It was 1972. She was born in the coastal city of Karachi, to a neurosurgeon father and social worker mother. The youngest of three siblings, she aced secondary school and in 1990 joined her brother in the US. She completed her undergraduate degree at the University of Houston, followed by a postgraduate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and a doctorate in cognitive neuroscience from Brandeis University. She married Amjad Khan and gave birth to son Ahmed, and daughter Mariam. By the summer of 2001, Aafia Siddiqui appeared to have the world at her feet – by September her world would never be the same.
9/11 and the War on Terror
It was officially called ‘the War on Terror’ but in reality it was a ‘War of Terror’ on Muslims and people of colour (POC). Following 9/11, US President Bush addressed a joint session of Congress. The event was beamed around the world, reaching into billions of households. From New York to Nairobi, Atlanta to Auckland we were all given an ultimatum: “Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make. Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists.” The problem was that few of us, including Bush himself, truly understood who the terrorists were. This ambiguity would prove most harmful to Muslims. It would prove devastating for Aafia.
Enhanced interrogation, better described as unconstrained torture, illegal detention, loss of civil liberties and basic human rights, and a bounty system that treated Muslims and POC as chattel would be the legacy of Bush’s words. But in 2001, we were naïve and assumed some sense of reason and morality would prevail. How wrong we were.
According to a 2023 study by Brown University’s Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs, an estimated 4.7 million civilians died (directly and indirectly) and a further thirty-eight million were displaced as a result of the War on Terror. The vast majority of those killed were from Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Pakistan, Somalia, Syria, and Yemen. The estimated cost of the War on Terror to the US Treasury – a whopping eight trillion dollars.
Yet America remained perversely fascinated by the cruelty their government exercised in their name. Nestled in Washington DC’s L’Enfant Plaza is the International Spy Museum, where you can: “Come face to face with spies and spy masters, the gadgets and engineers … with two floors of interactive exhibits to tap, touch, and play – you don’t just visit the Spy Museum, you live it.” In 2019 the museum introduced a section on the War on Terror. Anodyne cartoon-style graphics depicted vicious acts of white-on-brown torture. A stylised waterboarding kit was displayed, and visitors were encouraged to vote on whether its use should be permissible – despite the fact it already was. Notably missing was testimony from those who had been waterboarded. Andrea Prasow of Human Rights Watch commented: “Their [the curators] attempts in wall texts and video testimony elucidate a false balance between the people who have benefited from spy craft and those who suffer from it. Such a narrative benefits the intelligence community.”
What We Know
Aafia moved back to Karachi shortly after 9/11. The US was openly hostile to Muslims, and she was concerned for her two children. In September 2002, she gave birth to her third child, a son named Suleiman – which ironically means ‘peace’. Despite his birth her marriage was failing, and at times hostile. There were allegations of domestic abuse, and on at least one occasion there is a documented account of Aafia being admitted to hospital after her husband threw a bottle at her face, splitting her lip in the process. Aafia required stitches and moved out of the family home for several weeks afterwards. Realising the relationship was irrecoverable Aafia filed for divorce.
On March 25th 2003, the FBI issued a ‘wanted for questioning’ alert for Aafia. US intelligence concluded she was a person of interest after she was identified by a couple of dubious detainees during prolonged interrogation sessions. The process of identification lacked any rigour – a photobook was shown to detainees, and they pointed to people who they believed were possible ‘terrorist threats.’ The more you pointed, the less you were tortured. Confessions secured under interrogation would prove hugely unreliable, but in 2003 the US considered them effective sources of information, and a bounty of $55,000 was put on Aafia’s head.
Aafia made it into the photobook because husband Amjad had bought a pair of night vision goggles and some outdoor survival books shortly after 9/11. The couple were visited at their US home by the FBI and Amjad explained the goggles and books had been acquired for hunting trips. The FBI took no further action, but the couple remained on their watch list.
On March 30th Aafia and her three children, Ahmed (6), Mariam (4), and Suleiman (6 months), climbed into a taxi and headed for Karachi airport. It was an easy and normally uneventful drive. They were all excited, heading to visit Aafia’s uncle in Islamabad, some two hours flying time away.
But they never made the flight. Aafia and Ahmed wouldn’t be seen again until July 2008; Mariam, April 2010. Suleiman would never be seen again.
The Disappearance – An Operative
Aafia’s disappearance, and reappearance five years later, would generate two competing narratives. One offered by the US authorities and Pakistan’s infamous Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) unit, the other by Aafia and those campaigning for her release. The former is light on evidence and relies on the trope of angry Muslim turns terrorist, vanishes only to return to blow things up; the latter is an alarming depiction of governments gone rogue.
ISI is an odd institution, with a powerful and commanding role in Pakistan. Its omnipresence and web of tentacles reach directly into the heart of government as much as they reach into the dark and shadowy world of surveillance, state repression and violence. The result: the ISI manipulate, influence, and steer Pakistan’s actions at home and abroad, with little to no accountability.
