07 January 23
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In the debate over American workers’ welfare versus the Federal Reserve’s inflation-cooling rate hikes, the workers are losing.
“This is a really terrific jobs report in lots of subtle ways,” tweeted Neil Irwin, Axios’s chief economic correspondent. He said, “Job growth is soft-landingish” — polite econ-speak for saying growth is decreasing steadily.
“This looks like the right direction of travel re: jobs,” New York Times economic reporter Jeanna Smialek said on Twitter, above a chart depicting a steady decline in jobs. “But it’s probably not *as much* of a slowdown as the Fed wants, yet,” Smialek hedged, adding that “[Federal Reserve] Chair Powell is looking for notable cooling in wages” — the dip in wage growth depicted in the jobs report apparently not steep enough.
Others reacted to the news with even less restrained enthusiasm. “Wage growth … slowed a lot,” tweeted Harvard economics professor Jason Furman, declaring that it represented the “best reason for hope on moderating inflation.”
Even President Joe Biden welcomed the news, saying that “this moderation in job growth is appropriate,” after acknowledging that “average monthly job gains have come down from over 600,000 a month at the end of last year to closer to 200,000 a month.”
Last year, amid the economic recovery following the dips of the pandemic, the central bankers of the U.S. Federal Reserve launched a campaign of some of the steepest interest rate hikes in years in an attempt to tamp down inflation. By making money more expensive to borrow, rate hikes can reduce inflation by slowing down the economy and driving up unemployment.
“While higher interest rates, slower growth, and softer labor market conditions will bring down inflation, they will also bring some pain to households and businesses,” Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said in August. “These are the unfortunate costs of reducing inflation.”
Not all experts agree. Some argue that the medicine of rate hikes and their attendant costs to workers, including higher unemployment and lower wages, can be worse than the inflationary disease. Other dissenting experts say the primary, underlying causes of inflation — a pandemic, supply-chain crisis, corporate concentration, climate crisis straining agriculture — aren’t addressed by tighter monetary policy and that the pandemic-related inflation was always going to be transitory.
At stake in the debate is millions of Americans’ jobs. To tame inflation, former treasury secretary and economist Larry Summers has called for a year of 10 percent unemployment, far above what we have now and which would see millions of people put out of work. The Fed, for now, appears to be heeding that advice, albeit on a smaller scale — a scale that could grow depending on which side of the debate prevails.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., has warned that the Fed’s rate hikes “risks triggering a devastating recession.” Warren’s assessment was echoed by the Fed’s own research, which this summer warned that, in a past example, aggressive interest rate hikes in rapid succession resulted in the depression of 1920. The United Nations has also called on the Fed to stop its rate hikes, warning that it risks a “global recession.” The International Monetary Fund issued a similar warning, as did a World Bank paper.
Rate hikes can be an effective tool against inflation depending on its causes, but it is far from the only one. The inflation currently besetting the U.S. is being driven by forces beyond the control of the Fed, like supply chain problems and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Warren argued. (Economist Thomas Ferguson identifies the same causes as well as another one: extreme weather events resulting from climate change.)
Instead of rate hikes, Warren suggested several other ways to bring down inflation, including fighting corporate price gouging with aggressive antitrust policies, bringing more parents into the workforce by subsidizing child care, strengthening supply chains by ending tax breaks for corporations that offshore jobs, and bringing down drug prices by allowing Medicare to negotiate them.
“As with any illness, the right medicine starts with the right diagnosis,” Warren has said. “Unfortunately, the Fed has seized on aggressive rate hikes — a big dose of the only medicine at its disposal — even though they are largely ineffective against many of the underlying causes of this inflationary spike.”
Warren has asked Powell, the Fed chair, how many job losses the central bank is willing to accept in its war on inflation. The Fed has no clear answer.
In a press release announcing further rate hikes last month, the Fed specified the inflation rate it was aiming for — 2 percent — but, in terms of employment, only vaguely claimed to seek the “maximum.”
In contrast to the 2 percent figure, the president of the New York Fed recently said unemployment could reach 5 percent this year — representing millions of people losing their jobs. Despite the Fed’s famous mandate to pursue both the highest employment and lowest inflation possible, the priority seems obvious.
Inflation has been steadily falling since July, buoying hopes that the “pain to households” that Powell warned about might subside. For now, though, it appears the Fed’s aggressive war on inflation is just beginning, despite growing warnings that it could trigger a recession.
An alarming but little-noticed report released by the St. Louis Fed on December 28 found that slightly over half of U.S. states are experiencing “recession-like conditions” that serve as a key indicator for a coming national recession.
“Huge downward revision to November wage growth,” Dean Baker, an economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, said of the new jobs report. An earlier report had suggested wages were rising again, but the finding was corrected in the latest report once better data became available. Dean called on the Federal Reserve to “hold the rate hikes please.”
