Inside Hamas’ ‘Shadow Unit’: The Force Behind Hostage Protectionhttps://english.aawsat.com/features/5107631-inside-hamas%E2%80%99-%E2%80%98shadow-unit%E2%80%99-force-behind-hostage-protection
Inside Hamas’ ‘Shadow Unit’: The Force Behind Hostage Protection
Al-Qassam Brigades fighters before handing over an Israeli captive to the Red Cross in Gaza on Saturday. (EPA)
Hamas’ armed wing, the Al-Qassam Brigades, relied on its secretive “Shadow Unit” to keep Israeli hostages alive for nearly 15 months of war across Gaza, making it a crucial element in the Palestinian group’s operations.
Despite Israel’s ground forces advancing into every part of Gaza, backed by relentless air and artillery strikes, they failed to achieve one of the war’s key objectives—recovering hostages alive.
Most of those retrieved were bodies, with only a handful—no more than seven—rescued alive.
The “Shadow Unit” played a pivotal role in constantly moving captives from one location to another, thwarting Israeli efforts to locate them.
The public appearance of the Shadow Unit during the handover of Israeli hostages has raised questions about how the group managed to hold such a large number of captives for 15 months, despite intense Israeli military operations throughout the war.
The Shadow Unit was officially formed in 2006, shortly after the Al-Qassam Brigades and other factions captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit. However, its existence remained undisclosed until 2016—five years after Shalit was freed in a prisoner exchange in 2011—when Al-Qassam released previously unseen footage of him in captivity.
Hamas sources told Asharq Al-Awsat that the unit was established around three months after Shalit’s abduction, following a series of Israeli airstrikes targeting locations where he had been held, both shortly after his capture and at later stages.
The Shadow Unit was initially composed of highly skilled operatives with extensive security and military expertise tasked with safeguarding Shalit, they added.
Over time, more members were recruited, including operatives from Al-Qassam Brigades' intelligence unit, the elite force, and other combat divisions.
The recruits underwent specialized security, intelligence, military and technological training.
According to the sources, Hamas’ top military commander, Mohammed Deif, and his longtime associate Mohammed Al-Sinwar ordered the unit’s formation following Shalit’s abduction.
Many of its early members, including those assigned to guard Shalit, were from Khan Younis, Deif and Al-Sinwar’s hometown.
Among them were senior Al-Qassam field commanders Abdel Rahman Al-Mubasher, Khaled Abu Bakra, and Mohammed Dawoud, who were killed in separate incidents in 2013 and 2021.
Three Years Since ‘Daniel,’ Libya’s Derna Rebuilds as Families Await Redresshttps://english.aawsat.com/features/5317412-three-years-%E2%80%98daniel%E2%80%99-libya%E2%80%99s-derna-rebuilds-families-await-redress
Three Years Since ‘Daniel,’ Libya’s Derna Rebuilds as Families Await Redress
New homes built in Libya’s Derna after the storm (AFP)
Three years after Storm Daniel devastated Libya’s Derna, sweeping reconstruction projects are reshaping the city. But some families are still waiting for housing and compensation, while court proceedings have yet to settle responsibility for the collapse of its two dams.
Authorities have begun handing new homes to survivors, but families left off beneficiary lists are renewing their appeals. Dilapidated houses still bear witness to the disaster, which killed or left missing thousands of people and destroyed large parts of the city.
Residents of the Al-Akwakh neighborhood in Derna’s eastern coastal area of Al-Istallat have repeatedly issued statements and video appeals demanding inclusion in housing and compensation projects.
They say their homes are crumbling and the infrastructure has deteriorated further since Storm Daniel. A committee had previously surveyed and numbered the houses, raising hopes that residents would receive new homes.
Civil society activist Nouh Oweiyan said the plight of Al-Akwakh residents should be reconsidered.
“The Libya Development and Reconstruction Fund has become a source of hope for many Libyans seeking solutions to long-standing housing and living problems,” he told Asharq Al-Awsat.
Storm Daniel struck Derna and several other areas of eastern Libya on Sept. 11, 2023. The collapse of the city’s two dams sent huge volumes of water surging into residential neighborhoods. Authorities issued varying figures for the dead and missing as the disaster response unfolded.
The Libya Development and Reconstruction Fund, headed by Belqasim Haftar, launched a sweeping rebuilding drive in Derna two years ago. Since the spring, it has distributed 2,500 fully equipped homes to survivors free of charge. Last month, it announced plans to build another 552 units under the “Mountain Apartment Blocks” project.
