Detention games in Afghanistan
Max Boot says the recent prison break in Afghanistan is evidence the United States itself needs to detain more insurgents and extremists: That is why the U.S. has steadily expanded its own prison facility, the Detention Facility in Parwan (DFIP), which operates on a corner of the Bagram air base north of Kabul. I have ...
Max Boot says the recent prison break in Afghanistan is evidence the United States itself needs to detain more insurgents and extremists:
Max Boot says the recent prison break in Afghanistan is evidence the United States itself needs to detain more insurgents and extremists:
That is why the U.S. has steadily expanded its own prison facility, the Detention Facility in Parwan (DFIP), which operates on a corner of the Bagram air base north of Kabul. I have twice visited the DFIP since December and both times was impressed by how well run it is. U.S. soldiers are in charge but Afghan corrections officers are also present, learning the ropes….Until the Afghan state can make considerable progress, it is better for the U.S. to incarcerate suspected insurgents on its own—and on an even grander scale than is currently the case. In Iraq at the height of the surge, we were holding over 25,000 detainees. No one suggests that we need to incarcerate that many Afghans but we’d better lock up more suspects than we are currently doing, otherwise it will be hard to lower violence and gain the confidence of the population.
Another option is for NATO itself to get involved in the detention business. Thus far, that has been a step too far for key players in the alliance. Many NATO members prefer to hand detainees off to the Afghans and hope very hard–but without a lot of confidence–that they will not be tortured and kept under lock and key. Given everything that’s happened, their hesitation to get in the detention business is understandable, but it’s also an abdication of responsibility. This is an alliance struggle, and the alliance should work together more effectively to deal with detainees. Maybe the prison break will produce a shift toward a more responsible policy.
David Bosco is a professor at Indiana University’s Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies. He is the author of The Poseidon Project: The Struggle to Govern the World’s Oceans. Twitter: @multilateralist
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