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Then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) walks through a metal detector outside the House chamber at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C. (photo: Erin Scott/Reuters)
Fresh concerns raised over stripping away of measures put in place by Democrats after January 6 insurrection
House Republicans, who secured a narrow majority in the 2022 midterm elections, removed the metal detectors outside the House chamber ready for the first day of business of the 118th Congress on Tuesday 3 January.
The Democrats had installed the facilities after a mob of extremist supporters of Donald Trump had stormed the Capitol in 2021 in an ultimately unsuccessful attempt to prevent lawmakers from certifying Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential election.
The magnetometers’ removal came not just at a symbolically significant time heading up to the two-year anniversary on Friday of the Capitol attack, but also as federal lawmakers face increased risk.
US Capitol police reported 9,625 threats and directions of interest, which means actions or statements that cause concern, against members of Congress in 2021, compared with 3,939 in 2017. Metal detectors remain at the entrance of Congress for visitors and members of the public.
The Nevada Democratic representative Steven Horsford, incoming chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, criticized the removal of the metal detectors outside the House chamber, citing increased threats against lawmakers.
“Over the last two years since 2020, members of Congress, particularly members of color, have been under direct attack in our districts, in DC, in the communities – and House Democrats worked to enhance those protections, not just for ourselves, but by passing legislation for our constituents,” Horsford said, speaking to the Guardian on his way to a meeting at the Capitol two days ago.
“And now, the Republicans want to roll those protections back just like they want to roll back protections for women, protections for immigrants, protections for labor.
“They’re not here to serve the people – they’re here to serve their special interest and that’s why we have to do everything we can to make sure their term in the [House] majority is very short,” he added.
Jamie Raskin, Maryland Democratic congressman and member of the recently disbanded House select committee investigating the Capitol attack and Trump’s role in it, voiced similar security concerns.
“The January 6 select committee said that the forces that Trump arrayed against us are still out there,” Raskin said. “We need to be taking every precaution to make sure that January 6 [2021] doesn’t become a dress rehearsal for the next event.”
The Democratic former House speaker Nancy Pelosi had security officials erect the metal detectors to check members of Congress for weapons. These devices quickly became a flashpoint in the bitterly politicized discourse surrounding January 6, which was further intensified by deep partisan division over gun access in the US.
Many Republican members of Congress were unwilling to criticize the rioters that broke into and damaged the Capitol, shaking American democracy two years ago. The mob rampaged through the corridors, chasing and attacking police officers, while also threatening violence against lawmakers of both political parties, who had to flee for their lives. Republicans and the House January 6 committee, meanwhile, both released reports that present dueling narratives.
The bipartisan House committee directly blamed Trump for fanning the flames of insurrection. The Republican report, however, focused on security failures and did not explore rioters’ efforts to thwart Biden’s certification, CNN reported.
Later on Friday, Biden spoke at the White House to mark the anniversary of the insurrection by warning against the continued threat of extremism while awarding medals for police officers who defended the Capitol on January 6, in person and posthumously, and for besieged election officials who defended democracy in the 2020 election.
Following the Capitol attack, some lawmakers were leery of their own colleagues and thought that it was necessary to screen other representatives for firearms or other weapons.
At first, several House Republicans refused to go through the magnetometers, entering the chamber without undergoing weapons screening, and were subsequently fined.
Several Republicans heralded the detectors’ removal this week, including Lauren Boebert, a Republican Colorado representative and gun rights activist. Boebert, who got into a seeming dispute with an officer following the detectors’ installation – would not say whether she would bring a gun on to the Housefloor.
“I think they should be removed from the Capitol, filled with Tannerite and blown up,” Boebert told the New York Post shortly before the metal detectors were taken away, referring to an explosive material that’s used on firearms range targets.
“They should not feel unsafe,” Boebert said of Democrats voicing safety concerns. “If they do, they should come see me for a concealed-carry weapons permit and I can make sure they are locked and loaded in Washington DC legally.”
The Democratic representative Ted Lieu was disconcerted by the prospect of armed representatives on the House floor.
“I’m awfully concerned that Lauren Boebert wouldn’t answer on whether she would bring a gun to the House floor,” Lieu told the Guardian. “We have security here on the House floor, so there’s no reason for any member to bring a gun on to the House floor.”
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Demonstrators scuffle with riot police, during a protest following the death of Mahsa Amini. (photo: Reuters)
Two men hanged after being convicted of killing member of the paramilitary Basij force during continuing protests sparked by the death in custody of Hadis Najafi last year.
Mohammad Mehdi Karami and Mohammad Hosseini were executed in the early hours of Saturday, days after the country’s Supreme Court confirmed their sentences for “corruption on Earth”, according to the official news outlet of the judiciary.
Karami and Hosseini were accused of killing Ruhollah Ajamian on November 3 when large protests took place in the city of Karaj near Tehran.
