A tale of two Gitmo friends who turned foes
Two Afghan friends were incarcerated together at Guantanamo Bay, but they chose starkly divergent paths after release —one became an Islamic State jihadist, the other joined the US-led government fight to crush the group.
Haji Ghalib and Abdul Rahim Muslim Dost, whose friendship coalesced around a shared love for poetry, were scooped up in the post-9/11 American dragnet and shipped off to the prison camp in Cuba.
Their journey encapsulates Guantanamo’s failed legacy in the fight to expunge radicalism, as President Donald Trump appears set to reverse previous US efforts to scale it back.
“Guantanamo is the worst place on Earth,” said Mr Ghalib, who estimates he is 49, deep creases lining his gaunt face.
“Every day I ask myself the same questions: ‘Why was I taken? Why did they ruin five years of my life? Why is there no justice, no compensation?’”
After burnishing his reputation as a fearsome commander against the Soviets and the Taliban, Mr Ghalib was serving in the Afghan police in 2003 when he was unexpectedly accused of insurgent links.
Authorities ignominiously stripped him of his post, tore his uniform off publicly, and sent him to Guantanamo until the American military concluded in 2007 that he was “not assessed as being a member of Al Qaeda or the Taliban”.
When freed, Mr Ghalib channelled his resentment to fight not the Americans but those he calls the “real enemies of Afghanistan” — the Taliban and, recently, Islamic State jihadists, who are making inroads into the country.
That includes his former friend Muslim Dost, who Western and Afghan officials describe as a top ISIS commander in eastern Nangarhar province, and who was released from Guantanamo two years before Mr Ghalib.
A gifted demagogue, Muslim Dost spent his time inside Guantanamo praying and preaching to other inmates about jihad alongside 9/11 accused Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.
“When he preached, the inmates wept,” Mr Ghalib recalled. “They were left shaken by his loud, mesmerising voice.”
Muslim Dost scribbled poems on drinking cups for lack of writing material.
One verse published in the book “Poems of Guantanamo” by US law professor Marc Falkoff reads, “Consider what might compel a man to kill himself, or another/ Does oppression not demand some reaction against the oppressor?”
“Guantanamo is a seedbed of terrorism,” said Kako, 35, who was imprisoned along with his cousin Mr Ghalib and returned to be a corn farmer. “It gave legitimacy to fanatics like Muslim Dost.”
“America may consider Guantanamo a necessity, but they need to differentiate between fundamentalists and patriots,” Mr Ghalib said.
He added, “People like Muslim Dost are fighting foreigners but mostly killing Afghans,” he said as he composed himself.
“If I ever see him on the frontline I won’t let him go alive.”