Customer Reviews

Enemy Combatant: My Imprisonment at Guantanamo, Bagram, And Kandahar

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This book, "Enemy Combatant," draws its power from simple, straight forward descriptions of what it was like for an innocent man to be arrested in the night as a suspected terrorist in Pakistan, torn from wife and children, and then spend the next years of his life in US prisons at Bagram, Kandahar and Guantanamo. No preaching or polemics. The author, UK citizen Moazzam Begg, even has compassion and forgiveness for the frightened young military police, soldiers and a few of the interrogators. Even for people who brutalized him physically and psychologically.

In 2002 or 2003, I heard the author's father, a British banker and other parents of Gitmo detainees, speak at an event sponsored by the Center for Constitutional Rights at Cooper Union in New York City. When I heard these parents speak, I and many others assumed all prisoners in Guantanamo, Cuba were probably terrorists. The Center held the event to increase our awareness that it was only humane for the prisoners to know the charges against them, contact their families, and get a (fair) trial even if military. I had worked daily on the 101-105th floors of World Trade One until March 01 and know hundreds of the dead, could have been with them, so I took terrorism threats very seriously. But I went to hear the parents of detainees speak because I believe Americans can protect ourselves from terror attacks without, in the process, destroying the Bill of Rights and our nation's commitment to fair treatment of every individual.

When the author's father told us why his son Moazzam had gone from the UK with his wife and children before 9-11 to work with a girls' school and a water project, I remember thinking, "This may be the lie of a terrorist's father or his naievete about his son, but it certainly sounds truthful." In the book, I have met many of those "enemy combatants" in Gitmo, many of whom even the US now says were not trying to attack Americans or the US. In the book, I met men who were arrested because they had been in Afghanistan training camps before 9-11 to fight the Russians... Men who were sold to Americans looking for terrorists... Or who went to Afghanistan before 9-11 to help impoverished people and got scooped up like the author who had gone to set up schools for girls, water projects and other charity services as part of Muslim charity similar to Christian missionary work... Or heard about the collateral damage - deaths of civilians after American started bombing the Taliban in Afghanistan in retaliation for 9/11 and went to help protect the Afghani people caught in the bombings. Much as Lebanese and Israelis are leaving the US to help their countrymen now.

Throughout the book, Moazzam Begg, with the help of former Guardian editor Victoria Brittain, invites us to become a part of his childhood in England, his family in Pakistan, Kashmir and India, and then his life as a prisoner without any legal protection from guards who were terrified that he had funded the 9/11 attacks and would kill Americans if left unguarded for a second. Through his book, he introduces us to the prisoners and guards he met throughout his years of shackled terror when he thought he would never see his beloved wife, children, father and friends again. I usually skim a book but I've been riveted to each page of this one.

Ann Tares

Neither the publisher nor Amazon have done well at posting useful details that would encourage the purchase of this book, so here are two right up front:

1) David Ignatius, the world-renowned editor formerly with the Washington Post and now with the International Herald Tribune, is the author of the Foreword. This alone is compelling reason to buy the book, for this author and this story not only pass the Ignatius smell test, Ignatious rings the bell on how this book documents the shameful misconduct resulting from a Presidential violation of all the tenets of both international treaties and moral democracy.

2) The table of contents is as follows: 1) Illegally detained, 2) The Lynx; 3) Underdogs; 4) Mercy Mission; 5) Spooks; 6) 'English 558' (Prisoner of War Number); 7) The Hardest Test; 8) Devil's Agents; 9) A Solitary Echo; 10) Trial of Strength; 11) The Teasing Illusion; 12) Chime of the Razor Wire; 13) Mockery of Justice; and 14) Do You Know Who I Am?

The book does not have an index which I believe to be an error that should be corrected in future editions. While this is a book of reflections, there are enough legal, military, torture, and other matters to merit indexing and ease of access to references via an index.

I put the book down after an intense morning with it with the following reflections:

1) I am ashamed that the American Congress and the American public has stood idly by as the White House has ursurped the power to make law and interpret law, while sinking to the lowest moral point in our recent history.

