How bad is the Guantanamo Bay hunger strike?

"I've been on a hunger strike since Feb. 10 and have lost well over 30 pounds," Samir Naji al Hasan Moqbel, a prisoner at Guantanamo Bay since 2002, says in The New York Times. "I will not eat until they restore my dignity."

The Yemeni national's op-ed, told to his lawyers through an Arabic translator, capped a volatile weekend for the United States in Guantanamo Bay. On Saturday morning, U.S. military forces raided communal cell blocks in hopes of ending a three-month hunger strike, which, according to the Miami Herald, was sparked by searches for the captives' Korans and "fueled by years of frustration at their status of legal limbo."

Detainees defended themselves with improvised weapons including broomsticks and water bottles but, according to NPR, were ultimately subdued and put in individual cells, with one detainee reportedly injured by a rubber bullet.

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How bad has the hunger strike gotten? NPR reports that anywhere from 43 to 60 of the total 166 detainees are refusing to eat. When the Miami Herald's Carol Rosenberg visited in March, she said it was "clear that guards had lost a measure of control over life inside the communal blocks," with detainees covering surveillance cameras with cereal boxes and refusing to admit food carts.

Moqbel, who says that he has been detained for 11 years without a trial or being charged with a crime, described the experience of being force-fed:

Glenn Greenwald of The Guardian writes that 58 of the detainees who've been cleared for release are, like Moqbel, from Yemen. Another Yemeni, Adnan Farhan Abdul Latif, died in September 2012 in a suspected suicide. Latif had been ordered free by a federal district court judge. Moqbel says that he fears he will also end up dead:

Part of the problem facing Gitmo detainees like Moqbel is that after a terrorist plot was uncovered in 2009, President Obama issued a blanket moratorium in January 2010 to prevent Yemeni detainees from being released, even if they had been given clearance to go home. How long will they remain in the prison? The Boston Globe points to investments in fiber-optic cable and specialized medical care for aging detainees to suggest that "some will be held there for the rest of their natural lives."