US ready to construct major Afghan prison
Detentions seem a long-term plan
WASHINGTON - The Pentagon is proceeding with plans to build a 40-acre detention complex on the main US military base in Afghanistan, officials said, in a stark acknowledgment that the United States is likely to continue to hold prisoners overseas for years to come.
The proposed detention center would replace the cavernous, makeshift US prison on the Bagram military base north of Kabul, which is now typically packed with about 630 prisoners, compared with the 270 held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Until now, the Bush administration had signaled that it intended to scale back US involvement in detention operations in Afghanistan. It had planned to transfer a large majority of the prisoners to Afghan custody, in a US-financed, high-security prison outside Kabul to be guarded by Afghan soldiers.
But US officials now concede that the new Afghan-run prison cannot absorb all the Afghans now detained by the United States, much less the waves of new prisoners from the escalating fight against Al Qaeda and the Taliban.
The proposal for a new American prison at Bagram underscores the daunting scope and persistence of the US military's detention problem, at a time when Bush administration officials continue to say they want to close down the facility at Guantanamo Bay.
Military officials have long been aware of serious problems with the existing detention center in Afghanistan, the Bagram Theater Internment Facility. After the prison was set up in early 2002, it became a primary site for screening prisoners captured in the fighting. Harsh interrogation methods and sleep deprivation were used widely, and two Afghan detainees died there in December 2002, after being repeatedly struck by US soldiers.
Conditions and treatment have improved markedly since then, but hundreds of Afghans and other men are still held in wire-mesh pens surrounded by coils of razor wire. There are only minimal areas for the prisoners to exercise, and kitchen, shower, and bathroom space is also inadequate.
Faced with that, US officials said they wanted to replace the Bagram prison, a converted aircraft hangar that still holds some of the decrepit aircraft-repair machinery left by the Soviet troops who occupied the country in the 1980s. In its place, the United States will build what officials described as a more modern and humane detention center.
