Prisoners’ paradox

Of all the millions of nuggets that are emerging from the WikiLeaks, the ones that engaged me most were those that talked about what to do with the detainees at Guantanamo Bay. Gitmo, it had better be accepted, is a totally illegal facility. I say this because there are people who to this day take, shall we say, a nuanced position on its validity and effectiveness. Let’s get this out of the way right now: it is illegal. End of discussion.

In the world of ordinary people, the world that reads WikiLeaks rather than authors cables that find their way into them, when we do something patently illegal, we usually pay. When we are wrong, we either apologise, settle with a payout, go to jail or get hung. We don’t make our proven transgression a point of negotiation.

This is why we are not diplomats: people charged with the responsibility of turning crime into profit. I don’t use the word profit loosely.

When discussing how to get rid of high-level terror suspects (picked up randomly, tortured and detained well past their sell-by date) US officials worked hard to make attractive, profitable packages for all concerned. This is revealed even in the language used: taking in more prisoners would be a “low cost way for Belgium to attain prominence in Europe,” says one cable.

The department of detainee marketing looked everywhere. Spared no potential market, however small or remote. They typed ‘.ki’ on their database and found Kiribati, somewhere between Hawaii and Australia. Perhaps this country of less than a 100,000 people would give up a coral atoll or two in return for several million dollars in incentives. This would be profitable, surely, for a country whose annual budget is less that $60 million, and “low cost” for a country where that figure is a reasonable Wall Street bonus.

About a quarter of your GDP comes from aid any way, the peaceable, fish-eating Pacific islanders could be told. How about we raise that to half. Eh? Just take a few terrorists off our hands. And what’s this we see in the CIA fact book...“no regular military forces (constitutionally prohibited)”. Something to think about. Whaddaya say?

There were transactions everywhere. Under a “take any one, meet the Special One, scheme”, Slovenia was told that the intake of a single prisoner (possibly one of the more slippery ones) could be exchanged for an appointment with President Obama. A prisoner for a president. Sounds like a steal, prima facie. Plus you’ll be part of the solution, not the problem.

This is the kind of thing that I thought happened in places where you can, indeed, profit from a crime and take the high ground to boot. I’m talking about places like Bihar, India, say.

Some time ago, a gentleman I knew told me how he’d once been mugged in a Bihar town. The ‘bad character’ ambushed the rickshaw transporting the gentleman and rid him of his chain, watch and, of course, wallet.

“How will I pay the fare?” My friend pleaded. At which point, the robber turned to the rickshaw-puller: “How much?”

“Three rupees, sir.” This was met with a resounding slap, and many expletives.

“You little bastard! Overcharging a decent man! I’m giving you two rupees. And sir, if he creates a problem, just let me know. I am around here most of the time.”

This robber predates Gitmo, but I think he had the same motto, the line they put up on the fence, the words you hear when being water boarded: “Honour bound to defend freedom”.

Postscript: No matter what the allurement/threat, the Arab markets did not respond at all. The Kuwaitis, for whose freedom the US started Gulf War I, threw their hands up and said they couldn’t deal with the detainees. The Saudis suggested the equivalent of radio collars for the bad boys, not life in the desert under a benevolent despot. No Arab country was even considering taking any prisoners. I’m assuming they knew the product too well.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 2^nd, 2010.