What would you expect when they round up all the men and toss 'em in jail to sort through later where even if they are not tortured they meet up with their cousins, uncles, and neighbors?
"Insurgents find support among fellow prisoners; With US facility full, many sent to Afghan-run sites" by Ernesto Londono Washington Post / March 13, 2011
KABUL, Afghanistan — For six years, the Afghan government has held Abdul Jabar behind bars, separated from his father, a former Taliban judge, and his seven brothers, all Taliban fighters.
Being locked up for kidnapping, however, has not dulled Jabar’s love for the insurgents or hatred of the Afghan government. With so many Taliban supporters in Afghanistan’s largest prison, Jabar feels right at home.
“All of the prisoners support the Taliban. I also support the Taliban,’’ the 28-year-old said in a jailhouse interview inside Pol-e-Charki prison, on the outskirts of Kabul. “They will win the war in Afghanistan.’’
Already have: AmeriKa Has Lost Afghanistan
And we killed all those people while littering the place with depleted uranium munitions.
:-(
The problems at Pol-e-Charki, with its 5,000 prisoners, point to a weakness in the American approach to detention in Afghanistan. Among those housed in Pol-e-Charki are hundreds of suspected insurgents captured by the United States and transferred to Afghan authority because an American-run prison, with a capacity of 1,350, has long been filled to capacity.
Support for the Taliban is almost universal in Pol-e-Charki prison, the largest in Afghanistan, inmates said in interviews. Inmates and Afghan officials describe the prison as a breeding ground for the insurgency, with prisoners maintaining close and regular contact with comrades outside. Recently, Afghan intelligence officials said that a 45-year-old prisoner, Talib Jan, had orchestrated the deadly bombing of a Kabul grocery store from his prison cell.
American military officials say they want to keep in custody the inmates deemed most dangerous and those who are thought to possess valuable intelligence. To address the problem, the United States is nearing completion of a project that will double to about 2,600 the number of beds at the American-run Parwan Detention Center, formerly known as Bagram prison.
This as social services need to be cut here.
But with US Special Operations Forces capturing scores of prisoners each week, the United States for now must choose between releasing many prisoners after a few hours and handing over others to Afghan authorities....
And someone we still haven't won.
US officials acknowledged the problems at Pol-e-Charki but said the facility used to be worse.
See:
Hell-oween: Afghanistan Torture File/The First Abu Ghraib
Hell-oween: Afghanistan Torture File/Perversion
Hell-oween: Afghanistan Torture File/Dilawar and Habibullah
Hell-oween: Afghanistan Torture File/Chamber of Horrors
Hell-oween: Afghanistan Torture File/American Amnesty
Hell-oween: Afghanistan Torture File/Bagram
Afghanistan Torture Chamber
Inside Bagram Prison
The Globe's Weekend Movie
I guess anything would be an improvement.
Earlier in the war, the prison had a wing “completely controlled’’ by the Taliban, where guards could not enter and left food at the door, said a US official in Kabul who works on prison issues.
Sounds like a New York jail to me.
“There’s been considerable improvement,’’ the official said. “The facility has come a long way.’’
In August, the Justice Ministry’s central prisons directorate began to regularly search prisoners for contraband and record their findings. As of Jan. 20, guards had collected 705 cellphones, as well as weapons and drugs, from Afghan prisons. US officials have also helped pay for metal detectors and generators at Afghan prisons and pushed to classify prisoners by threat level to avoid lumping petty criminals in with hard-core insurgents....
YOUR TAX DOLLAR$ hard at work, America!!
Asked about American concerns, Lieutenant Commander Christina Skacan, a spokeswoman for the US-run detention task force, said in an e-mail: “We are working together to prevent prisons and detention centers from becoming places of radicalization.’’
Stop throwing them in there.
The focus on the issue nearly 10 years into the US-led war reflects growing concern over weaknesses in Afghanistan’s rule-of-law sector, at a time when US planners had hoped to wind down their detention system.
Why would that concern the U.S.?
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