GUANTANAMO BAY: Nothing quite embodies America’s transformation since Sept 11 as the orderly array of metal roofs on the cell blocks at Camp Delta gleaming in the Caribbean sun.

A hundred yards from the sea, they look like roofs of some tropical factory with their barrel-shaped fans as neatly spaced as chimneys. But in reality they cover something that would have been hard to think of only a year ago — a US-run gulag for foreign captives held indefinitely without being charged or even formally identified.

Camp Delta, a camp within a camp at the US military base in Guantanamo Bay, is a measure of how much America has changed. Yet because it is perched on a remote corner of Cuba, out of bounds to all but a few thousand troops and specially vetted service workers, the mutation has gone mostly unseen. Inside, there are 598 detainees from the “war on terror” from 38 countries, swept up in the clash of civilisations that erupted last October when the US and its allies took on the Taliban. Critics, who include Amnesty International and the UN, say the detainees’ status can only be determined by an independent tribunal, not by the Pentagon. They add that PoWs are supposed to be released when hostilities end. In the war on terror, that may never happen.

Camp Delta is smarter and better built than its improvised predecessor, Camp X-Ray, which was made-up of cages in a heat-trap valley, with no ventilation. The new complex, which has cost more than US dollars 30 million for just over 600 cells, benefits from sea breezes and fans. Conditions have improved since images of hooded, shackled prisoners in metal cages triggered international concern. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) is allowed daily access to the camp and the prisoners, and has declared itself satisfied with the co-operation of the military authorities.

In recent months, camp guards report, there have been 30 incidents of inmates trying to harm themselves, and four of those have been classified as suicide attempts. Interrogation sessions take place in a cell block inside the compound, and are carried out by Joint Task Force 170, a collection of CIA, FBI and military intelligence officers assembled to pump the inmates for information.

No one at the camp would comment on what was being gleaned from the questioning, but leaks in Washington have suggested there are no inmates of any importance from the Al Qaeda hierarchy here, and that little usable intelligence is emerging.—Dawn/The Guardian News Service.