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Ghana, otherwise
home for Guantanamo Bay prison (Gitmo) detainees
E. Ablorh-Odjidja
January
07, 2016
This transfer of Gitmo prisoners
reminds me to write, "Obama gives Ghana the back hand" by
returning two Yemeni Muslim terrorists to Ghana, a place
they don't belong and where they should not even be
tolerated.
This is not to say Ghana has no
place for people of the Muslim faith.
There are people of
this faith in abundance in Ghana.
They are a tolerant
lot and are part of the religious fabric of a safe nation
and not prone to causing mayhem like Boko Harem in Nigeria.
So, is it for safety and religious
stability that these two detainees were sent to Ghana?
The decree that sent Atef and Al-Dhuby
to Ghana read:
“As directed by the president’s
Jan. 22, 2009, executive order, the interagency Guantanamo
Review Task Force conducted a comprehensive review of these
cases. As a result of those reviews, which examined a number
of factors, including security issues, Atef and Al-Dhuby
were unanimously approved for transfer by the six
departments and agencies comprising the task force,”
according to a US Department of Defense report picked up by
Ghanaweb.
Atef and Al-Dhuby are coming to Ghana.
The two Yemini terrorists have been incarcerated at Gitmo
for the past 14 years.
According to reports, they cannot be
returned to Yemen, their country of origin and a place where
they share a common religion with the overwhelming
population, more so than they do in Ghana.
They are prisoners at Gitmo now
because no American state wants them in a prison on the main
land. The need
to dump them on Ghanaian soil has become the wise political
choice. Not
accidental, but a deliberate one that was arrived at some
six years ago.
I would have objected to the transfer
were they Christian terrorists.
The objection here is not a matter of religion.
It is about security and risk.
Did Obama overlook this risk to our fragile country?
Some of us in Diaspora America
identify with Obama. He is one of us, the historic first
Black president of America and the inspiration for our
generation and next.
And then he dumps Atef and Al-Dhuby on us.
Think about it. This gift is what
Ghana gets from Obama. Bush gave us the MCA grant of over
half a billion dollars and some of us have contempt for him.
Regardless, Atef and Al-Dhuby can be a
gift that will keep on giving.
We hope that, in the
end, the consequences are not bitter for our nation.
And even if the transfer is an
experiment, we still have to wonder why Obama would want to
choose Ghana for it.
First point, we know it is a
political promise Obama made to his constituents - to close
the Gitmo detention camp.
Gitmo
was George Bush's legacy and his approach to fighting
terrorism. Obama found this approach unnecessary, thus his
wish to repudiate. He
has been working at it despite the strong opposition from
all sides.
Governors of states, leaders of
America's political parties and even some officers within
Obama’s administration will not accept his intent to close
Gitmo.
On December 18, 2015,
Free Beacon reported that "The chairman
of Joint Chiefs of Staff did not approve the Oct. 30 release
of a terrorist held at the Guantanamo Bay prison, contrary
to a Pentagon announcement that the transfer was
“unanimously” approved by senior Obama administration
officials."
A special report from Reuters on
December 29, 2015 said
"Pentagon thwarts Obama's effort to close Guantanamo."
The report continued that "Since Obama took office in 2009,
these people said, Pentagon officials have been throwing up
bureaucratic obstacles to thwart the president's plan to
close Guantanamo."
Whether Obama is right on any
grounds, humanitarian or otherwise, is not the issue.
But note even his
military brass is in opposition to his idea.
We read that "Tri-county sheriffs
have written to U.S. Sen. Tim Scott urging him to keep up
the fight to prevent terror detainees from being transferred
to the Navy brig in Hanahan if President Barack Obama closes
the prison at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba,"
wrote South Carolina,
Post and Courier, November 24, 2015.
A Gallup poll, on the favorability
among Americans on closing down Gitmo, shows " two in three
(66%) oppose the idea,” a feeling that has barely budged
since 2009.
The opposition to the idea is
because, " the relocation is nothing more than an open-door
invitation for terrorists to launch attacks in the area;" in
spite of the Obama administration to only “hold detainees at
a maximum-security level.”
And we wonder why all these objections
don’t matter for Ghana.
We don’t have maximum security level prison that can hold
hardened Gitmo detainees
The Obama
administration knew. Yet, it was insensitive enough to
approach poor Ghana for relief.
A relief they knew
could easily be coerced or incentivized.
Obama, if you will recall came to
Ghana in 2009, hard on the heels of Bush who had visited a
year earlier.
It is interesting to remember why
Bush was in Ghana.
Bush came to see the impact his
foreign aid investment plan, the Millennium Challenge
Account (MCA), offered under the Kufuor regime. This foreign
aid plan was generous and huge in its intention and
realization.
Obama, so far, has brought Ghana
nothing, except the detainees.
But there are some
interesting hypotheses as to why he came to Ghana.
Some believe Obama came to take
off the shine Bush had made on Ghana with the generous MCA
plan. Others think he went to identify with Africa, since
Ghana was the first sub-Saharan African country to gain
independence.
All the above views are
interesting because they help to bring up another
speculation. Was
Obama in Ghana to gain marks for this eventual Gitmo deal -
to use the grace of the trip to grease the way for easy
acceptance of Atef and Al-Dhuby?
Obama couldn't send Gitmo
prisoners to Kenya. He was aware of the religious conflicts
waging on in East Africa and how much this was impacting
Kenya, just as he was aware of the many religious unrest and
conflicts going on in other parts of Africa, except Ghana.
Obama in his address to Ghana's
parliament in 2009 said:
Let me be clear: There are wars over
land and wars over resources. And it is still far too
easy for those without conscience to manipulate whole
communities into fighting among faiths and tribes."
Security vulnerability was on
Obama's mind as he spoke that day to the Ghanaian
Parliament. It was absent in his transfer of the Gitmo
detainees to Ghana.
Ghana in many ways is very
vulnerable now as it has been historically. If these
terrorists were detained there, they would be housed with
other inmates.
The exposure of their ideas and methods to other undesirable
elements should be a concern here.
For the above reason states in
America have opposed the idea of accepting and housing of
these inmates on their main land.
They feared the ideological contamination of the worst
virulent kind from these terrorists.
This virulent contamination is now
Obama's gift to Ghana. It
is his gift, the gift that will continue giving.
E.
Ablorh-Odjidja, Publisher www.ghanadot.com, Washington, DC,
January 07, 2016.
Permission to publish: Please feel free
to publish or reproduce, with credits, unedited. If posted
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publisher@ghanadot.com. Or don't pu
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