WHEN PRESIDENT Bush decided that the Geneva Conventions would not apply to prisoners taken in Afghanistan, he effectively disavowed long-accepted rules for how civilized nations deal with captives taken during war - and he laid the groundwork for the abuses of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. Now President Obama is fulfilling his pledge to bring the Geneva rules back. About 600 detainees at the Bagram air base prison in Afghanistan will receive formal hearings, after being behind bars for as long as six years without a chance to challenge their designation as enemy combatants.
The Bush policy hindered the ability of US forces to win support among Afghans. Restoring the old rules will help increase backing for the US fight against Al Qaeda and the Taliban while also increasing the likelihood of fair treatment for US soldiers who are captured in future conflicts.
Article 5 of the conventions calls for captors to provide “competent tribunals’’ to determine the status of those caught up in the fog of war. In line with the conventions, which do not require that detainees be represented by lawyers, the administration will assign military officers to help prisoners gather witnesses and evidence, including classified material.
Because the hearings are in Afghanistan, detainees at Bagram should have a better chance to make their case than the Afghans held thousands of miles away at Guantanamo. The passage of time will still make it difficult to achieve fair rulings. Still, it is a step in the right direction that Afghan prisoners can finally make their case why they do not deserve indefinite detention in a war of indefinite duration.