2) The author is quite balanced and most extraordinary in his personal telling of this history. I hope he files a wrongful imprisonment lawsuit against the government of the United States of America. As Senators Warner and McCain refuse to support the White House's idiotic and immoral attempts to justify torture, every American should be conscious that there is a price to pay for allowing our government to commit war crimes, and there is also a great strategic value to be gained by restoring "America the Good." This book should be translated into many languages, and will stand in history as a simple individual condemnation of the very worst abuses of power--while we have not gassed the millions that Hilter did, we have negligently killed hundreds of thousands, murdered hundreds and aided in the murder of thousands more--this is serious sick mis-behavior.

3) The author is to be admired for recollecting the goodness of those who ingored the illegal and immoral orders, and treated him humanely. Marines are taught to think for themselves and to disobey illegal orders, I am only sorry that our military is on rigid auto-pilot and lacking an understanding of the strategic value on inherent morality at every level of operations.

4) Lastly, this book confirms my worst fears about what happens when you give FBI and CIA personnel too much money and too much power without first giving them the education and experience they need to be balanced in the field. This book documents, at every turn, the incompetence of our whole system, while also documenting how torture causes prisoners to make things up just to stop it--and in turn wastes precious time and resources in following false leads.

There are many other books I have reviewed that could be helpful to Americans in search of wisdom and rehabilitation in relation to Islam, such as "Good Muslim, Bad Muslim," but I have to say, if there were one book that I would want to force on every good-hearted person in America who needs to understand just how badly broken the federal government is, how counter-productive this "war on terror is" (terror is a tactic, not an enemy, and the fear the White House seeks to inspire is a lie, not a solution), this is that book.

Although the author has not suffered the many years of prison that Nelson Mandela did, or Martin Luther King, I believe that in this book the author has earned a very special place in the literature of moral freedom.

I recommend Cornel West's "DEMOCRACY MATTERS: Winning the Fight Against Terrorism," itself a Nobel-level work, and going back in time, B. F. Skinner's "Beyond Freedom and Dignity." Indeed, throw in George Will's "Statecraft as Soulcraft," to make my final point: this White House, and the extremist Republican Party, aided by the inept and timid Democrats, Senator Byrd not-with-standing, has substituted ideological hypocrisy and high crimes and misdemeanors for legitimate governance. This book is George Bush's report card--he not only earns an F, he earns a one way ticket to juvenile detention. He has no business pretending to be an adult, and he must still be held accountable for stealing the 2000 and 2004 elections (see my reviews of three books on the substance of impeachment).

This book should be required reading for every single American. Moazzam shows us how American policies-policies most people don't even bother learning about-severely affect others. Moazzam, through this book, turns on a very bright light in the darkened closet of American apathy and makes it impossible for us to shut it off once we finish the book.

In my younger days I was enthralled with books by prisoners of the Soviet Gulag. Little could one imagine that one day there might be an American variation on that theme. It has been said that September 11th changed everything, it did indeed.

One of the most amazing things about this gripping story is that the author does not harbor a grudge against Americans in general - amazing that he did not become what he was suspected of being. This is the source of how terrorism will grow, unjust and heavy handed treatment only breeds more of what it attempts to stop by coercion. This story is uplifting in the human spirit overcoming the horrors of unjust treatment while exposing the lies of those who wish to gloss it over. It is not republican or democrat in its spin, its a look at how fear has led us to injustice.

"Anyone who has proclaimed violence his method, inexorably must choose lying as his principle" -Alexander Solzenitzen

Moazzam Begg has written a memoir about an experience during three years as a "detainee" that reminds one of Franz Kafka's fiction, but he claims that these things really happened and he writes with such clarity, conviction, and telling detail that I, for one, am convinced. Whether or not he was "guilty" is a mute point because although he was accused of many things - some quite fantastic and improbable - and even "confessed" under duress, he was never charged or tried for any crime. After three years of harsh treatment and over three hundred interrogation sessions, he was merely told he was free to go with no apology, thanks or recompense.
Although I consider myself well educated, I know little about the language, culture, history, and religion of Muslims; I have few acquaintances and no friends from that world. In this respect, I believe I am typical of most other native born senior citizen of the United States. I am indebted to Begg for lifting this veil of ignorance for me; he is an excellent ambassador. Interspersed in this narrative about what Hannah Arendt called the "banality of evil" are asides and incidents revealing information and insights valuable to my understanding. If he is an example of Islam in practice, I want to know more about it. In the midst of his ordeal he was able to reach out to many of his guards and interrogators and establish a human bond. I was reminded of Pogo's memorable statement: "we have met the enemy and he is us." If you are old enough to remember that line, you may also remember the bad old days of McCarthyism and anti-communist hysteria and have a sense of déjà vu. You might do well to pay close attention to this book as a primmer on how to survive the kind of ordeal that Begg suffered through. In the current political environment of anti-terrorist hysteria, if you give aid, comfort, or support to Begg or people like him you could well be labeled "Enemy Combatent" and suffer the same fate or worse.

