By GORDON CUCULLU
Posted: 2:26 am
June 29, 2008
Mahvish Rukhsana Kahn, daughter of Afghan immigrants, became concerned about Guantanamo's detention center in 2005 while a student at University of Miami's law school. In her view "US policymakers had cleverly circumvented legal principles in creating the military detention center," and driven by the conviction that "the United States guarantees everyone with certain inalienable rights," she was determined to see that the "luckless Afghans" being held in Cuba were properly defended.
She contacted the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights, who directed her to a Philadelphia law firm that represented detainees. With her ability to speak Pashto and an understanding of the culture she decided to "put the fruits of my upbringing to use." Initially she served as an interpreter, but later she began representing clients of her own. Her first meeting was with an Afghan pediatrician, "son of a prominent Afghan family," who she was convinced was innocent. "Almost immediately I knew that he was someone good. Someone I could relate easily to and trust."
As time passed Kahn visited more detainees and decided that they were "sold" to America by unscrupulous individuals, "eager to collect a reward." Based on her visits and extensive interviews she believes that "a terrible injustice is being committed" at Guantanamo. "I don't believe any of the Afghans I met were guilty of crimes against the United States," she declares, in her new book "My Guantanamo Diary," while acknowledging that "I may be naive . . . I was young and idealistic."
While commendable under certain circumstances, such idealism certainly skewed her objectivity. Her account is laden with personal stories but is otherwise thinly-sourced. And Khan relies almost exclusively on "the stories they told" her, as the subtitle indicates.
Besides her sympathies for the "innocent" Afghans, Kahn grew openly contemptuous of the American military men and women serving there. She describes mocking a posted "Soldier's Creed" to a guard and how she had to learn "the military's sneaky speak" - her description of terms commonly used in the detention process. She refers to one female guard repeatedly as "Rodent Face," and repeats one detainee's story about how he found the guards "androgynous" and that "we can find no sign of manhood in this army." If she was bothered by these attitudes, she doesn't mention it.
