Life after Gitmo: A tale of two Afghan friends

BATI KOT, Afghanistan: Two  Afghan friends were incarcerated  together at Guantanamo  Bay, but they chose starkly divergent  paths after release --  one became an Islamic State  militant, the other joined the  US-led government fight to  crush the group.  Haji Ghalib and Abdul  Rahim Muslim Dost, whose  friendship coalesced around a  shared love for poetry, were  scooped up in the post-9/11  American dragnet and shipped  off to the prison camp in Cuba.  Their journey encapsulates  Guantanamo’s failed legacy in  the fight to expunge radicalism,  as President Donald Trump appears  set to reverse previous US  efforts to scale it back.  "Guantanamo is the worst  place on Earth," said Ghalib,  who estimates he is 49, deep  creases lining his gaunt face.  "Every day I ask myself the  same questions: ‘Why was I  taken? Why did they ruin five  years of my life? Why is there no  justice, no compensation?’"  After burnishing his reputation  as a fearsome commander  against the Soviets and the Taliban,  Ghalib was serving in the  Afghan police in 2003 when he  was unexpectedly accused of  insurgent links.  Authorities ignominiously  stripped him of his post, tore his  uniform off publicly, and sent  him to Guantanamo until the  American military concluded in  2007 that he was "not assessed  as being a member of al-Qaeda  or the Taliban".  When freed, Ghalib channelled  his resentment to fight  not the Americans but those he  calls the "real enemies of  Afghanistan" -- the Taliban and,  recently, Islamic State militant,  who are making inroads into the  country. That includes his former  friend Muslim Dost, who  Western and Afghan officials describe  as a top IS commander in  eastern Nangarhar province,  and who was released from  Guantanamo two years before  Ghalib.  A gifted demagogue, Muslim  Dost spent his time inside Guantanamo  praying and preaching  to other inmates about jihad  alongside 9/11 accused Khalid  Sheikh Mohammed.  "When he preached the inmates  wept," Ghalib recalled.  "They were left shaken by his  loud, mesmerising voice."  Muslim Dost scribbled  poems on drinking cups for lack  of writing material. —AFP