Visiting The
Post-9/11 America
By Hassan N.
Gardezi
23 September, 2005
Countercurrents.org
The
fourth anniversary of 9/11 has come and gone as another occasion to
reflect on the many ways in which this tragic episode changed the course
of world affairs. There was much reminiscence of the horror of the day
and discussion of the global political agenda pursued by George W. Bush
in reaction to the injury inflicted on the United States of America,
the mightiest power on Earth. What I was thinking of on this September
11, 2005 was the way the United States of America itself changed as
a civil society and as a host country to foreign visitors in the wake
of 9/11 attacks.
I must admit that
as far as I remember I never found the United States of America particularly
hospitable to foreign visitors. On my first visit to that country in
1958, I found myself more of an object of curiosity as an exchange student
from a poor Third World country than anything else. After moving to
Canada from Pakistan I visited America many times from 1970s on just
to see friends or attend professional meetings as an academic. But seldom
did I get through the ports of entry into the neighboring United States
without feeling like a trespasser who at the end should be grateful
for being allowed to enter rather than be detained and prosecuted for
some inexplicable misdemeanor. However, on most of those occasions the
initial feelings of being unwelcome did not last very long, once in
the company of some good friends on the other side of the border or
after a drive through some of this planets most scenic landscape
where once the bison roamed, and the "Red Indian" camped to
harvest the natures bounty.
At other times,
however, trying to cross the 49th parallel which separates Canada from
the United States turned out to be a really threatening experience,
as at one time when I was on my way to Manila to attend a meeting of
Asian scholars. The year was 1990 when the Berlin Wall had fallen and
the American global TV networks were triumphantly flashing pictures
of people chipping away at the crumbling barrier with their hammers.
My travel agent had booked me to Philippines via San Francisco where
I was supposed to have a short wait in the transit area of the airport
before catching the connecting flight to Manila.
On arrival at Canadas
Toronto airport, I found a large crowd waiting to board the plane. After
receiving our boarding cards we had to carry our baggage in hand to
the US immigration/customs post which is located inside the international
departures terminal of the Toronto airport. Moving slowly in a long
line of passengers, I finally entered the US inspection enclosure and
handed over my travel documents to one of the American officials. He
looked at my Canadian passport and duly noticed my place of birth.
"Born in My-on-valee
(Mianwali), Packistan?" He muttered aloud.
"Yes,"
I said
"open your
suitcase."
When the suitcase
was opened, he was joined by another of his colleagues to ransack its
contents. A third one took position at the entrance from where I had
walked in. This one, a familiar figure at the US immigration/customs
posts was in a dark blue uniform, chewing furiously on the piece of
gum in his mouth. From each side of his steatopygic buttocks dangled
two guns a billy club and other assorted contraptions.
Those examining
the contents of my suitcase, item by item, also began to throw a volley
of questions at me. How long have you lived in Canada? Why are you going
to San Francisco? (which I was not). Why are you going to Manila? (which
I was). How much American currency do you have? Do you have any drugs
with you? etc. etc. Having emptied the suitcase my interrogators flipped
it upside down and tapped and knocked it on all sides.
Then having felt
my pockets and socks, they turned to my briefcase and started pulling
out its contents, taking their sweet time. Stationary, papers, reading
materials everything came out. From this pile they fished out a letter
for closer inspection, as if this was the piece of incriminating evidence
they were looking for.
What have they found?
I wondered.
"Islamic terrorism"
in those days had not yet been identified as a menace to America. Osama
bin Laden was an American ally who had helped oust the Soviet Red Army
from Afghanistan and there was no perception that this trusted holy
warrior would one day let loose his "evil doers" on "the
crusaders and Zionists." Americas collective paranoia was
still focused on the leftist subversives, remnants of the anti-Vietnam
War rebellion, drug dealers and "racially unfit" people trying
to illegally settle in the land of milk and honey.
In any case, the letter in their hands became the subject of another
round of grilling. Who was the writer of the letter? Where did I meet
him? Why was I corresponding with him? Why was I carrying the letter
with me? etc. etc.
The letterhead and
the text of the letter in simple English should have answered their
questions. A professor of philosophy from the University of Mane, USA,
writing to ask if I would contribute a chapter to his book. But these
men obviously thought that they were looking at some coded script about
some criminal or subversive deal.
Finally, after the
departure of the flight was announced their interest in me and my baggage
began to dwindle. They gave up their quest and turned their backs on
me, as if they had nothing to do with me at all. The stream of announcements
from the departure lounges PA system ceased and suddenly it was
all quiet around me. The gunman guarding the entrance had disappeared.