Videos circulating on social media on the day showed a main highway closed off by crowds and Ajamian, wearing a Basij uniform, lying motionless on the ground.
According to the judiciary, 16 people were arrested in connection with his death, while Karami and Hosseini were the main suspects.
The judiciary showed clips from their court sessions, where Karami said he struck Ajamian with a rock and Hosseini told a judge he stabbed him with a knife several times.
The judiciary outlet also released clips that it said showed the two men during the act, and showed an image of Hosseini who was sitting with his hands tied behind his back and had several types of knives in front of him that he allegedly owned.
Saturday’s hangings bring the total executions over the protests to four. The latest executions come amid allegations that the confessions were forced.
In an audio clip circulating online, a man, said to be the 22-year-old Karami’s father, said his son was innocent. The judiciary rejected the claims and released clips of interviews with supposed witnesses to Ajamian’s killing.
The judiciary has said the main suspects in the case were arrested just over a week after the incident and indictments were issued after nine days. Court cases were held less than a month later.
The Supreme Court has accepted appeals by three others in this case, citing incomplete investigations. But it upheld the execution sentences of several others in different cases, and Amnesty International has warned that dozens could be at risk of execution.
Two men, Mohsen Shekari, 23, and Majidreza Rahnavard, 23, were executed in cases linked with the protests in December, with the latter being hanged publicly from a construction crane in Mashhad. They were convicted for moharebeh or “waging war against God”.
Iran’s protests began in mid-September after the death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old who was arrested by morality police in Tehran for allegedly not adhering to a mandatory dress code for women.
Foreign-based human rights organisations say more than 500 people have since been killed during the unrest.
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Kevin McCarthy. (photo: ABC News)
He owes his entire speakership to Matt Gaetz and five other far-right Republicans who effectively handed him the gavel on a technicality.
Worst of all for McCarthy: he owes his entire speakership to Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz and five other far-right Republicans who effectively handed him the gavel on a technicality. And the cost of winning that seat could be much of the power that previously gave the Speaker’s role its outsized influence on Congress.
Earlier on Friday, the House Republican leader had cut a deal with more than a dozen House rebels, one which would entrench the power of the far-right House Freedom Caucus. McCarthy announced that he had reached a deal with Rep.-elect Chip Roy of Texas, a leader of the Republicans who’d withheld support, on a call with Republican caucus members on Friday morning.
After winning the support of 214 Republicans in the first round of voting Friday and 12th overall, Rep.-elect Andy Harris of Maryland flipped to McCarthy in the 13th round—still leaving McCarthy four votes short of a majority. Two pro-McCarthy Republicans, Wesley Hunt of Texas and Ken Buck of Colorado, missed votes due to family and medical issues, but returned to D.C. Friday night to help elect McCarthy.
But even after the House gaveled back in late Friday night, McCarthy’s path to the speakership was punctuated by one of the wildest scenes on the House floor in American history.
On the 14th ballot, four anti-McCarthy votes stuck together while Gaetz and Boebert voted present, continuing to deny an exasperated McCarthy the speakership. Gaetz engaged in heated conversation with McCarthy and his allies; after McCarthy walked away Rep. Mike Rogers of Alabama lunged at Gaetz.
Republicans then moved to adjourn until Monday, but amid the chaos, Gaetz and McCarthy struck a deal. And on the 15th and final ballot, all six of the remaining holdouts voted present, giving McCarthy 216 votes and a slim majority of the 428 ballots counting toward the total.
As House Clerk Cheryl Johnson read McCarthy’s name in the tally following the 15th ballot, the new Speaker yelled: “Finally!”
McCarthy had said after the House adjourned Friday afternoon that he was confident he’d finally win the election.
“We'll come back tonight and I believe at that time, we'll have the votes to finish this once and for all,” McCarthy told reporters. “This is the great part: because it took this long, now we learned how to govern.”
The original deal McCarthy struck with the holdouts reportedly lowers the threshold to force a vote on “vacating the chair” — effectively a no-confidence vote in the Speaker of the House — to just one member, according to NBC News. This means it will be much easier to kick McCarthy out of the job he just won.
The deal also reportedly gives House Freedom Caucus members key slots on the House Rules Committee as well as other committees, according to NBC News, and caps discretionary spending for 2024 at 2022 levels, putting programs such as Social Security and Medicare on the chopping block. It also means a possible government shutdown over the summer, when the U.S. hits the debt ceiling.
Previously reported details of negotiations include that the political action committees tied to McCarthy will stay out of open House primaries in safe Republican districts—which could clear the way for even more right-wing members to be elected to the House.
McCarthy denied Friday that all of the concessions that he has made so far will weaken his position as speaker. “Has it undercut the power of all of the other Speakers?” McCarthy told reporters. “I would only be a weaker speaker if I was afraid of [losing].”