Moazzam Begg has given us a rare testimony of the experience of a survivor of torture in his book, Enemy Combatant, My Imprisonment at Guantanamo, Bagram, and Kandahar.

Moazzam starts his story as a child who lost his mother at the age of six. He relates his early education as a Muslim in a Jewish school, his troubled teen years as a member of the Lynx gang. Moazzam is a second generation Pakistani who is born in and grows up as a British citizen. By the time he marries Zaynab and fathers his first two children we are familiar enough with Moazzam that we know him as a fascinating human being in search of an identity.

After Moazzam marries he makes a critical decision to live his life as a devout Muslim with a special commitment to practice charity and social justice. This fateful decision leads him to travel to Pakistan, Turkey, and finally to settle in Kabul Afghanistan where he can assist the poorest of the poor. When the United States, in response to 9/11, attacks the Taliban and Al Qaeda, Moazzam and his family, caught in the crossfire, flee to Pakistan. Moazzam's travel and work for the poor brings him under suspicion of the British M15. Soon thereafter he is awakened in the middle of the night and carried off to Bagram, Kandahar and finally to Guantanamo where his harrowing three year experience as a prisoner of US forces begins. Moazzam is branded a terrorist.

In fact, Moazzam is considered such a threat to security he is placed in solitary confinement, continually watched by an American soldier for twenty-three long months. He is only taken out of his cage to endure over three hundred interrogations. His interrogation runs the whole gamut of physical and psychological abuse including threats to his family.

In the treatment of Moazzam the reader can understand the consequences of the suspension of the Geneva conventions, the denial of the writ of habeas corpus, the endless time it takes for the prisoner to get effective legal representation. Moazzam's life becomes the focal point of the dramatic battle in the courts, the Congress, and the Bush-Blair administrations, human rights organizations, as well as ordinary citizens, concerning the proper (hopefully legal and just) means to "wage the war on terror."
Moazzam spends most of his time in Guantanamo in a section of the prison called, ironically, Camp Echo. From Camp Echo, comes a sound that is surely not intended by Moazzam's captors. It is the sound of a beautiful, innocent human being, who with the strength given to him by indomitable character and reliance on his Muslim faith, turns the table on the guards and the prison system.

Without minimizing the awful pain, fear and isolation he undergoes, the reader finds Moazzam Begg retains his dignity, defends himself, and in the process, even uplifts the American soldiers who guard him. Some even come to respect him, seek his advice, and even see themselves less free than he. Without any lessening of Moazzam's desire to return home to his loved ones, we see he will not be reduced to an animal in captivity, no matter how brutal the treatment as a defenseless human being deprived of all liberty he endured.

After a serpentine legal process and a media campaign carried on by his family in Britain, Moazzam's ordeal abruptly comes to an end. He is brought into a room and told by an army Major, `Mr. Begg, I am here to inform you that the United States military has decided to hand you over to the British authorities, and any charges that we had pending have been dropped.' The man whom President Bush claimed was the `worst of the worst, and who according to reports leaked to Newsweak claimed that he designed and was planning to fly unmanned drones loaded with anthrax in the Houses of Parliament' was to become a free man.

He returns to England and is at last united with his family whom he feels has suffered as much if not in some ways more than he. His ordeal as a torture survivor has begun a new phase. He is questioned by M15 when trains are bombed in Britain. His adjustment to 'normal' life is difficult. He has continual flashbacks and sleepless nights.

Mr. Begg meets with human rights groups and thanks them for the support he received in prison. He joins with Vicoria Brittain, a journalist and former associate editor of the Guardian in London to write his book.

