. Most of the men at the Guantanamo prison compound were Arab Muslims kidnapped from third-party countries. In Slahi’s case, he was taken from Mauritania to Jordan, to Afghanistan, and then to Guantanamo. Of the 780 detainees mentioned, only 11 had been charged with war crimes (and only one convicted) as of 2021 (“The Guantanamo Docket.” The New York Times. 2 May 2023). Cases like Slahi’s eventually shed some light on the large-scale human rights abuses that took place within the US jurisdiction in the context of the War on Terror.
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