It is so far unclear what Gaetz and the final holdouts secured in exchange for the present votes.
McCarthy is the first incoming Speaker in a hundred years to win the position on multiple ballots, and there were more rounds of voting this time around than at any point since before the Civil War. And the maneuver to “vacate the chair” has already claimed the job of one recent Republican Speaker: John Boehner, under whom McCarthy served under as House Majority Leader at the time. (Boehner resigned in 2015, after future White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows filed the motion against him.)
The inability of Republicans to elect a Speaker of the House also hamstrung the work of the House of Representatives for several days. Effectively, there was no House of Representatives—though members were supposed to be sworn-in on Tuesday, that process happens after a Speaker has been elected.
Rep.-elect Greg Casar, a Texas progressive who’s entering his first term in Congress, told VICE News Friday that his office had already begun handling constituent phone calls even though he hasn’t yet been sworn in. But the lack of a Speaker, a rules package, or any actual member of the House has complicated things for would-be House members and their staff.
“Some people have had trouble with email access or getting different parts of the federal government to be responsive. Folks are worried about whether they have to make purchases to set up their offices,” Rep.-elect Greg Casar, a Texas progressive who’s entering his first term in Congress, told VICE News. “I’m worried there might be federal employees who might not get paid, if this drags on.”
Rep. Don Bacon, a Nebraska Republican and McCarthy supporter, said a federal agency told his staff the same thing, and that he and another House Republican were barred from a classified intelligence briefing for the same reason.
“A handful of Members are holding us hostage from doing our jobs and are putting our national security at risk!” Bacon tweeted.
Sarah Selip, the communications director for incoming GOP Rep-elect. Brandon Williams of New York told VICE News that she was unable to even unlock her computer.
Williams’ office drafted a letter this week through the House’s electronic “Dear Colleague” system, which is web-based rather than email. The letter asked other offices to sign onto a plea to House clerk Cheryl Johnson for access to “email and other technology,” saying the lack thereof was “preventing our staff members from carrying out the important work we were elected to do on behalf of our constituents.”
“Our caseworkers are unable to assist our constituents with pressing issues before government agencies, and our legislative staffers are unable to communicate with the many stakeholders we were elected to represent,” the letter said. “It is important our staff are able to begin working so that we are ready to carry out the people’s business once a Speaker is elected.”
The letter was never officially sent or gathered signatures. But Selip said that House technology staff caught wind of it and gave access to Williams’ staffers Thursday, though some emails haven’t been transferred. “There is still so much progress to be made, but we’re in a much better place than if we did not circulate that letter,” Selip said in a text message Friday.
For Casar, the problems McCarthy had to win his first vote shows who actually stands to hold the power in the House for the next two years, and what they’ll attempt to do with it.
“It's troubling not just because we can't do the people's business and pass laws in response to crises,” Casar told VICE News. “It's troubling because it foretells that the extreme right-wing of Congress is willing to break the institution to gret what it wants, and will do anything it takes to cut Social Security and cut Medicare and take apart basic components in the federal government that we've worked for so many generations to build.”
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A destroyed Russian tank stands across the road of a church in the town of Sviatohirsk, Ukraine. (photo: Evgeniy Maloletka/AP)
Exchanges of artillery fire were reported along the front lines in Ukraine’s Bakhmut, Kreminna and other locations in Donetsk and Luhansk regions.
Exchanges of artillery fire were reported along the front lines of Ukraine’s city of Bakhmut, the town of Kreminna, and other locations in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions on Friday after the start of Moscow’s order for its forces to maintain a unilateral truce from midday in observance of the Russian holiday.
Russian rockets also rained down on residential areas in the cities of Kherson and Kramatorsk before the truce was scheduled to begin at noon Moscow time (09:00 GMT).
“What ceasefire? Can you hear?” a Ukrainian soldier told the Reuters news agency as an explosion rang out in the distance at the front in Kreminna.
“What do they want to achieve if they keep on shooting? We know, we have learned not to trust them,” the soldier said.
Ukrainian forces in Kreminna fired back from tanks.
Reporters with Agence France-Presse heard both outgoing and incoming shelling at the front line city of Bakhmut after the time the Russian ceasefire was supposed to have begun.
Russia’s defence ministry said its troops began observing the ceasefire from noon Moscow time “along the entire line of contact”, but said Ukraine had kept up shelling populated areas and military positions.
Pavlo Diachenko, a police officer in Bakhmut, said he doubted the ceasefire would mean much to the city’s civilians even if it had been respected by Russian soldiers.
“What can a church holiday mean for them?
They are shelling every day and night and almost every day there are people killed,” he said.
A witness in the Russian-occupied regional capital Donetsk also described outgoing artillery fired from pro-Russian positions on the city’s outskirts after the truce was scheduled to take effect.
