Taliban's detention

The premature and hypocritical concern voiced by otherwise reputable international organizations such as the International Committee of the Red Cross, Human Rights Watch or Amnesty International over detention conditions of Taliban and al-Qaeda prisoners at the U.S. Guantanamo Bay Naval Station in Cuba is not just utterly misplaced, but outright ridiculous.

If given the choice, millions of destitute, hungry and freezing Afghan refugees would gladly change places with Taliban prisoners in their roofed, albeit open-air, wire cage accommodations with three square meals a day, medical attention, sanitary facilities, not to mention a free copy of the Koran thrown in for good measure.

By any standards of comparison, detention conditions in Guantanamo Bay are incomparably better than those they have had to endure in Afghanistan over the last months of fighting and exaggerated concerns for their being "exposed to elements" naively ignores the fact that Cuba's climatic conditions cannot, by any stretch of the imagination, be compared to the harsh sub- zero winter conditions in Afghanistan.

Last, but not least, the U.S. military are not so naive as to bluntly ignore the Geneva Convention on the treatment of prisoners of war and thereby gratuitously sacrifice much of the goodwill earned in its fight against terrorism. As a result of their exaggerated and misguided concern over the Taliban's detention conditions, international aid and human rights organizations have sadly undermined their own credibility and goodwill, whereas they would have been better advised to concentrate their efforts and concerns on the suffering of the millions of hungry and destitute Afghans left behind!

JOSEPH L. SPARTZ

Jakarta