THAT pesky pretzel was not the only thing which stuck in President Bush's gullet last week: the detainees at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba were also causing more than a fair bit of irritation. Protests about their treatment might not have grabbed the headlines in the US media -- there have been jokes that after the caves and mud huts of Afghanistan, sleeping out in the balmy breezes of Cuba has to be an improvement -- but very few Americans seem to realize that the treatment of these Taliban and al-Qaeda POWs is whipping up a storm of outrage in the rest of the world.

Guantanamo Bay Detainee

After falling off his sofa in the White House as a result of a pretzel attack Bush suffered nothing more serious than an embarrassing facial bruise and a sore throat, but many diplomats now fear that unless he cleans up the American's act in Cuba he could be on the receiving end of a much bigger blow -- the collapse of his much vaunted and, to date, highly successful coalition in the war against terrorism.

Four months into that campaign the first cracks are beginning to appear in the coalition which George W Bush and Tony Blair built. The breach is not yet serious but just as a carefully lit fire will eventually bring down a wall, the first embers are beginning to glow, not because any of the partners believe that the fighting in Afghanistan was wrong, but due to doubts and diplomatic unease about the less than welcoming treatment being meted out to 80 Taliban fighters detained in Camp X-Ray, the grimly named prison in the equally dismal surroundings of Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.

Just as embarrassing, the loudest voices of protest are coming from Britain where three cabinet ministers -- Robin Cook, Patricia Hewitt and Jack Straw -- have expressed their concern about the treatment of the detainees and argue that international agreements about the conditions imposed on prisoners of war are being breached. Although both sides insist the coalition remains intact and Blair has been suitably restrained about making any comment, British officials have been embarrassed by the growing political criticism -- Foreign Secretary Straw has let it be known that only by treating the Taliban captives responsibly can the US maintain its 'moral ascendancy' -- while their US counterparts have countered that they are growing impatient of British whining. According to a senior British source, until the question of Guantanamo Bay is sorted out once and for all, the row will rumble on, and in so doing will hurt Blair's new special relationship with Bush.

The falling-out centers on one crucial question: when is a prisoner of war not a prisoner of war? The answer should be straightforward to anyone with a passing knowledge of the Third Geneva Convention of 1949, but in the new US-led war against terrorism the short answer seems to be any 'unlawful combatant'. And the punishment is being imprisoned in a dog cage at Camp X-ray with only a thin mat to lie on and a meager diet of Fruit Loops, beans and rice. Predictably, the plight of these detainees has created alarm and concern, not just in the UK, but in many other corners of the civilized world. Just as predictably most Americans cannot believe that such a fuss is being made over a group of people whom one commentator called 'the scum of the earth ... they should be put inside a gigantic tanker and the door should be slammed shut'. Another was equally blunt about the treatment: 'Humiliating them is not our goal, just a perk.'

If Guantanamo Bay is not exactly setting the agenda in the US, other than as a serve-them-right afterthought, the same cannot be said of the response elsewhere. As Congress was pushing through the USA Patriot Act, which allows for the indefinite detention of any 'non-citizen' found by the Attorney General to be suspected of engaging in acts of terrorism, the New York-based Human Rights Watch was arguing that the treatment of the detainees is not only cruel and unnatural, but it allows any 'tinpot tyrant' to act in the same way against their opponents.

The Human Rights Watch's 660-page report says it all: 'If the west continues to accept repression as the best defense against radical politics it will undermine the human rights culture that is needed in the long run to defeat terrorism.'

That underpins the whole problem. In the aftermath of the September 11 atrocities the US announced it was going to wage war on international terrorism and, while that is an imprecise objective, it gave some legality to the air strikes and ground operations which followed in Afghanistan. As soon as the first bombs fell and the first bullets were fired it was clear there was going to be prisoners and that they would have to be recycled in one way or another. Most were 'Arabs' -- Saudis, Chechens, Pakistanis, Yemenis -- who supported the Taliban and those who warranted further interrogation were shackled, sedated and shaved and sent half-way across the world on board soulless US military transport aircraft. Very few of them even know where they are.

To the US these men are 'battlefield detainees' or 'unlawful combatants' and not only are they dangerous but they have priceless intelligence which will only be accessed after strict and relentless interrogation. Camp X-ray is part of that process, hence the insistence of US military commanders that the treatment of the detainees is hard but fair, that while Guantanamo Bay is not the Hilton, it is not much worse than any other military penitentiary. They also argue that the conditions match up to the Geneva Convention, and it is on this point that the critics differ.

While it is a matter of interpretation about whether or not Camp X-ray is 'reasonably consistent' with the convention (to use defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld's words), there is no doubt that by treating the men so harshly its spirit has been broken -- under its terms torture, cruelty, humiliation and inhumane and degrading treatment are prohibited. The same holds true for the interrogation which will commence shortly. According to the Geneva Convention, a prisoner of war is only obliged to give name, rank and serial number, but in Cuba the US military plans full-scale questioning.

As for the military commissions with which the US is planning to try those suspected of engaging in international terrorism, that too is a gray area. No decision has been taken but it is thought that these will be held in camera without right of appeal and that the ultimate penalty will be execution by firing squad. Sending the detainees back to their homes for trial could be an option but with the exception of those from the UK and Australia, most would face execution.

This is an option which would have been familiar to Sir Duncan Campbell, of Auchinbreck, after he was taken prisoner at the Battle of Inverlochy in 1645 -- his captor Alasdair MacColla asked him if he wanted to be shortened (beheaded) or stretched (hung) -- but as one British diplomat put it, extremes of behavior of that kind are hardly the hallmark of a civilized country. Guantanamo Bay could still be a graveyard, and not just for the Taliban and al-Qaeda detainees.

©2001 smg sunday newspapers ltd

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