The Ukrainian governor of the front-line eastern Luhansk province, Serhiy Haidai, said that in the first three hours of the purported ceasefire, Russians had shelled Ukrainian positions 14 times and stormed one settlement three times.
One rescue worker was killed and four others injured when Russian forces shelled a fire department in the southern Ukrainian city of Kherson before the deadline earlier on Friday, the regional governor said.
Shortly before the ceasefire was meant to start, rockets slammed into a residential building in the city of Kramatorsk, close to the eastern front line, damaging 14 homes, though with no casualties as many people have fled.
“It’s bad, very bad,” said Oleksnadr, 36, outside a supermarket at the time of the attack.
“This happens often, not only on festive occasions. Every other day.”
The Kremlin announced the 36-hour ceasefire on Thursday, though Kyiv had said it would not comply with the unilateral action, which Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy described as a ploy by Putin to slow Ukraine’s advances and create an opportunity for Russia to replenish its forces.
The Russian Orthodox Church, whose patriarch is a supporter of Moscow’s war in Ukraine, observes Christmas on January 7. The main Orthodox Church in Ukraine has rejected the authority of Moscow and many Ukrainian believers have shifted their calendar to celebrate Christmas on December 25, as in the West.
Meanwhile, the Russian-installed governor of the Crimean city of Sevastopol said on Saturday that air defences had shot down a drone in what he suggested was the latest attempted Ukrainian attack on a port where Russia’s Black Sea Fleet is based.
Mikhail Razvozhaev, the Russian-backed governor of the city, made the allegation on the Telegram messaging service, alleging that the incident had occurred in the early hours of Saturday.
Ceasefire not ‘credible’
The United States State Department said the continued Russian strikes on Friday proved the ceasefire was a “cynical” ploy, while the French foreign ministry described it as a “crude” attempt by Moscow to divert attention from its culpability for the war.
The European Union’s most senior diplomat said on Friday the ceasefire was “not credible”.
“The Kremlin totally lacks credibility and this declaration of a unilateral ceasefire is not credible,” EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said during a visit to Morocco.
There was widespread scepticism at the announced ceasefire across Ukraine.
“You can never trust them, never… Whatever they promise, they don’t deliver,” said Olena Fedorenko, a 46-year-old from the war-torn port city of Mykolaiv in the south of the country.
Putin on Saturday attended an Orthodox Church Christmas service by himself inside a Kremlin cathedral, rather than joining other worshippers in a public celebration.
Russia’s RIA news agency said it was the first time in years that Putin had marked Christmas in Moscow rather than in the region around the capital.
State television showed two live clips of Putin inside the gilded Cathedral of the Annunciation as Orthodox priests conducted the midnight service, known as the Divine Liturgy.
Putin, wearing a blue jacket and a high-necked white sweater, was the sole worshipper and crossed himself several times in the video clip.
A painting by Sabri al-Qurashi while detained in Guantánamo prison shows a detainee lying on a pair of flip-flop sandals and covering his eyes with his arms behind a chain-link cage, in 2014. (image: Sabri al-Qurashi)
Sabri al-Qurashi Has Lived Without Legal Status in Kazakhstan Since His 2014 Guantánamo Release
Al-Qurashi lived the nightmare of languishing in a cage as a detainee at the notorious U.S. military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. He never expected he’d be living in another version of a cage after he was released in 2014. For nearly a decade, he has found himself stuck in Kazakhstan. Promises once made to him of starting a life and starting a family after Guantánamo have now been all but shattered. His life now feels like one of permanent purgatory as he holds no form of basic identification at the mercy of the Kazakh government. With no hope or patience left, al-Qurashi is now threatening a hunger strike.
“Truly, my life now is just as bad as when I was in Guantanamo, and in many aspects even worse. At least there, I knew I was in prison and that I would get out one day,” al-Qurashi wrote in an account shared with The Intercept, which is set to be published by CAGE, a group that advocates for “war on terror” victims and detainees. “Now I’m living as if I’m dead and being told I am free when I am not.”
When al-Qurashi met with representatives from Kazakhstan’s government while still at Guantánamo, he was optimistic about being sent to a new strange home. He agreed to a secretive resettlement deal negotiated by the U.S. State Department.
Unable to return to Yemen because of the country’s instability, al-Qurashi said he was offered a good life elsewhere. His understanding, and that of his legal team, was that, after living under some restrictions for two years, he would be a free man, with all the same rights as Kazakh citizens. It is a Muslim country, he was told, and he would be treated as a member of society. Instead, he said now he finds himself without the most basic needs.
“I have no official status, no ID card, no right to work or education, and no right to see my family,” al-Qurashi said. “I have been married for eight years, but my wife is not allowed to come and live with me.”
