Taxi to the Dark Side

2007
Directed by: Alex Gibney

Create this Picture in your mind: You are driving your car to a large city along some rural road to pick up some people in the next town. All of a sudden you are stopped along a road because there was a tip that terrorists might be on the move after setting off a bomb. The police do a routine checkup and find a strange wire in your trunk which could have been used to trigger a bomb. You are quickly taken away to a jail where you aren’t told why you are arrested or given a lawyer. You are interrogated but pronounce you know nothing of what you have been accused of. New clothes are given to you and your arms are shackled to an iron mesh above your prison cell. You aren’t allowed to rest more than a few hours and even then you can’t sleep because if you doze off the handcuffs dig into your wrists and burn with pain. Later guards kick at your legs until they are pulverized. In a few days you are dead from your internal injuries.
This is a nightmare to most people - but this actually happened to one young taxi driver named Dilawar in Afghanistan. It was the first day of his job as a taxi driver and he was just driving some people he picked up in another town. He was later proven to be innocent as were the people he drove. This was unfortunately after he was beaten to death.
The film, though is not just about this one man but the many others who were incarcerated with little more against them than being at the wrong place at the wrong time. Of all those sent to bases to be interrogated , less than 5 percent were actually guilty of anything.
Taxi to the Dark Side details the mistreatment of prisoners under U.S. forces from Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan to the Abu Graib prison and Guatanamo Bay in Cuba. There is no embellishment in this film. It does not try to sway the viewer to any particular opinion. But it doesn’t need to either since the truth is right there for us to see in the degrading photos we see and from what we hear from actual prison guards at these locations.
The guards were told to think of the men there as less than human & they did a pretty good job of it - almost too good as many died from the inhumane treatment that is in total disregard to the Geneva Convention.
Taxi to the Dark Side really made me consider our foreign policy in harsher light. I had heard of the prisoner abuse scandals before and had seen pictures but to be reminded that it was our troops & most of all our leaders who had done this was especially hurtful. There was an interesting point brought up and one I’ld like to mention here. We Americans pride ourselves in belonging to a free country with inalienable rights for all mankind, where everyone under American protection can count on fairness and justice, do we not? If so, then how can we treat other human beings in such an inhumane way? It sends the opinion that if you are foreign you can be treated as: A) subhuman, B) a terrorist, C) unjustly, D) all of the above. I do wonder how many innocent prisoners became terrorists later after they were let out - only time will tell.
4 stars