At a short distance from me I saw another brown-skinned man re-packing
his suitcase. After collecting our belongings, the two of us walked
back to the Canadian territory of the Canadian airport. With an expression
of disgust and frustration on his face, my fellow traveler said something
about not being able to make it to an important staff meeting of his
company in Tokyo.
"That is how
the cookie crumbles," I recited an American saying to him which
I had heard a long time ago at Washington State University when I was
studying sociology there. Needless to say that my companion was not
amused and hurried on to the airline counter from where we had received
our boarding cards.
To put this little
episode in context, it happened at a time when the treatment of "aliens,"
as non-citizens are officially called in America, was still informed
by some narrative of constitutionality and civil rights. Then came the
deadly strikes of 9/11 in 2001 that, we are told, changed America and
the world for ever. Within days of the suicidal attacks on the Twin
Towers in New York and the Pentagon in Washington George W. Bush declared
"war on terrorism," and assuming the powers of a "war-time
president," launched a wide-ranging assault on the democratic rights
of his fellow citizens as well as non-citizens alike.
Neighboring Canadians
got the feel of where America was headed immediately after the September
11 strikes. Washington closed the border between the two countries,
as soon as it figured out what had happened on that day, while at the
same time diverting all overseas flights approaching America to Canadian
airports, presumably with the consent of Canadian authorities. Hundreds
of passengers of these flights ended up as house guests of Canadian
families. On the afternoon of September 11 a Korean Airlines passenger
jet bound for Alaska was chased by US fighter planes with orders to
shoot it down and was forced to land at White Horse, a remote airport
in the Canadian North. Luckily the alarm that the Korean jet was being
hijacked turned out to be false, just in time to save the lives of its
300 occupants.
Inside the United
States the Department of Justice moved quickly after September 11 to
pick up over 1000 non-citizen Muslim males of Middle Eastern and South
Asian background in its first wave of roundup for interrogation and
detention under the cloak of secrecy. No names were released and no
charges laid for involvement in any criminal or terrorist activity.
Those detained were held under subhuman conditions without due process
of law.
Thirteen days after
the 9/11 strikes the Bush Administration drew up an act under the pretentious
title of "Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate
Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism" ( USA-PATRIOT)
Act. It was rushed through the Congress and was signed into law on October
26, 2001. The American public, held in fear of terrorists running loose
by their government and an acquiescent mass media, watched silently
and approvingly as the PATRIOT Act took away their legal protections
embodied in the First, Fourth, Fifth and Eighth Amendments to the Constitution.
Among other things, the Act provided that both citizens and non-citizens
of America can be jailed indefinitely without being charged with any
specific legal offence and without fair trial; they can be subjected
to searches and surveillance without judicial approval and oversight;
and can have their personal records examined by the FBI and other law
enforcement authorities, including their records of library borrowing
and book purchases at stores. Non-citizens can not only be denied entry
to the united States and deported but can also be detained and incarcerated
on mere suspicion. By a separate executive order issued by President
Bush on November 13, 2001, non-citizens suspected of terrorist acts
could also be tried by military tribunals.
The PATRIOT Act
provided legal support for intensified interrogation and tracking of
the arrival and departure of non-immigrant visitors to America by the
US Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) which had already begun
this task. As if this was not enough, the Attorney Generals office
issued yet another executive order entitled U. S. National Security
Entry-Exit Registration System (NSEERS). Under this order began the
compulsory registration of non-immigrant visitors to America from a
number of targeted countries on September 11, 2002. From November 5,
2002, the dragnet of NSEERS was also extended to cover those already
in America. All males over 16 years of age who were citizens or nationals
of more than 20 named Muslim countries plus North Korea were required
to report by stages to designated INS offices where they were asked
to produce documents that suited the discretion of officials present,
interviewed, finger printed, photographed and, in some cases, detained
under deplorable conditions until processed, sent to jail or released
on bond.
The abuses of registration
under NSEERS became so notorious that two prominent US Senators, Russel
D. Feingold and Edward M. Kennedy addressed a letter to the Attorney
General John Ashcroft, urging him to suspend the implementation of NSEERS
registration and to open up the records of proceedings under the program.
The Senators wrote that "this special registration program appears
to be a component of a second wave of roundups and detentions of Arab
and Muslim males disguised as perfunctory registration requirement."
They added that "You have failed to identify most of the hundreds
of individuals arrested and detained in the wake of September 11...
This pattern of targeting persons for arrest , based on race, religion,
ethnicity or national origin rather than on specific evidence of criminal
activity serves to undermine the trust of the American people, ..."