According to the US and the ISI, Aafia and the kids weren’t going to her uncle’s but into hiding. Mother and children made off into the mountainous region between Pakistan and Afghanistan, where she became a terror operative and runner involved in covert, clandestine operations – a Mata Hari of sorts. On July 17th 2008, she and son Ahmed inexplicably travelled to Ghazni, a city southwest of Kabul, looking for Ammar al-Baluchi whom she had apparently married. The marriage is refuted by Aafia’s family, and Ammar’s publicly announced detention at Guantanamo Bay in 2006 would appear to undermine this claim. In Ghazni, Aafia attracted police interest. She was arrested and taken to the local station where she spent the night, tellingly not in a cell but a rear room separated from the adjoining office by nothing more than a flimsy curtain.
The next morning two FBI agents and three US soldiers (a warrant officer, a captain and an interpreter) arrived to question Aafia. At some point a weapon was placed on the floor, Aafia reached for it, there was a scuffle and shots were fired. The only casualty was Aafia, who had been wounded in the abdomen. In critical condition she was flown by helicopter to Bagram air base north of Kabul, where she underwent immediate surgery. On July 31st she was charged with assault with a deadly weapon and attempting to kill a US Army Captain while he was engaged in official duties. Aafia was flown to New York on August 4th and found guilty on February 3rd 2010. She was sentenced to eighty-six years. Son Ahmed was released to Aafia’s sister, Fowzia, after the Ghazni incident. Daughter Mariam was deposited in a Karachi street – near Fowzia’s house – in April 2010, and now lives with her aunt. Suleiman remains missing.
Aafia was never charged with any terror offences, and no evidence linking her to any terror related activity between 2003 and 2008 has ever been presented. Neither the US nor the ISI have provided any surveillance material of Aafia for the time in question.
The Disappearance – A Tortured Detainee
“The taxi was surrounded by several cars. Men jumped out and Aafia was separated from the children. There was a tussle, and it was chaotic. Baby Suleiman appears to have been accidently dropped on the road by the men. There was a pool of blood.”
Aafia’s account of March 30th is very different and traumatic. She and the children got into the taxi and headed for the airport. The taxi was surrounded and stopped. Men, assumed to be from the ISI, separated the family into different vehicles. She didn’t see the children again. Ahmed would claim to see baby Suleiman fall to the ground. Aafia, Ahmed, and Mariam were transported to Afghanistan. Ahmed (6) was put into borstal, Mariam (4) was illegally adopted by an American couple in Kabul, and Aafia was interned at the notorious interrogation centre at Bagram air base. She would spend the next five years being tortured and sexually abused.
On July 16th 2008, she was unexpectedly released. At the gates she was handed a young boy, eleven or twelve years old, named Eshan Ali. He would turn out to be Ahmed. Together they were put on a bus to Ghazni and instructed to wait outside the city’s mosque for Mariam. They did just that.
Opposite the mosque is a tailor’s shop. The owner watched Aafia and the boy all afternoon, and realising the perils of Ghazni at night, approached Aafia and asked if she had somewhere to stay. She didn’t, so he offered to take her to his sister’s house, but Aafia never made it. At that moment, shop keeper, mother and child were surrounded by armed police suspicious of Aafia. They had been tipped off about a suicide bomber. The tailor, a city local, calmed the situation down and Aafia and Ahmed were escorted to the police station, to a small back room with a curtain as a door, where they spent the night. No explosives were found on Aafia or Ahmed.
Word got to US authorities that a woman and child were being detained in Ghazni, and a small team was dispatched to interview her. They arrived the following morning. On hearing American voices, Aafia assumed she would be returned to Bagram. She peered through a gap in the curtain and was shot by one of the soldiers. Aafia, who is 5’ 4” tall and was unarmed, was rushed to Bagram then flown to New York; Ahmed went to live with his aunt, and they were joined by Mariam in April 2010 after she was deposited in a nearby street.
Unlike the US/ISI narrative, Aafia’s version of events has supporting testimony. There are over half a dozen witness statements placing Aafia in Bagram, she bears the tell-tale scars of the type of torture associated with Bagram, the Ghazni tailor has provided an eyewitness account of what happened outside the mosque, and forensics from the police station support Aafia’s account of events.
The Set Up
What is most worrying about Aafia’s narrative is that it alludes to the possibility she was intentionally sent to Ghazni to be killed. Having publicly denied her existence at Bagram for five years, was Aafia becoming a political embarrassment, a problem for her captors? Was her release not a release to freedom and family, but a four-hour drive to execution, and one last attempt to malign her as a bloodthirsty radical? Was she lured to Ghazni on the false promise of seeing her daughter, only to be slain as the clichéd terrorist President Bush invented in 2001? But for the tailor of Ghazni, would Aafia have joined the other 4.7 million Muslims and POC who have paid the real price for the War on Terror?
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©2024 Sul Nowroz – Real Media staff writer
