Afghan families like his are traveling from distant provinces and turning up by the hundreds for a similar chance to get a glimpse of loved ones who have been held at the American base for months, sometimes years, without charges or legal redress. It is a measure of their desperation for any word on the fate of their husbands, fathers and brothers that so many families have come so quickly.In the three months since the program began, about 500 calls have been made. On a recent morning a dozen families gathered to wait their turn before the video screens provided by the American military and set up in three small booths at the Kabul offices of the International Committee of the Red Cross. The program, the first of its kind, amounts to a compromise of sorts between the United States military and the Red Cross, which has long pressed the Americans to allow the detainees visitors, without success. %26#8220;We have always been pushing for family visits,%26#8221; said Graziella Leite Piccolo, the spokeswoman for the Red Cross in Kabul. %26#8220;This is the first step, but it is not the same as person-to-person contact, and we are pushing to allow face-to-face visits.%26#8221;For the families, the calls are something, but a small consolation. They are churning up a maelstrom of emotions for the detainees and their families, who swing from relief and joy to pain and frustration, even despair at what many of them see as the hopelessness of their situation.The detention center at Bagram Air Base, just an hour%26#8217;s drive north of Kabul, has been a black hole for detainees and their families since it opened in early 2002. The detainees %26#151; 600 to 650 people are being held there %26#151; have no access to lawyers, nor any judicial process. They receive no parcels. The United States military will not release any information about them, but, according to their families, some have been held at Bagram for as long as three years. The Red Cross visits the detainees, under its mandate to assess conditions at prisons in Afghanistan, though it will not comment publicly on what it finds. It also provides a letter service for detainees and families, which is often the only way that families learn relatives are being held at Bagram at all.%26#8220;We don%26#8217;t know who to complain to,%26#8221; said Gul Shah Khan, whose son, Ahmad Murid, 24, has been held for two and a half years without trial or any investigation. %26#8220;There is no place to appeal to and say what is true and what is false.%26#8221;In that atmosphere of fear and uncertainty, the video calls have become a lifeline so popular that families are returning a second time, with wives and babies and sick mothers, for a 20-minute call. %26#8220;We realized he is alive and he is in Bagram,%26#8221; Rahimullah, Esrarullah%26#8217;s uncle, said of the boy%26#8217;s father, Hafizullah, who was detained eight months ago after he was stopped at a checkpoint near his home. His relatives said people in power in the province from a rival faction were behind his detention. %26#8220;When he sent us a letter, we knew, but now we are 100 percent sure.%26#8221;%26#8220;He said, %26#8216;Hello Dad,%26#8217; and then he could not talk,%26#8221; he said of Esrarullah after the call on the big black box with a small television screen and a clumsy old-fashioned receiver, which is operated on a secure video and telephone line from Bagram.When the boy could not speak, Rahimullah, 42, who like many Afghans uses only one name, took the phone from him and rattled off a series of jokes about the long beard his brother-in-law had grown in prison. %26#8220;I did not want them to be sad,%26#8221; he said. Sidiqque Ahmad, 21, emerged crying after talking to his younger brother, Jawed, a journalist from the southern city of Kandahar who was arrested by American forces on Oct. 26. 1 2 Next Page %26#x00bb;Sangar Rahimi and Abdul Waheed Wafa contributed reporting.
Tags: egan, family, rth, three months, united states military
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