I was able to read this book on an airplane journey that took all day from Maryland to New Orleans. During the trip I became so engrossed in Enemy Combatant it would be no exaggeration to say that Moazzam's journey and mine became as one.

Moazzam Begg was a young muslim working in Pakistan shortly after 9/11. He had been an idealist. He had visited sensitive places particularly in Afghanistan. And that was about it. Although it was enough to see him abducted from his home and, via Kandahar and Bagram, to become one of the British detainees in Guantanamo Bay.

He remained in detention for 3 years. He was in solitary confinement for much of the time. He was interrogated time and time again. He was threatened with death and torture. Finally he was freed without ever finding out what he was supposed to have done. Neither has he ever received an apology or explanation.

This is a well written book that confirms what we have all suspected about Guantanamo. The nightmare is made more stark by Begg's writing. He comes across as a quiet intelligent young man with a dry sense of humour. One poignant moment is when he and other detainees discuss the rights and wrongs of militant Islam - Begg taking a moderate tone which contrasts with the attitude of the powers that have detained him. Indeed he also shows a remarkable lack of bitterness. For months on end his only human contact was the particular guard who was watching him. He builds up a sympathetic relationship with these guards against whom no persoanl grudge is seen.

Anyone who has any doubts about this affront to human rights which should embarass all of us in the West should read this book.

This book is among the first published material describing the "War on Terror" from the perspective of the other side. Mr. Begg -- who isn't a terrorist, he just happened to be in the wrong place at the right time -- is able to humanize the events, we see the people involved, captors and detainees alike, as real people rather than the stylized "us (good) and them (bad)" that we're fed by most of the mass media. Mr. Begg does not judge people but by dispassionately describing them and their actions he makes a very powerful indicitment of the system that has created this mess and justifies it day to day.

Mr. Begg is English and one of the interesting facets of the book is the way that certain events and actions unfold using a logic that's utterly mysterious to him but obvious to an American. I hope that the US edition of this book, due to be released later this year, is not changed to alter this.

The author was a second-generation British Muslim born and raised in England, and was seized from his family home in Pakistan in 2002, accused by the U.S. of being a terrorist, and held for over three years. His story of his imprisonment and detention including two years at Guantanamo Bay provides the first account by a detainee of life inside the prison. From his intense interrogations to his release in 2005, this account is co-authored by Victoria Brittain, former foreign editor of the UK Guardian, and provides an engrossing, condemning eyewitness account of the US prison system and civil rights pertaining to terrorist suspects.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch

Begg is a phenomenal writer. For the moment, strip away the politics of all this, and what he went through. Begg knows how to write. He knows how to pull you in, to write sentences which fully describe reality, to provide all the details to make you turn page after page, rushing to find out what will happen next.

Yes, Begg writes as an apologist for Islam, and sometimes his historical undersanding is incorrect, scewed in defense of Islam. But usually he displays a phenomenal grasp of information and detail, weaving together disparate threads to reveal a big picture rarely understood in the Wester world.

I believe this book to be accurate, and I'll tell you why. Moazzam Begg does not come off smelling like a bed of roses. We see progressive character dedevelopment in him, as the years of abduction begin to wear on him, and his response becomes angrier, more terse, and less caring. Many might say he had every right to, but Begg doesn't come across as a Ghandi- what he would be likely to do if he were trying to make up a story and hype up the horror. Begg is a real person, with all the glories, and the flaws. One must respect the honesty it takes to write that.

And since this doesn't seem to be hyped up-

I weep for our country. Here there is page after page of stark detail of government sponsored and approved torture. Some might say the torture could be worse. It could be. Doesn't make Torture Light permissible. I now fully see these are not Internment Camps. They are Concentration Camps, designed to circumvent U.S. and International Law. Not all the Nazi camps were Auschwitz. This didn't make the others acceptable.

After reading this book, you will no longer be able to accept things as they have been. This is a book to open the eyes. We turned the corner. Walter Wink writes of the Principle of Violent Mimicry, that we become what we hate. The American government has rightfully hated mistreatment of prisoners, torture, and terrorism for years. Now in our thirst for empire and revenge, the line between us and our enemies has disappeared, and Bin Laden has won.