Obama's GITMO

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From Wired Magazine - Danger Room:

Military Expands ‘Obama’s Gitmo’ in Afghanistan

The U.S. military is getting set to expand its controversial detention camp at Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan — just as new reports of a “black jail” inside the facility are surfacing.
In a solicitation issued today, the U.S. military put out a request for a contractor to build three new detention housing units next to the existing facility, known formally as the Afghan National Detention Facility at Parwan (Bagram is in the southwest corner of Parwan Province). As of last September, 645 prisoners were held there.
The cost of the project — which will include construction of one special housing unit and two detention housing units — is projected to run between $10 million and $25 million. The contractor will have approximately nine months to complete the entire project.
Presumably, these new buildings are in addition to Bagram’s separate and previously clandestine detention facility, revealed by the International Committee of the Red Cross yesterday. Nine former prisoners say they were abused there, according to the BBC.
Timing here is key: The jail is supposed to be handed over to Afghan control of the place, sometimes called “Obama’s Guantanamo,” sometime next year. (Afghan president Hamid Karzai would like tomake the hand-off even earlier.) Afghan and U.S. officials have signed an agreement to hand control of the Parwan facility to the Afghan ministry of defense, and eventually to its ministry of justice. The transfer may help resolve an issue that has caused a fair amount of controversy for the U.S. military.

Back in 2002, two Bagram detainees died in a Bagram_torture_and_prisoner_abuse. And last year, The New York Times reported the existence of a “black jail” at Bagram that was kept off limits to the Red Cross. The military has maintained that there is no separate facility at Bagram: In a bloggers’ roundtable earlier this year, Navy Vice Adm. Robert Harward emphasized that there were “no black jails” at Bagram, but he did clarify that there was a short period of detention at undisclosed “field-detention sites,” where Afghan and U.S. authorities hold individuals to determine who they are and whether they have any actionable intelligence.
“We don’t disclose where those field-detention sites are, because of operation security,” Harward said. “They would be targeted. They’d be at great risk. At those field-detention sites, they’re held for a very short period, to determine who they are, their classification, immediately actionable intelligence. And then, from that point, they’re moved to our detention facility in Parwan.”
It’s worth emphasizing here that humane treatment of prisoners is considered a cornerstone of effective counterinsurgency. The idea is to prevent further radicalization of detainees, and turning detention facilities into recruiting centers for the insurgency.
In the roundtable, Harward borrowed a phrase from counterinsurgency guru David Kilcullen. The goal is to prevent the “accidental guerrillas” from filling up the facility.
“If that village says, yeah, he’s a bad guy, we’ve just gotten additional intelligence on him and better understanding of the individual,” said Harward. “The village may say, hey, he’s a bad kid but he could be good. Well, then maybe he does need a program where we teach him to read or write, and a short incarceration would benefit him and convince him not to be the jihadist, that he was the accidental guerrilla; that there’s options and purpose for him in Afghan society outside of that, and maybe we can give him some skills that will help him.”
[PHOTO: U.S. Department of Defense]


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