Al-Qurashi lives under conditions that are in stark contrast to the stability that the State Department had tried to guarantee in his deal. “The United States’ goal in resettling former Guantánamo detainees was to create conditions for these men to integrate into their new societies and give them the opportunity to start a new life in a manner that protected the security of the United States,” a former State Department official familiar with the Obama administration’s efforts to transfer Guantánamo detainees told The Intercept. “Among other things, successful resettlements entailed housing, access to medical care, educational opportunities, the ability to work, and the opportunity to start or reunify with their families.”
In an interview with The Intercept, al-Qurashi said that he has been repeatedly told over the years that his wife and other family are not allowed to visit, much less join him, from Yemen because he is “illegal.” He said he was told, “You have no rights.” According to a message viewed by The Intercept, the Red Crescent Society is currently negotiating with Kazakh officials for al-Qurashi’s wife to finally be allowed a brief first visit. “We are waiting for a reply. I will keep you informed,” an International Committee of the Red Cross representative working on al-Qurashi’s behalf texted him in late October. Al-Qurashi hasn’t heard anything since.
A spokesperson for the State Department said that once security agreements around resettlement expired, responsibility for treatment of the former detainees fell to the host governments. “Repatriation or resettlement of former detainees is a carefully negotiated process between the United States and receiving countries based on mutually reached security and humane treatment assurances. While security assurances are time-limited, assurances related to humane treatment do not expire,” said Bureau of Counterterrorism spokesperson Vincent Picard in a statement. “While host governments are encouraged to consult with us, the U.S. government does not exercise any sort of custody over the treatment of resettled individuals. We encourage all host governments to exercise their responsibilities humanely and with consideration of appropriate security measures.” (The Kazakh Embassy to the U.S. did not respond to a request for comment.)
For al-Qurashi to have gone so long without even documentation of his identity, in defiance of the diplomatic efforts of the State Department, is something his legal advocates never imagined.
“Ultimately, he never received proper identification to be a documented individual in the country, and that poses problems in any country,” Greg McConnell, al-Qurashi’s pro bono counsel, said. “That’s something that was never appropriately fulfilled in the way that we understood it would be by the Kazakh government.”
Following the broken promises, al-Qurashi now feels that no one cares about him. With the ICRC financing his apartment, food, and even a place to paint, al-Qurashi worries that Kazakh officials may ask, “What more could you possibly want?” For al-Qurashi, though, the new life he signed up for was one where his wife could join him, and they could build a home together. His existence now, he said, is sustained by aid, but it isn’t really life at all.
“Of course, I try not to give up,” he said, “but everything is against me.”
Road to Guantánamo
Al-Qurashi maintains a calm confidence. His infectious smile is matched by a warm hospitality that can be felt through our WhatsApp video calls. His big hands wave around and often stop suddenly, palms up toward the ceiling when he emphasizes his most exasperating moments. When he’s not caught up in despair, his humor shines through.
On a call one afternoon in late fall, he asked me where I was sitting. “It’s a little backyard, like a garden,” I said, panning the laptop around my ground-floor, concrete yard in Brooklyn.
“Oh, I’ve got a garden too,” he said. “Let me show you.” He walked through a stark apartment and plunges the camera into the saddest-looking attempt at an indoor herb garden I’ve ever seen. Small green seedlings of basil and mint fight for life in a halved plastic water jug. A big laugh follows, his face transformed by a joyful moment of self-deprecation. A few weeks later, all the plants were dead.
For years, al-Qurashi has tried to keep himself sane by painting; his illustrations are sophisticated and conceptual, and his talent, discovered at Guantánamo, is immense. The power of escape afforded by making art, however, has diminished lately. “Even drawing, which is the best thing in my life, and I love it — I’m no longer enthusiastic about it,” he told me.
Al-Qurashi opened up about his youth in a series of interviews. Born in Saudi Arabia to Yemeni parents, he spent all his youth in Hafar al-Batin, doing odd jobs for vendors at the market so he could run home with 10 or 20 riyals in his pocket after school. With dreams of becoming a “rich man,” he began selling perfume oils in the Saudi markets in his mid-20s. Eventually, he took a trip to the wholesale factories in Pakistan, his first such solo visit. That’s when the 9/11 attacks happened. In a desperate attempt to leave the country while security forces were rounding up foreigners, al-Qurashi was grabbed in a raid of the apartment he was staying in.
At the time, the U.S. government was doling out up to $5,000 to Afghan warlords and to the government of Pakistan for capturing suspected members of Al Qaeda or the Taliban and turning them over. According to the Center for Constitutional Rights, 86 percent of the men jailed at Guantánamo were sold for a bounty. Al-Qurashi had no idea he was about to join hundreds of men handed over to American intelligence by Pakistani officials.
