Some Taliban prisoners ask to go to Cuba

Associated Press

SHIBERGAN, Afghanistan – Jailed fighters of the fallen Taliban shout the name of their former foe, but no longer in anger. “We want to go to an American prison,” many plead.

Anything, they say, to leave Shibergan prison in northern Afghanistan, now jammed to more than 10 times its capacity with about 3,500 men. But unlike the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay, this has been a prison largely out of the spotlight.

“I can’t lie and say it’s fine. The problems are clearly visible,” said the head warden. “We are struggling.”

While human rights advocates and some U.S. allies have complained about the conditions at the U.S. military prison in Guantanamo, Cuba, the situation in Shibergan is much more dire.

In addition to overcrowding, prisoners have to deal with shortages of medical supplies and care, food and water, and there is little to protect them from the elements. Facing bitter cold outside and inside, they have just the clothes they were wearing when they were captured. Many don’t have shoes.

Prison doctors have begged for medicine, but only a few boxes of antibiotics and rehydration salts have been sent to Shibergan, one of the largest detention camps in the country.

An official at the hospital said supplies are critically low and there is little money to buy more. “The Taliban prisoners are not a priority,” he said.

Nearly a third of the prisoners at Shibergan are suffering from chronic dysentery and other gastric problems, doctors said.

“We have no medicine. It couldn’t be worse,” said Dr. Abdul Bashir, one of four prison physicians. “No, let me correct that. It will get worse when the weather gets warmer. We could be seeing things as bad as cholera.”

Many prisoners see their former enemy as a possible savior.

“The United States should help us. How can the world ignore us?” pleaded Maqsoud Khan, 26, who is among about 1,100 Pakistani prisoners in Shibergan.

Some say the conditions at Shibergan are the United States’ business.

“The United States cannot wash its hands of responsibility for prisoners whose fate from the start it has been in a position to influence or determine,” said a report by a delegation for the Physicians for Human Rights, who visited Shibergan earlier this month.