Among those still living with the disaster is the family of Marajea al-Ghazizi, whose brother Walid died inside the family home during the floods.
Al-Ghazizi said reconstruction had made visible progress outside the house, but his family was still living with the tragedy inside.
In a Facebook post, he shared a video showing the home’s dilapidated interior. He said court rulings issued in favor of some survivors had not been enforced and called for justice for families who had lost their homes.
“Appreciating the reconstruction effort does not diminish affected families’ right to receive their full entitlements,” he said.
In another account posted on a Facebook page under the name Abdelhalim Haf, a survivor said he received a message telling him his family was entitled to a new home, bringing joy to his children. He later discovered that his name was missing from the beneficiary lists.
The survey and compensation committee told him the message had been sent by mistake, he said, turning the family’s joy into shock. He questioned what would become of the property he had bought with his own money.
Abu Bakr al-Zawi, director of the fund’s Survey and Compensation Department, said in a video that a formal committee comprising Derna’s chief prosecutor and security director had opened a complaints process for anyone who believed they had suffered losses.
Official figures put reconstruction work in Derna at 80% complete.
In a statement on Friday, Belqasem Haftar said: “An even bigger surprise is coming to the city as it opens a new chapter in its history, with a major inauguration worthy of its achievements.”
The rebuilding drive has not closed the question of legal accountability, with victims’ families growing increasingly frustrated, according to local media reports.
A court convicted 12 officials and acquitted four others in July 2024, but the Supreme Court overturned the rulings. The convicted officials have been retried before the Benghazi Court of Appeal since October 2025.
At its latest public hearing on Aug. 9, the court adjourned the case until Oct. 4, leaving the proceedings without a final ruling.
Derna lawyer and activist Mohammed al-Lafi said the disaster was caused by “errors and negligence” under successive governments and political systems. He told Asharq Al-Awsat that he had represented victims seeking financial compensation for the harm suffered by their families.
The courts rejected those claims, al-Lafi said. He added that the interim Government of National Unity in western Libya, which controls the country’s financial decisions, had yet to propose an initiative to compensate victims’ families.
He praised the General Command of the Libyan National Army, however, for providing assistance and building homes for families whose houses were destroyed.
With compensation claims still unresolved, the disaster’s third anniversary was marked prominently at both official and public levels on Friday.
Presidential Council head Mohammed al-Menfi commemorated the victims of Storm Daniel, saying on Friday that “the tragedy united Libyans.”
He praised the rebuilding effort and the restoration of normal life in Derna and other affected areas.
House of Representatives Speaker Aguila Saleh said Derna’s reconstruction represented “a qualitative transformation that astonished everyone,” according to a statement issued on Friday.
Osama Hammad, the prime minister of the government appointed by parliament, said the city was moving toward recovery and reclaiming its role.
Residents and local institutions also marked the anniversary by sharing photographs and memories of victims on social media.
Guantanamo Detention Camp: The 'Exception' that Became the Rulehttps://english.aawsat.com/features/5317185-guantanamo-detention-camp-exception-became-rule
Guantanamo Detention Camp: The 'Exception' that Became the Rule
General view of Camp X-Ray, where security was tight (AFP)
On the 25th anniversary of the September 11 attacks, the Guantanamo detention camp appears less like a prison that remained open by mistake and more like an entrenched institution that has learned how to withstand the passage of time.
The detention camp, which opened at the US naval base at Guantanamo Bay in January 2002, was supposed to be a temporary solution to an exceptional situation: detaining captured fighters in the “war on terror” far from the US mainland and, according to the logic of the US administration at the time, outside the legal rules governing conventional prisons or prisoners of war.
But the temporary became prolonged.
After a quarter century, the question is no longer simply: Why was Guantanamo never closed? It is also: What happened to the idea that gave rise to it? And how could a legal and political exception, born in a moment of “collective trauma” following the September 11 terrorist attacks, become an institution capable of enduring and continuing even after administrations in the White House changed, wars on the ground shifted, the nature of the threats evolved, and the names of those behind them changed?
After the attacks, the United States entered a new war that it called the “war on terror.” Within the framework of that war, a broad system of detention outside the ordinary legal framework emerged, relying on secrecy and indefinite detention, as well as an attempt to separate the military “war” from the legislative framework that would normally govern it.
