McChrystal
General Stanley McChrystal

The Obama administration is engaged in an attempt to absolve itself of responsibility for illegal detentions in Afghanistan, but its efforts appear to be nothing more than a fairly simple shell game. In an article published yesterday at Truthout, Andy Worthington explains the two basic aspects of the deceit: the US is transferring control of the Bagram prison, which is publicly acknowledged, to the Afghan government while continuing to maintain multiple secret detention sites. Here is Worthington on the transfer issue:

This [new policy for reviewing a prisoner's status] is depressingly close to the "new paradigm" of warfare introduced by Bush and Cheney, and it is, perhaps, no surprise that, as criticisms began to mount, the administration strategically announced that it was in the process of transferring control of Bagram to the Afghan government. It remains to be seen how swiftly the proposed transfer will occur, but it is unsurprising that the announcement has been made, for two reasons: firstly, because it diverts attention from current US policy, and secondly, because, as with the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) in Iraq, it allows the US government to abdicate all responsibility for the mistakes it has made. Signed in November 2008, the SOFA in Iraq has led to the transfer of thousands of prisoners in US control to the custody of the Iraqi government, even though what awaits them is not a review of whether their detention by US forces was a mistake, but the chaos of the Iraqi judicial system.

The agreement on transfer of control of the Bagram prison was signed on January 9 and could well represent the outcome of a review process first discussed last July:

A sweeping United States military review calls for overhauling the troubled American-run prison here as well as the entire Afghan jail and judicial systems, a reaction to worries that abuses and militant recruiting within the prisons are helping to strengthen the Taliban.

As Worthington points out, transferring control of the publicly acknowledged prison at Bagram is an attempt to deflect responsibility for occurrences at a prison that is known to "strengthen the Taliban". The Times article notes the known issues with prisons already under Afghan control and points to efforts by the US to provide training to improve conditions in the prisons. Given the overall deficiencies known to exist in recruiting and training Afghan defense and police forces, it remains dubious whether any progress has been achieved in training those in charge of Afghan prisons.

In the same article, Worthington presents new evidence that the US maintains secret prisons in Afghanistan (see this diary for a discussion of the recent UN report on secret prisons and this article by Anand Gopal for more):

Late last year, a reliable Afghan source informed a lawyer friend of mine that there were, at the time, about two dozen secret facilities in Afghanistan, including three or four in Herat, four or five in northern Afghanistan, and three or four in Kabul. According to this source, the majority were US facilities, although a few were run by the National Directorate of Security (NDS), the Afghan government’s domestic intelligence agency, and a few others were run by the Afghan Army. The source added, "They are all worse than Bagram. All contain a mix of combatants, criminals and totally innocent persons. The main difference is that those at the US prisons are fed better. No one has any rights."

In addition, just last week, in response to my recent articles, a military insider let me know that, "Not only were there facilities in Bagram, but in Kandahar and Salerno as well. Saw them firsthand between 2006 and 2009, but was told not to speak of the jails." These, it was noted, were "unsanctioned facilities," which were off-limits to the International Committee of the Red Cross.

Back in July, when the New York Times article linked above first came out, I seized on the second paragraph to note that Admiral Michael Mullen, Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was attempting to inoculate himself against involvement in torture and illegal detention with the statement he put out calling for proper treatment of prisoners. I still think that was the case, and an article this week by Jeremy Scahill provides further information on why we would have the strange situation of a Joint Chiefs Chair attempting to separate himself from actions expected to be undertaken by forces ostensibly under his control. Scahill is writing about recent events in Pakistan, but this passage speaks to the situation in Afghanistan as well:

With General Stanley McChrystal, who commanded JSOC from 2003-2008, running the war, forces–and commanders–accustomed to operating in an unaccountable atmosphere now have unprecedented influence on overall US military operations, opening the door for an expansion of secretive, black operations done with little to no oversight. "The main thing to take away here is a recognition and acceptance of the paradigm shift that has occurred," says the former CENTCOM employee. "Everything is one echelon removed from before: where CIA was the darkest of the dark, now it is JSOC. Therefore, military forces have more leeway to do anything in support of future military objectives. The CIA used to have the ultimate freedom–now that freedom is in JSOC’s hands, and the other elements of the military have been ordered to adapt."

Scahill’s article also speaks to a Bush-era concept of "preparing the battlefield", continued by the Obama administration. Although different from the process Scahill described of sending in covert forces before sending ground forces, the actions with regard to prisons in Afghanistan also qualify as a preparation of the battlefield for McChrystal’s surge in Afghanistan.

The McChrystal/JSOC modus operandi is highly dependent on detaining large numbers of prisoners (see the Gopal article above for the effects on a family that was subjected to a nighttime raid to detain a family member). From the changes that have been announced in advance of the Afghanistan surge, it appears that the new detainees will be split between facilities under Afghan control and the remaining secret prisons under JSOC control, assuring that Mullen’s caution to treat prisoners according to international norms will be ignored.

If the surge does result in a large increase in prisoners to be disappeared into secret JSOC prisons or publicly transferred into poorly run Afghan prisons, then the surge will increase violence rather than decrease it. Avoid the rush and prepare now for a large helping of "who could have expected" when the violence increases.