Guantanamo
Bay
Martin
O�Malley | January 2002
Updated: March
2003
The United States outpost at the
eastern tip of Cuba is officially known as Guantanamo
Bay Naval Base, but for the locals it is "Gitmo." The
U.S. has occupied the area since 1898, leasing it from
Cuba for some $4,000 per year. Cuban President Fidel
Castro refuses to cash the rent cheques, calling the 116
sq. km base "a dagger pointed at Cuba's heart."
This is where the Afghan "detainees" are being kept,
starting with the first batch of 20 that arrived in
January 2002, after a 20�hour flight from Afghanistan.
The open�air, high�security prison was known as "Camp
X�ray" because of its metal cages used to house
prisoners. The cells were open to the elements, but each
had a metal roof. This precaution was taken in order for
guards to be able to see prisoners at all times.
X�ray was replaced in April 2002 by a newly built
long�term prison known as "Camp Delta." The prison can
accommodate up to 2,000 prisoners and features enclosed
cells, each with its own flush�toilet and running water.
As of February 2003, more than 650 detainees were
being held there. To that point, there had been 15
suicide attempts, including five within a three�week
period in January and February 2003. U.S. officials have
not said how many of those attempts were successful.
The U.S. operations at Guantanamo Bay house 7,000
people, of whom 3,000 are military personnel. It is a
magnificent port, with 42 anchorages that can
accommodate any ship in the U.S. navy, including
aircraft carriers and submarines.
On the U.S. side of the base's fence is the world's
densest mine field, with 735 acres planted with 70,000
antipersonnel and anti�tank mines, the first of them
laid during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. It is not
uncommon for wild animals � and occasionally humans � to
be blown up at any time of the day or night.
Gitmo used to be a Caribbean retreat for William
Randolph Hearst, the newspaper magnate. U.S. Marines
first landed there in 1898 during the Spanish�American
war, which some historians say Hearst encouraged in
order to sell more of his tabloid newspapers. (In Orson
Welles' Citizen Kane, newspaper magnate Charles Foster
Kane, modelled on Hearst, tells one of his reporters in
Cuba, "You provide the prose poems, I'll provide the
war.")
The bay area is hot and dry, the land brown and
parched, with salt marshes and mangrove swamps. It is
abundant with cactus and the water abundant also with
sharks, should any of the Afghan detainees consider
making a swim for it.
The military compound has many recreational
facilities, including an 18�hole golf course. The greens
are heavily irrigated, but the fairways remain desert.
Golfers carry strips of Astroturf � called "Gitmo rolls"
� which they place on the scorched earth to make their
shots.
It's not the first time Guantanamo Bay has been used
to accommodate foreigners, though it has never been used
as a large�scale prison. In the mid�1990s, it housed
thousands of Cuban and Haitian refugees, and in the
late�1990s it served as a temporary shelter for Kosovo
Albanians who fled the war in the former Yugoslavia.
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Prisoners in Afghanistan
|
On the trip
to Guantanamo Bay the first 20 Afghan detainees
wore orange overalls and some reports said they were
sedated, their heads hooded, and they were chained to
their seats and to each other. They are not being called
"prisoners of war," though the U.S. promises to abide by
the Geneva Conventions governing POWs.
Since Castro took over in Cuba in 1959, the communist
dictator has always resented the presence of the U.S.
military on his island. In February 1964, he ordered
that the water supply be cut off, arguing that the
military base was using more water than it had paid for.
The U.S. had an agreement with Cuba to supply water to
the base, for which the U.S. paid Cuba $14,000 a month
(far more than the yearly lease of the base itself).
The military base at the time had storage facilities
for 14 million gallons of water, which meant severe
water conservation efforts had to be undertaken. By the
end of 1964, the U.S. had installed a desalinization
plant, which provided three million gallons of fresh
water daily.
As many as 3,500 Cubans used to work at the naval
base, but Cuba increasingly discouraged them from
working there, making them go through cumbersome
entrance procedures that included forcing them to strip
and change clothes.
The Cubans working at the base were known as
"gusanos," a Spanish word that translates as "worm" but
denotes "traitor." The Cubans then earned as much as $8
million a year in salaries. Now only about 80 Cubans
work at the base, arriving each morning and leaving at
the end of the day.
The facilities used for Afghan detainees will
eventually be replaced by a maximum�security prison that
is under construction. The first detainees to arrive
have been described as hard�core al�Qaeda and Taliban
fighters, soldiers the U.S. has called "the worst of the
worst."
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