Also Big in Albania

Most Albanians may love Bush, but I bet these guys have some complaints:

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.

The men have been told that they will need to get work to move out of the center, they said, but that they must learn the Albanian language to get work permits. For now, they subsist on free meals heavy with macaroni and rice, and monthly stipends of about $67, which they spend mostly on brief telephone calls to their families. But some of the men have already lost hope of ever seeing their wives and children again.

That's some good counterinsurgency stuff right there, I guess? The old arbitrary detention followed by endless exile in Albania approach to hearts and minds.

Comments

"Arbitrary detention" is, of course, completely false, as anyone reading the article would note. The guys were picked up at a terrorist training camp. Their detention was not "arbitrary" in any sense of the word. Like all such persons, we kept them until we determined that they are no longer a thread. This is the same standard that is applied in any war.

In any case, I see no reason not to send them back to China. There is no evidence presented in the article that these particular Uighars would suffer any harm by the Chinese authorites if we sent them back.

Posted by Al | June 10, 2007 1:07 PM

There's a recent episode of This American Life that discusses these men's cases.

Posted by Kriston | June 10, 2007 3:47 PM

Al will be interested to know -- if he doesn't already -- that a couple of these men are unique in having won a ruling in court that their detention at Guantanamo was in fact unlawful. The court found that it lacked the power to do anything about it, and it was on the eve of the oral argument of the appeal from that ruling that they were spirited away to Albania. Presenting the DC Circuit and their lawyers with a fait accompli.

Posted by CharleyCarp | June 10, 2007 10:42 PM

The power to be capricious with others lives is such a thrill. It's like Bush and his supporters get to have everyone they want in a pit in their basements.

Posted by Jeffrey Davis | June 11, 2007 9:32 AM

Let them phone Skype.

Posted by James Wimberley | June 11, 2007 10:09 AM

What a bizarre post, and what a bizarre series of comments. What would it take to rouse you leftists to criticize the Chinese? I mean, other than for assorted capitalist acts?

I mean, there's nothing unusual or sinister about the initial US detention of these men, who the article suggests were training at a terrorist training camp in Afghanistan. The review process apparently worked, albeit slowly, and the men were cleared for release years ago.

The US declined to send them to China. Is the criticism above related to that decision? If that's the case, then let's raise the money and send them to China. I'm sure if we all got together we could put together the necessary funds to get them there. For that matter, I suspect the Chinese would be happy to pick them up for free. The supposedly sophisticated seem to miss the bit about the Chinese wanting them, and the supposed opponents of "renditions" relying on the receiving country's commitment to non-torturous treatment are fine with the practice here. Deranged is too kind a word for this sort of thinking.

Posted by Thomas | June 12, 2007 1:12 AM