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Road To Guantanamo: Confrontation generalized, undifferentiating, brutal
By Hania Mourtada
Posted: Jan 23, 2007
“Stop praying!” roars some prison guard at a Muslim inmate in Michael Winterbottom’s poignant new
film The Road To Guantanamo. Amidst the frantic search for the untraceable and much feared Al-
Qaeda fighters following the September 11th attacks, what happened in Guantanamo Bay usually
stayed in Guantanamo Bay because the war on terror simply called for the existence of such sinister
facilities. No one cared to know but mostly no one dared to ask. Hordes of suspected Taliban fighters
were detained there for interrogation without even the hint of a trial. That wasn’t the main concern
though, given the urgency of the problem at hand.
What does rightfully raise eyebrows in Winterbottom’s film is the fact that amongst the five hundred
detainees, about four hundred and ninety turned out to be absolutely innocent. Eventually word got out
that this isolated place in Cuba was all about inhumane treatment, forced confessions and most
importantly people who did not belong there to begin with. The “freedom paradox” was bound to take
center stage sooner or later because in many minds it was presupposed that the venerated values in
every real democracy would be left intact during America’s war on terror. How can you compromise the
exact values you are fighting for? Regrettably what would happen was that the freedom of selected
individuals would be inevitably undermined by the greater cause of safeguarding the West from the
emerging threat of fundamentalism.
The award winning film by Winterbottom and Whitecross does not uncover anything new at this point
because the ordeals some Muslims or Arabs had to go through is already well publicized. What is so
exceptional about The Road To Guantanamo is how penetrating its outlook is, especially in regard to
the erroneous perceptions people hold and to what happens when religion is highly politicized. Shut
from premeditated angles, the different scenes explore the intimate details of four friends who got
caught up in a rapid proliferation of events and ended up wrongfully accused in Guantanamo. We
witness their bone chilling transformation from uninformed fun-loving young men on their way to a
wedding in Pakistan to hardened, skeptical and emotionally drained men. But what is certainly more
alarming for any given viewer is to watch the utter agony and misguidance of those who are
determined to unearth terror where it doesn’t exist.
The director creates a lucrative medium in which he reveals the pitfalls of the aggressive approach
employed by officials without being too critical of them. The American and British guards whom we see
mishandling the inmates and constantly marching through the prison camp are not shown as either
cold-blooded or Racist. Far from it. They are just plain feisty and strong-willed, driven by the belief that
some random bearded prisoner at their mercy is a lead to something much larger. Something that
might stop the threat to their very own existence in its tracks.
We get the sense from some of Winterbottom’s dramatic scenes that the kind of pressure which
tantalizes these guards and interrogators day and night basically causes them to will terror in the
inmates. The film has undoubtedly several haunting images. An Interrogator repeatedly tells one of the
four characters whose journey we follow: “You are Al-Qaeda” in a tone that does not allow for negation.
And every time the accused young man named Rafiq blandly answers that he is not, the guard behind
him administers a cruel strike. Such well-made films provide us with the prospect of going beyond
xenophobia to look for the attitudes originating in the frustrations harbored at the ineptitude to track
down the menacing current of extremism.
The clue to watching The Road To Guantanamo is to know what to look for. It may seem that this film is
just about the four British men of Pakistani origin who found themselves at the wrong place at the
wrong time, a cruel twist of fate. In reality this true story is just a tool to show the absurdity that has
reigned throughout the war on terror wrecking lives and feeding hatred. “That’s Bullshit, that’s
Bullshit.” one of the inmates keeps saying at every wrong accusation but the guards don’t hear him,
neither do the interrogators. He even raps about it which of course serves him nothing but to vent his
own frustrations and amuse a guard.
The conditions Winterbottom recreates for us are strangely reminiscent of what we know about
concentration camps in Nazi Germany. The prisoners are treated like animals, isolated and ridiculed
for their faith. A series of interviews with the actual men to whom this happened and some archive
news footage highlights the reality of it all but the dramatized scenes are the most vivid in that they
provide a glimpse into the stressful lives of the “Ghost-chasers”, the men and women who are after
the few bad seeds amongst a multitude of irreproachable men. It’s as if you are looking for a deeply
buried treasure and you need to look everywhere because you’re afraid you might miss it.
In rather subtle even so revealing moments Michael Winterbottom succeeds in showing us the
impulse behind indiscriminately rounding up dark-skinned observant Muslims and subjecting them to
endless hours of psychological and physical stress. A woman interrogator shows Rafiq a video of a
pro-Taliban demonstration insisting she recognizes him and his friends in the crowd when in fact
neither him nor his friends were ever there. His exclamations that he wasn’t even in Afghanistan at the
time leave her indifferent as she mechanically reiterates her own perceptions over and over again.
The fact that obsessive ingrained reflexes and rigid minds paralyzed by fear, even when this fear has
its basis in reality, may cause the war on terror to take a wrong turn is one of the many messages of
this worthwhile and rich movie. Another message is that taking up a tough confrontation is not
necessarily the finest solution out there to counter the growing militant movements. All the more when
the confrontation is generalized, undifferentiating and brutal.
### ### ###
Hania Mourtada is a Global Affairs Intern, The Atlantic Affairs.