At the American makeshift prison in Kandahar, Afghanistan, al-Qurashi said he was stripped naked, shaved, intimidated with dogs and deprived of water, warmth, and basic dignity. The worst day of his life, he said, was the flight to Cuba. He waited for his captors to realize their mistake, but the day never came. Through brutal interrogations, hunger strikes, and solitary confinement, he maintained his innocence.
Al-Qurashi said he feels no bitterness about what happened to him, even expressing gratitude for the friends he’s made along the way. I asked if he forgave the people who tortured him. “Of course,” he responded without hesitation. “It is in my nature that I forgive even those who have wronged me.”
Another Prison
By the end of 2014, three Yemenis, including al-Qurashi, and two Tunisian men arrived in Kazakhstan from Guantánamo Bay — the first and last group to be sent to the former Soviet country. The destination may seem odd, but Kazakhstan is majority Muslim and could address the U.S.’s security concerns about a handoff. Harsh treatment, intensive surveillance, and harassment started immediately, as documented in a Vice investigation shortly after the men arrived.
Al-Qurashi and Lotfi bin Ali, a 6-foot-8 Tunisian, were first placed along the Russian border in Semey, a small city in the shadow of the Semipalatinsk nuclear weapon testing site. The men expected to be welcomed in a Muslim country, but instead they found outward hostility.
Al-Qurashi struggled to learn Kazakh from a non-Arabic-speaking teacher, in a city that mostly spoke Russian. Lotfi, at the time, couldn’t find a winter coat that fit his huge frame.
Bin Ali frequently spoke to reporters about his conditions in Kazakhstan and, perhaps because of the embarrassing media reports, was resettled again in Mauritania, along with fellow Tunisian, Adel Hakimi. Never having returned home to Tunisia, bin Ali died on March 9, 2021, after struggling to find adequate medical treatment for heart disease.
“The State Department didn’t even pretend to give a shit,” said Mark Denbeaux, bin Ali’s former lawyer. “All they wanted to do was get people out of Guantánamo. They dumped them in Kazakhstan and didn’t care what happened.”
Another former Guantánamo detainee shipped to Kazakstan — Asim Thabit Al Khalaqi, a Yemeni without documented health problems — died four months after the transfer from a sudden severe illness. Friends and family allege medical malpractice and say his body was never returned to Yemen or properly buried.
Al Qurashi, too, now struggles to find adequate medical care for an injury he sustained three years ago, when a man violently assaulted him on the street. Struck in the face and left with nerve damage, he was told after the attack that he could not report the incident or have any sort of day in court. The police said al-Qurashi, because of his lack of status in the country, did not have standing to bring charges. His treatment for the partial facial paralysis is ongoing — he’s been given acupuncture and a jar of blood-sucking leeches — but he needs a complicated surgery that he is afraid to have performed because of how he’s been treated so far.
In addition to leaving his body in peril, the Kazakhs authorities’ approach to al-Qurashi has left him virtually unable to make meaningful social contact with those around him, he said.
“I have no basic dignity or freedom to move even in the streets around my apartment,” al-Qurashi explained in the CAGE account. “The government harasses anyone I get in contact with which makes it impossible to socialize. The government deters people from associating with me by telling us that we are terrorists and dangerous. Because of not wanting to put anybody in harm, I have stopped attempting to integrate with locals.”
Because of his lack of identification, al-Qurashi is unable to do basic things like send and receiving money, packages, or mail. He is unable to work. When he wants to leave his apartment, for instance to go fishing nearby, he must call the Red Crescent office and ask for his assigned chaperone to accompany him. Sometimes the wait is days long. He cannot leave his neighborhood, let alone drive or travel outside Kyzylorda, his open-air prison. “I exist in life, but I do not live it,” al-Qurashi told me.
The experience echoes those of other former prisoners speaking out against the relentless stigma of life after Guantánamo. “When they leave Guantánamo, it’s not as if they’re exonerated, it’s not as if the United States says that they’re innocent or that they were wrongfully detained,” said Maha Hilal, author of “Innocent Until Proven Muslim” and a scholar of the effect of the so-called war on terror on Muslims. “And so, obviously, they leave Guantánamo with the stigma of ‘terrorist’ on their back.”
Al-Qurashi said, “I have been treated like a terrorist since the day I stepped off the plane here.”
Of the five detainees sent to Kazakhstan, only al-Qurashi and Muhammad Ali Husayn Khanayna, who declined to comment, remain today in Kyzylorda.
Whose Responsibility?
When the Obama administration ended, so, too, did the diplomatic effort of the State Department working with men cleared for release from Guantánamo. The Trump administration disbanded the office responsible for the resettlements, then called the Special Envoy for the Closure of the Guantánamo Bay Detention Facilities. Former Guantánamo prisoners were left with no support to hold their host countries to account for mistreatment. The men cleared for release from Guantánamo remained in prison as President Donald Trump canceled all outbound transfers.
