Red Cross links jailed Taliban fighters with families

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan -- Malika came running out of the house in southern Afghanistan at the news, collapsing into a tearful huddle as she reached for the letter from her husband that had traveled halfway round the world.

It was the first time in four months that she has gotten word that Haji Mohammad Omar is alive -- and now being held by the United States at Cuba's Guantanamo Bay.

"We did not know where they took him," Malika said Tuesday as a representative of the International Committee of the Red Cross delivered the letter. "We did not know if he died. At least now we know where he is being detained."

Written from prison, the letters are the sole link between the alleged Taliban and al-Qaida fighters imprisoned in Cuba and their anxious families. Not allowed phone calls or any other type of contact with the outside world, the prisoners come to rely on the aid agency's ad hoc postal service.

"We are often the only news their families get," said Philippe Tremblay, a Red Cross official.

As part of their role in monitoring conditions of prisoners taken during armed conflict around the world, the neutral, Swiss-based agency offers letter delivery for prisoners' families.

The Pentagon refuses to release the names of the detainees, their nationalities, or any other details about them.

Contact with prisoners

Within Afghanistan, the Red Cross says it is visiting 5,800 prisoners held across the country and is still finding out about new detention centers. Most of them were imprisoned during the fighting that ousted the fundamentalist Taliban regime.

Jails in the north, including those in Mazar-e-Sharif, Bamiyan, and Kabul, hold the majority of war prisoners.

Thousands of families anxiously await word about relatives who disappeared during the war. It can take months for letters to arrive, given the agency's limited resources and difficulties of travel into remote regions of the country.

Over the past nine months, nearly 1,300 letters have been delivered in the southern region alone. Only a fraction -- 50 to 80 -- have come from Guantanamo.

On this day, one of those letters is for Abdullah, 26, whose cousin Khairullah Khairkhowz, a member of President Hamid Karzai's Popolzai tribe, served as Taliban interior minister from 1996 until 1999, when he was promoted to governor of Herat and head of the five-province southwestern zone.

"We kept hearing different stories all the time. But there's been no word from him in three months," he said.

Hearing that he is being held in Cuba is reassuring, yet also stirs up new fears, Abdullah said.

"Of course it makes me very worried. Conditions are not good there," he said, though he admits he's not exactly sure where Guantanamo is located.

The family had been regular visitors to the Red Cross office, he said.

"They will be very happy to get the letter," he said. "Hearing rumors about where he was made it hard for us. But I know from this letter that this is really him."

Censored by jail officials before they go out, the letters are typically sparse, containing only personal news -- anything that jeopardizes security is prohibited. But for their anxious families, every word is valued.

"We were arrested in Kandahar but are now in the hands of Americans. We are fine and healthy. I hope that, God willing, you are fine as well," reads the letter from Omar, the sole breadwinner for a family of 10.

The words send his wife Malika into another fit of weeping.

"Why has he been taken? He is innocent. My kids depend on my neighbors for food now. There is no one to care for us," she said.

Still, she said, she feels lucky to know that he is alive.

"At least we can hope he will be released," she said.