Guantanamo became the clearest example of a contradiction that gradually came to light. While several secret detention sites operated by the Central Intelligence Agency emerged in multiple countries, relying on coercive and inhumane interrogation programs that later became part of one of the most controversial chapters of America’s war on terror, Guantanamo remained different. It had an additional advantage.
It was a living place. It grew, evolved and expanded across a larger geographic area over the years, from the moment it opened in early January 2002 to the present. As it adapted to successive US administrations, Republican and Democratic alike, and developed its methods and practices, it never strayed an inch from the idea on which it was founded and from the vast sphere of political power that underpinned it: that under exceptional circumstances, the US government could create an exceptional space; that a detainee could be an “enemy combatant” without being a prisoner of war in the traditional sense and without being charged before a criminal court; and that a war could last long enough for detention itself to have no defined end. That remains the reality for some Guantanamo prisoners today, nearly a quarter century later.
Guantanamo as an Archive
Perhaps in the first days after September 11, the logic of the exception was easy to understand. America was still reeling from the attacks, and the US administration viewed Al Qaeda as a threat that transcended the boundaries of states and conventional armies.
But the dilemma lies in the exception itself, not merely in the moment when it was created. The problem is its ability to survive after the moment that gave rise to it has passed.
This is where the entire story of Guantanamo lies.
The men initially sent there were considered part of the new war and its new tools. But over the years, it became clear that many of the detainees were not senior Al Qaeda leaders, and that some had been sent there on the basis of false information, marginal connections or financial rewards, only to find themselves trapped in a system that was difficult to escape.
Over the years, roughly 800 men passed through the detention camp. Only a small number remain today. At the beginning of 2025, the official number was 15 detainees, including some awaiting transfer to other countries, others facing proceedings before military commissions, and three who remained in detention without criminal charges or approval for their transfer.
But the decline in numbers did not mean the end of the problem.
On the contrary, the fewer detainees there were, the less Guantanamo resembled a mass prison detached from the broader context and the more it came to resemble a living archive of the war on terror: unresolved legal cases, confessions obtained under coercive conditions, military trials delayed for years, and people with whom the US government still struggles to determine how to deal and how to bring their detention to an end.
A Valuable Catch in a Dark Hole
It may be unfair to reduce the story of a detention camp as significant as Guantanamo to a single individual. But Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is a stark example of the enormous contradictions surrounding this case.
The man accused of being the mastermind of the September 11 attacks did not arrive at Guantanamo immediately. Years of pursuit and secret detention preceded it, including detention by the Central Intelligence Agency and harsh interrogations, before he was transferred to Guantanamo in 2006 along with a number of “high-value detainees,” as they were known at the time, who had been held at the previously mentioned secret sites known as the “black sites.”
Here, the man’s story intersects with the story of the place: Where does war end and justice begin? And can a case involving a crime on the scale of September 11 be built on evidence that was, in part, developed within a secret system that used torture and coercion?
More than two decades after the attacks, the case is still searching for its conclusion. Finally, in August, a military judge set a tentative date of June 5, 2028, for the trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and three other defendants before a military commission at Guantanamo, following years of legal setbacks.
But then came the surprise. After the rules governing the trials changed, prosecutors decided to proceed with the case without using a key confession made by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in 2007, in which he admitted responsibility for the attacks, after it was deemed involuntary and obtained through coercion.
Ironically, prosecutors did not appeal the decision, fearing that it would delay the trial even further.
The detention camp had thus become part of the very problem it was supposed to solve. After having condemned hundreds of innocent people, it may now end up acquitting a guilty man.
Washington now faces an even greater dilemma. On the one hand, it wants to put those responsible for the largest terrorist attack ever carried out on US soil on trial and close this chapter. On the other, it is forced to confront the predicament of its own making: What happens to evidence when the process that produced it is itself subject to legal challenge?
For this reason, the Khalid Sheikh Mohammed case is no longer simply the case of a man accused of terrorism. It is also the case of a state that sought to deliver justice without paying its full legal price.
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the “mastermind” of the September 11 attacks, shortly after the CIA captured him in Pakistan in 2003 (AP)
A Countdown... to No End
In 2009, when the newly elected Obama administration announced its intention to close the detention camp, which had been one of his campaign promises, with a target date of January 22, 2010, I traveled to Guantanamo on a journalistic assignment. It was eight years old at the time, and during those years it had undergone one expansion after another, along with numerous “improvements” to its services. Trials had also begun there, in courtrooms with wooden arches, seating for spectators and all the elements of a courtroom designed to project the appearance of justice.