Once the two-year deal between a host country and the State Department expired, there was no longer a means for maintaining that the hosting countries would treat the resettled detainees with basic human rights, said Martina Burtscher, a fellow at the human rights group Reprieve who works on Guantánamo issues. (“Once security assurances have expired, and pending any specific renegotiation of assurances, it largely falls to the discretion of the host country to determine what security measures they continue to implement,” said Picard, the State Department spokesperson.)
The complete collapse in communication and lack of diplomatic pressure allowed host countries like Kazakhstan, the United Arab Emirates, and Senegal to do whatever they wanted with the resettled detainees — including imprisoning them and, in the case of Senegal, forced repatriation to Libya.
“This is not the solution the U.S. wanted, but [it happened] because of lack of care and lack of resources,” Burtscher said. “I understand that they need to empty Guantánamo. But they also have a responsibility to follow up.”
“They implanted these men in countries where they have no family, no friends, no connections, don’t speak the language, have nothing,” she continued. “The very least they can do is make sure that they have a solid legal status.”
After Joe Biden assumed the Oval Office in 2021, the State Department created a desk with a mandate similar to the old special envoy, now the office of the Senior Representative for Guantánamo Affairs. Tina Kaidanow was appointed in August.
For resettled men like al-Qurashi, the appointment makes them no less desperate for their host country’s mistreatment to radically change. Through his lawyer, Greg McConnell, al-Qurashi sent a message to Kaidanow asking for help in his case. “Please, I’m asking you to review my case,” al-Qurashi wrote. “If I stay in Kazakhstan, I must be given the right to live and work as a free man, have legal status, be able to travel, and be allowed for family visits. If this is not possible in Kazakhstan, please, help [me] be relocated to another country where I can live as a free man.”
As al-Qurashi’s advocates continue to request legal status for him in the country, al-Qurashi said the only offer on the table from Kazakh officials is a trip back to Yemen — an offer that may violate the international law of nonrefoulement, Burtscher said. He has so far refused, the stigma of being branded an Al Qaeda terrorist by the U.S. potentially making him a target for various factions in the Yemeni civil war.
The State Department’s new office could conceivably intervene — should they make it a priority over transfers of detainees out of Guantánamo — and negotiate for al-Qurashi to be transferred to a more hospitable country.
Al-Qurashi, however, said he would stay in Kazakhstan if the authorities give him legal residence and allow his wife to live with him. “If I were given my freedom and rights, I could achieve so much more here,” he told me.
So far, the new State Department office has seemed slow to act. “Having the ambassador named is helpful and that certainly shows some level of commitment from the Biden administration,” McConnell said. “I have yet to really hear anything meaningful from them about what’s happening to remedy this situation. They’re very polite, very appreciative, and absorb a lot of information — and I get nothing back — and that hasn’t changed in a long time.”
Mansoor Adayfi, another Yemeni that was formerly held in Guantánamo, said nothing will happen without meaningful U.S. moves. “His case needs the U.S. government to get involved again to fix the problem. And either they need to talk to Kazakhstan to guarantee legal status, so he can see his wife, be able to get permission to work and live legally, like anyone else,” Adayfi said. “Or they should send him to a better country so he can build his life.”
McConnell said, “This was something of their making. It’s failed. And they need to help rectify it.”
READ MORE 
Deforestation near Humaita, in Amazonas state, Brazil. (photo: Bruno Kelly/Reuters)
Satellite monitoring detected 218.4 square km of forest cover destroyed in Brazil’s share of the world’s biggest rainforest last month.
Satellite monitoring detected 218.4 square kilometres (84.3 square miles) of forest cover destroyed in Brazil’s share of the world’s biggest rainforest last month, according to the national space agency’s DETER surveillance programme.
The area was up more than 150 percent from the 87.2 square kilometres (33.7 square miles) destroyed in December 2021, according to the agency, INPE.
Bolsonaro, who was replaced on January 1 by President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, triggered an international outcry during his four years in office for a surge of fires and clear-cutting in the Amazon, a key resource in the race to curb climate change.
Under Bolsonaro, an agribusiness ally, average annual deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon rose by 75.5 percent from the previous decade.
“Bolsonaro’s government may be over, but his tragic environmental legacy will still be felt for a long time,” Marcio Astrini, executive secretary of the Climate Observatory, a coalition of environmental groups, said in a statement.
It was the third-worst December on record for the eight-year-old DETER programme, after 2017 and 2015.
Deforestation in 2022 was also at or near record highs during the crucial dry season months of August, September and October, when clear-cutting and fires often surge because of drier weather.
Experts say the destruction is mainly driven by farms and land grabbers clearing the forest for cattle and crops. Lula, who presided over a sharp drop in deforestation when he previously led Brazil from 2003 to 2010, has promised to reboot Brazil’s environmental protection programmes, fight for zero deforestation and ensure the South American giant stops being a “pariah” on climate issues.
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