By Hania Mourtada
Posted: Jan 23, 2007
“Stop praying!” roars some prison guard at a Muslim inmate in Michael Winterbottom’s poignant new
film The Road To Guantanamo. Amidst the frantic search for the untraceable and much feared Al-
Qaeda fighters following the September 11th attacks, what happened in Guantanamo Bay usually
stayed in Guantanamo Bay because the war on terror simply called for the existence of such sinister
facilities. No one cared to know but mostly no one dared to ask. Hordes of suspected Taliban fighters
were detained there for interrogation without even the hint of a trial. That wasn’t the main concern
though, given the urgency of the problem at hand.
What does rightfully raise eyebrows in Winterbottom’s film is the fact that amongst the five hundred
detainees, about four hundred and ninety turned out to be absolutely innocent. Eventually word got out
that this isolated place in Cuba was all about inhumane treatment, forced confessions and most
importantly people who did not belong there to begin with. The “freedom paradox” was bound to take
center stage sooner or later because in many minds it was presupposed that the venerated values in
every real democracy would be left intact during America’s war on terror. How can you compromise the
exact values you are fighting for? Regrettably what would happen was that the freedom of selected
individuals would be inevitably undermined by the greater cause of safeguarding the West from the
emerging threat of fundamentalism.
The award winning film by Winterbottom and Whitecross does not uncover anything new at this point
because the ordeals some Muslims or Arabs had to go through is already well publicized. What is so
exceptional about The Road To Guantanamo is how penetrating its outlook is, especially in regard to
the erroneous perceptions people hold and to what happens when religion is highly politicized. Shut
from premeditated angles, the different scenes explore the intimate details of four friends who got
caught up in a rapid proliferation of events and ended up wrongfully accused in Guantanamo. We
witness their bone chilling transformation from uninformed fun-loving young men on their way to a
wedding in Pakistan to hardened, skeptical and emotionally drained men. But what is certainly more
alarming for any given viewer is to watch the utter agony and misguidance of those who are
determined to unearth terror where it doesn’t exist.
The director creates a lucrative medium in which he reveals the pitfalls of the aggressive approach
employed by officials without being too critical of them. The American and British guards whom we see
mishandling the inmates and constantly marching through the prison camp are not shown as either
cold-blooded or Racist. Far from it. They are just plain feisty and strong-willed, driven by the belief that
some random bearded prisoner at their mercy is a lead to something much larger. Something that
might stop the threat to their very own existence in its tracks.
We get the sense from some of Winterbottom’s dramatic scenes that the kind of pressure which
tantalizes these guards and interrogators day and night basically causes them to will terror in the
inmates. The film has undoubtedly several haunting images. An Interrogator repeatedly tells one of the
four characters whose journey we follow: “You are Al-Qaeda” in a tone that does not allow for negation.
And every time the accused young man named Rafiq blandly answers that he is not, the guard behind
him administers a cruel strike. Such well-made films provide us with the prospect of going beyond
xenophobia to look for the attitudes originating in the frustrations harbored at the ineptitude to track
down the menacing current of extremism.
The clue to watching The Road To Guantanamo is to know what to look for. It may seem that this film is
just about the four British men of Pakistani origin who found themselves at the wrong place at the
wrong time, a cruel twist of fate. In reality this true story is just a tool to show the absurdity that has
reigned throughout the war on terror wrecking lives and feeding hatred. “That’s Bullshit, that’s
Bullshit.” one of the inmates keeps saying at every wrong accusation but the guards don’t hear him,
neither do the interrogators. He even raps about it which of course serves him nothing but to vent his
own frustrations and amuse a guard.
The conditions Winterbottom recreates for us are strangely reminiscent of what we know about
concentration camps in Nazi Germany. The prisoners are treated like animals, isolated and ridiculed
for their faith. A series of interviews with the actual men to whom this happened and some archive
news footage highlights the reality of it all but the dramatized scenes are the most vivid in that they
provide a glimpse into the stressful lives of the “Ghost-chasers”, the men and women who are after
the few bad seeds amongst a multitude of irreproachable men. It’s as if you are looking for a deeply
buried treasure and you need to look everywhere because you’re afraid you might miss it.
In rather subtle even so revealing moments Michael Winterbottom succeeds in showing us the
impulse behind indiscriminately rounding up dark-skinned observant Muslims and subjecting them to
endless hours of psychological and physical stress. A woman interrogator shows Rafiq a video of a
pro-Taliban demonstration insisting she recognizes him and his friends in the crowd when in fact
neither him nor his friends were ever there. His exclamations that he wasn’t even in Afghanistan at the
time leave her indifferent as she mechanically reiterates her own perceptions over and over again.
The fact that obsessive ingrained reflexes and rigid minds paralyzed by fear, even when this fear has
its basis in reality, may cause the war on terror to take a wrong turn is one of the many messages of
this worthwhile and rich movie. Another message is that taking up a tough confrontation is not
necessarily the finest solution out there to counter the growing militant movements. All the more when
the confrontation is generalized, undifferentiating and brutal.
### ### ###
Hania Mourtada is a Global Affairs Intern, The Atlantic Affairs.
| (c) 2006 New Criterion Foundation, London |
| Ideologies. Populism. Multiculturalism. |