At the time, the camp administration brought journalists in to show them its conditions. It had come to resemble federal prisons, with kitchens serving halal meat, sports fields, various activities and prayer times, in the hope of making up, however slightly, for the images of rows of cages standing in the heat of a tropical island.
At the same time, the political leadership in Washington was negotiating with various countries to transfer detainees there. The practical question was simple: How could those held there be moved out and the facility closed?
But the place, its inhabitants and the volunteer lawyers defending them there in New York... they all said otherwise.
During those tightly organized and closely monitored visits, it was possible to see many parts of the detention camp and its updated and improved facilities, but other parts remained beyond view. And there was a phrase that military personnel repeatedly told visitors, carrying a promise that exceeded the place’s ability to fulfill it: “Here, you will see the truth naked,” they said.
But can the truth really be seen naked from behind a curtain?
For example, there was “Camp 7,” the most secretive section, designated for the “high-value detainees” among Al Qaeda’s senior leaders. Its existence was known, and its building overlooked the other facilities from a nearby hill. But its details were shrouded in absolute secrecy.
In “Camp 6,” for example, detainees would look out, or try to look out, through narrow openings in the windows, and their voices reached us from a distance before we could make out their faces. “Liars! Liars!” was the cry that repeatedly came from behind those walls. It was not possible to see the faces clearly, as looking up at the prisoners was prohibited, but the accusation could be heard loud and clear.
That, in itself, was a small lesson in the nature of the facility: its doors could be open enough for you to see it, and closed enough to keep you from knowing everything inside it.
At the time, Rear Adm. Tom Copeman, commander of the joint forces at the base, also described closing the detention camp as a difficult task, “but not an impossible one.”
A logical statement in the context of 2009.
At the time, the difficulty of closing it was not technical. It did not require ending a war or dismantling a state. What was required was to transfer hundreds of men and make political and legal decisions about who would be tried, who would be released and who would be transferred to a third country, and then close a facility like any other. Each decision led to another.
Would a detainee return to his home country? Would a third country accept him? Would he appear before a civilian or military court? Could he be released if there was insufficient evidence to prosecute him? And what about intelligence agencies that considered him a threat? What does a state do with someone it cannot convict but does not trust itself to release?
In this sense, Guantanamo became less about the number of detainees and their “improved” detention conditions than about the decision-making structure within the US administration and the complex chain of command that had developed around them.
Welcome sign at the entrance to the Guantanamo detention camp base following renovations (file, AFP)
What Did Guantanamo Do to America?
Perhaps the mistake was to view Guantanamo solely as an external human rights problem.
In an important sense, it was an American domestic experiment in the limits of power.
After September 11, the executive branch acquired enormous power in the name of national security. The judiciary then imposed limits on that power through a series of landmark cases, from Rasul v. Bush to Hamdan v. Rumsfeld and then Boumediene v. Bush. Each time, the same question returned in a different form: Can war create a zone outside the law?
The answer is undoubtedly complicated.
Congress passed laws, administrations changed their policies, the courts intervened, the military revised its detention rules, and the United States transferred or released a large number of detainees. But the institution that emerged in a moment of exception remained, and remains, and could be repurposed to continue indefinitely with new missions.
That is why the latest developments at the base carry significance beyond that of a passing news story.
In January 2025, the administration of President Donald Trump directed the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security to expand the Migrant Operations Center at the Guantanamo naval base to its full capacity, with the aim of providing additional space for detaining migrants. Since then, ICE documents have confirmed special procedures for detaining migrants at the base, including at “Camp 6” and the Migrant Operations Center.
Two US soldiers enter Camp Delta 1, a high-security facility (Getty)
Accordingly, Adam Abdullah, a 31-year-old Somali man detained by immigration authorities in Minnesota, was transferred to Guantanamo without clear charges. He has lawful status and is subject to periodic reviews with immigration authorities. US media reported that he had been held in “Camp 6” for about two weeks and was one of eight Somali nationals detained there.
This does not mean that the “war on terror” detention camp and migrant detention centers are the same legal institution, nor that the people held in them are subject to the same system. But reusing the same facility to carry out detentions outside the legal framework and far from the US mainland raises a question that cannot be ignored:
Are the tools of the “war on terror” being revived to wage a “war on migrants”? And is the notorious detention camp being repurposed again and again depending on who occupies the White House?
