POLICESTATE USA

Guardian: Bush's Secret War


When security agents took away her husband in the middle of the night they did not tell Ellah Ulusam that Washington had just opened a new front in its war against terror. They said he would be back the next day. Arif Ulusam vanished along with four other Muslim men, all arrested at home, handcuffed and bundled into a car for a bizarre odyssey which has not yet ended.

This is a part of George Bush's war which does not make it on to television news, for it is waged on a front so remote few know it exists. In less eventful times what happened would be considered extraordinary. As it is, their story has been barely reported.

On June 22 Malawi security agents seized five men in Limbe, outside Malawi's commercial capital Blantyre, and spirited them out of the country on suspicion of belonging to al-Qaida, earning praise from the US ambassador.

Relatives were distraught. "Taking Arif away was a big loss to me. I was stranded. I didn't know what was going on," says Ellah, 27, cradling her daughter Kardelen, not yet three. "Kardelen misses her father so much, she puts on his shoes, kisses his shirts."

Following the script from Afghanistan and other countries where terror suspects have been snatched, it seemed these were more Muslims destined for orange jumpsuits, their guilt or innocence to be decided at a future date by a US military tribunal. Except a funny thing happened on the way to Guantanamo - they were released.