(ADC Press Release, December 26, 02, accessible: www.adc.org/index.php?id=1570)
The trust and concerns
of the American people has in fact come under constant manipulation
since 9/11 by their government and its compliant media networks, maintaining
a relentless focus on the imminence of another terrorist attack on American
targets by enemy agents stereotyped as Middle Eastern and Asian Muslims.
The Department of Homeland Security, a monolithic bureaucracy created
in 2002 has kept the American public in a continuous state of alarm
and mass hysteria by frequently issuing its color-coded threat level
advisories of terrorist attacks. The imaginary or suspected high level
terrorist threats (Red and Orange) are always preceded by some disclosed
or undisclosed findings of suspicious activities by Arab and other Muslims
whether American citizens or not.
Late Edward Said, a Palestinian-born American citizen and a distinguished
professor at New Yorks Colombia University wrote , "I dont
know a single Arab or Muslim American who does not now feel that he
or she belongs to the enemy camp, and that being in the United states
at this moment provides us with an specially unpleasant experience of
alienation and widespread, quite specifically targeted hostility. ...
Hundreds of young Arab and Muslim men have been picked up for questioning
and, in far too many cases, detained by the police or the FBI. Anyone
by an Arab or Muslim name is usually made to stand aside for special
attention during airport security checks." (Al-Ahram Weekly, 26
Feb. - 6 March, 2002).
Ones religion
not being a visible attribute, it is the color of ones skin and physical
appearance which in America attracts suspicion of being a terrorist,
leading to harassment by civilian vigilantes and security guards. This
became painfully evident to the distinguished Indian-born Canadian novelist
Rohinton Mistry in October 2002 when he flew to America on a book signing
tour organized by his U. S. publisher. Neither a Muslim, nor from a
country identified by the United States for its terrorist connections,
as Mistry embarked on his journey with his wife, he was pulled aside
for special security checks at every single American airport until he
decided to cancel the rest of his tour and return home. Back in Canada
he told press reporters that he found his security checks non-random
and "degrading," giving him the "visions of Guantanamo."
(Globe and Mail, November 3, 2002).
The mistreatment
of a high profile person like Mistry by American security guards received
wide international media coverage. Hundreds of other Canadians of ancestry
in NSEERS listed countries have also been subjected to similar or worse
treatment while on visits to the United states. For many of them such
visits are a part of their cross-border business and professional duties.
As complaints from these travelers mounted, Canadas Department
of Foreign Affairs had to issue a travel advisory in the Autumn of 2002
warning Canadians born in NSEERS listed countries to stay away from
the United States. The advisory specially warned Canadians born in Saudi
Arabia, Yemen and Pakistan that they could attract "special attention
from American immigration and security authorities." The Foreign
Affairs Minister told the Canadian House of Commons that he had protested
to his U. S. counterpart, but "We cant tell Americans what
to do on their own territory. ... What we are telling them is that we
do not accept this and we find it very troubling." (Globe and Mail,
31 October, 2002).
Canadas own
record of treatment of its immigrant communities from the Middle Eastern
and other Muslim countries since 9/11 leaves much to be desired. But
that is another story that has to be understood in the context of Canadas
cultural, economic and defense integration with the United States as
a junior partner.
What is more disturbing
is that no one was speaking to the U. S. authorities on behalf of people
from the Third World countries such as Pakistan caught in the INS "anti-terrorist"
sweep. On recent visits to Pakistan I found a widespread public impression
that Pakistani community in America was in deep trouble. Over a thousand
working class Pakistanis who had ended up in America as economic or
political refugees were deported back to Pakistan in the aftermath of
9/11. Many others who had acquired U. S. citizenship and were settled
there in medical and other professions had voluntarily returned to Pakistan
rather than living and raising their children in an environment of increasing
racial discrimination and state surveillance. Then, there were many
first and second hand "horror stories" circulating about the
experiences of Pakistanis in America. These involved many non-immigrant
visitors who had been singled out for invasive security checks at the
U. S. airports and immigrant Pakistanis subjected to raids at their
homes or places of work, who were rounded up by police and FBI agents
and mistreated, detained or jailed without being charged or convicted
of any offence. There was also an interesting story circulating about
a General of the Pakistan Army in command of anti Taliban/al-Qaeda operations
on the Afghanistan border who was on his way to a military conference
in America. The General was detained at New Yorks Kennedy International
Airport and made to walk barefoot to his interrogation.
All these stories
would sound bizarre to someone familiar with Pakistans history
of supporting and fighting the U. S. wars as a front line state, first
against the Soviet communists and now against the "al-Qaeda jehadis
in Afghanistan.
