Caught in limbo

What do you do after you have rounded up “enemy combatants” from around the world, imprisoned them for a few years, and then determined that they are, in fact, not terrorists at all?

What do you do if returning them to their “home” countries would most likely lead to their torture or even execution?

The New York Times today has a fascinating look behind the scenes of this whole nightmare:

The men, Muslims from western China’s Uighur ethnic minority, were freed from their confinement in Cuba after they were found to pose no threat to the United States. They have now lived for more than a year in a squalid government refugee center on the grubby outskirts of Tirana, guarded by armed policemen.

To make matters worse, the U.S.’s attempts to find safe countries to place former Guantanamo detainees have been thwarted by the Chinese government:

American diplomats said they had contacted governments from Angola to Switzerland to Australia. Increasingly, though, they have seen the shadows of their Chinese counterparts.

“The Chinese keep coming in behind us and scaring different countries with whom they have financial or trade relationships,” said one administration official, who insisted on anonymity in discussing diplomatic issues.

It’s become almost a truism that China’s global influence will continue to expand rapidly for the foreseeable future. The U.S. has caused untold suffering and destruction under the Bush administration, but those who cheer on the U.S.’s declining role on the world stage ought to take a good, hard look at who’s most likely to fill the power vacuum.

posted by Nicholas ⋅ tagged america, politics

2 responses to “Caught in limbo”

1. June 11th, 2007 at 10:17 pm , jayawick says:
   

   I think I’ve told you this before, Nick, but to repeat– while I’m quite left-wing and abhor the substantive principles of the neo-cons, I think that Americans are almost alone in having something resembling a moral conscience, and they do take their (admittedly self-appointed) role as moral leader of the world seriously, in stark contrast to countries like China. This may have had the effect of making the U.S. look like hypocritics for the last 60 years, but we wouldn’t see the U.S. as being hypocritical if we didn’t think they cared about doing the right thing in the first place…

   (It just struck me that the British and French also claimed to have values on their side during the age of colonialism, and my gut reaction is not to give them the benefit of the doubt so much. Maybe that says something about my own moral hypocrasy…)

2. June 11th, 2007 at 10:38 pm , Sra. Bibliotecaria says:
   

   I actually think it’s a bit irresponsible of the reporter to play up the Chinese government’s alleged actions with that dramatic language (“shadow”). If you remove the nationalities from this story, it’s actually extremely predictable:

   A. Powerful country decides there are Bad Guys after it. Some Bad Guys are imprisoned.

   B. Other countries decide they too are being threatened by their own Bad Guys.

   C. The powerful country decides to let some of the alleged bad guys go because, whoops, they weren’t OUR Bad Guys.

   D. One of the other countries is unhappy about this because – wait for it – maybe they’re not *your* bad guys, but now we’re worried they’re *ours*.

   I mean, sure, I think China’s wrong to characterize the Uighers as bad guys. I think the US was wrong too. But it’s not irrational for China to use its influence on other countries so they won’t accept the Uiger refugees.

   Anyway, not disagreeing with your point so much as making a tangential one.