The two wars do not need to be identical for the question to be worth asking.
Guantanamo is no longer simply a product of what happened on September 11. It has become a daily test of what can happen to the tools states create in moments of fear, only to discover later that they are easier to invent than to abolish.
It is simply the story of an exception that became the rule.
Doomsday Tech: Could AI Really Kill Us All?https://english.aawsat.com/features/5317101-doomsday-tech-could-ai-really-kill-us-all
A banner shows message reading "AI" during the London Tech Week at Olympia, in London, Britain, June 8, 2026. (Reuters)
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Doomsday Tech: Could AI Really Kill Us All?
A banner shows message reading "AI" during the London Tech Week at Olympia, in London, Britain, June 8, 2026. (Reuters)
Stark warnings from artificial intelligence researchers that advanced forms of the technology could wipe out humanity have raised questions over whether governments are moving fast enough to regulate it.
What are the potential dangers of "superintelligent" computer systems, and should we be worried?
- What's the worst-case scenario? -
AI experts have long described the threat as critical.
In 2023, hundreds of AI scientists and industry figures, including the heads of top US labs, signed a "statement on AI extinction risk" calling for the issue to be treated as seriously as pandemics or nuclear war.
If an out-of-control future AI deems that humans are obstructing its goals, it could use robots to "synthesize and spread novel pathogens", said Stuart Russell, computer science professor at the University of California, Berkeley.
Or it could "convince people to initiate nuclear war, including by hacking into early warning systems", Russell, a prominent voice on AI safety, told AFP.
Such existential fears do not concern current AI systems, he stressed. But as the technology improves it could take lethal action beyond our understanding, such as by removing oxygen from the atmosphere.
"We are less intelligent than superintelligent AI. If you ask chimpanzees how humans could wipe them out, they probably wouldn't be able to give you all the right answers."
In the meantime, "in the next year or two I think the risk is higher from human misuse," Russell added -- such as an AI-enabled terror attack.
- Why don't AI labs stop? -
"The stakes are well-understood," Jacob Coxon, a 27-year-old researcher, wrote on X this week, announcing his resignation from US AI startup Anthropic.
"But they are locked in a race to get there first," he added, saying that Anthropic "believe no one else will act responsibly, so they must do it themselves".
Anthropic this year removed a pledge from its safety charter to halt development of its models if it failed to control their risks.
It argued that if it unilaterally paused its work, its less cautious rivals would dominate the industry, making it less safe overall.
"The people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade," said Coxon, who previously worked at ChatGPT maker OpenAI.
He accused both companies of "gambling with our lives" as they strive to develop AI models capable of self-improvement.
Fears are heightened over rogue AI after OpenAI technology operating outside human supervision hacked into Hugging Face, a repository of AI models.
"We really do earnestly believe AI could kill all humans!" Anthropic safety executive Evan Hubinger chimed in on X, estimating the risk at more than 10 percent over the next decade.
- What's the hype factor? -
It's important to remember that doom-laden percentage predictions are "absolutely unscientific", said Hussein Abbass, a computing professor at UNSW Canberra.
"The situation is still controllable, and it can be managed," Abbass told AFP.
But governments should not sit on their hands when it comes to regulating AI, he added, urging an "agile" approach as AI development accelerates.
Both Anthropic and OpenAI are expected to go public soon, and some skeptics say scary warnings make AI appear powerful and worthy of large investments.
Others argue that focusing on the risk of extinction distracts from more pressing problems caused by AI, from job losses to machines discriminating against minorities.
In July, more than 1,000 tech employees, including Anthropic's CEO, called on Washington to support a coordinated slowdown in the development of the most advanced AI systems.
OpenAI halted training of its latest models for two weeks in August before resuming it under tighter controls.
- What will it take to regulate? -
So far, the United States has been firmly against global regulation of the sector that could stifle innovation.
But the unprecedented hacking capabilities of the most cutting-edge models have given Washington pause, with recent Anthropic and OpenAI releases delayed over national security concerns.
Even then, "we don't want to restrict them where all of a sudden we come in second to China", President Donald Trump has said.
"Maybe it will take a massive, Chernobyl-scale disaster to get governments to act," Russell said, urging them to establish a licensing regime for AI, as exists with aviation, medicine or water supply.
"Perhaps at some point governments will remember that their voters prefer not to be dead," he added.
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