But Americas
global war on terrorism is itself a bizarre exercise which does not
admit of any analysis in terms of conventional causal logic or principles
of justice and equity. The lesser world powers have to go along with
it or be branded as foes of America and pay the price. War involves
collateral damage, we are told. Americans who have lost their constitutionally
guaranteed civil liberties and the victims of crackdowns on immigrants
and visitors to America have to be viewed simply as collateral damage
of Americas domestic war on terrorism, just as thousands of innocent
Afghans and Iraqis being killed and injured represent the collateral
damage of War on terrorism abroad. What is more alarming is that this
domestic collateral damage promises to be a permanent impairment of
American civil society. A post-9/11 publication coming out of official
Washington reassures Americans that "Our nation suffered great
harm on that terrible morning. ... There should be no doubt that we
will succeed in weaving an effective and permanent level of security
into the fabric of a better, safer, stronger America." (National
Strategy for Homeland Security, Washington DC, July 2002, p. 69).
As this "permanent
security" is being woven into the fabric of American society, what
does it mean specifically with respect to the human rights and legal
protections of people visiting America or transiting through America
to other countries? The position taken by the U. S. government lawyers
in a recently filed civil suit provides an incisive answer to this question.
Maher Arar, a Canadian
citizen was flying back to Ottawa on September 26, 2002 from a trip
abroad. While in transit through the Kennedy International Airport he
was detained as a terrorist suspect and held in solitary confinement
in a Brooklyn detention center for 12 days. After that he was deported
to Syria where he was born under the U. S. policy of "extraordinary
rendition." This policy is used by Americans to send suspected
detainees to other countries which practice torture.
As expected, Arar
was severely tortured in Syria before being allowed to return to Canada.
In January 2004 he filed a civil suit, through his lawyers, in a Brooklyn
Federal Court challenging the practice of "extraordinary rendition"
and violation of his human rights. The preliminary hearing of the suit
came up in August 2005.
What the lawyers
of the U. S. Department of Justice deposed in this case before the federal
court to argue for the dismissal of Arars law suit is a remarkably
clear exposition of how Washington views the status of foreign visitors
to America. The Court was told by these attorneys that foreign citizens
who change planes at airports in the United States can legally be seized,
detained without charge, deported, deprived of a lawyer or courts and
even denied basic necessities like food. (New York Times, August 10,
2005).
What is even more
frightening is that any one of the multitude of U. S. Border guards
has the unquestioned, on-the-spot power to decide which one among the
foreign visitors who shows up at a U. S. port of entry with no legal
rights will be detained and which one will be allowed to proceed to
his or her destination. These functionaries are poorly educated and
have little more than their mutually reinforced racial and ethnic prejudices
and stereotypes to guide them in their decisions.
The irrationalities
of Americas domestic war on terrorism are reflected in every device
invented to make America more "safer." Take for example the
secret "No-Fly" list established after 9/11 by the department
of Homeland Security to stop possible terrorists from boarding planes
at any airport in America. Although the list has been used to subject
thousands of citizens and non-citizens of America to intensive interrogations
and searches, while trying to board their flights, none has yet been
arrested and tried for any terrorist act. What has frequently happened
and made news is that travelers, including babies in arms and well known
American personalities, have been blocked from boarding their flights
at American airports because their names happened to be same or similar
to someone on the computerized and growing "No-Fly" list.
In March 2004
U. S. Senator Edward
Kennedy was stopped and questioned five times while trying to catch
domestic flights because his name or a name similar to his appeared
on the secret list. He had to pull strings at the highest levels to
get his name removed from the list of possible terrorists. For thousands
of others whose names are on the list or similar to those on the list,
there is no recourse. They are permanently debarred from flying without
even knowing why. Although no significant opposition to the uses and
abuses of the list has appeared in America there are murmurs emanating
from the civil liberties groups to the effect that the list is being
used as a tool to harass dissenters such as anti-Iraq war protesters,
environmental activists, anti-free trade activists and others.
The amazing part
of all this is the acquiescence with which the people of the "greatest
democracy" in history have given up their constitutionally protected
democratic freedoms and the utter contempt with wich their government
violates the civil and human rights of visitors to their country on
a daily basis. One no doubt hears some voices of protest against the
draconian acts like the USA-PATRIOT by advocacy groups such as the American
Civil Liberties Union. But there is no revolt of the intellectuals,
no contentious debates in the academia and no signs of a political movement
to resist the transformation of America from the superpower that it
is to a super police state.