An Afghan prisoner listens to a speech as a security personnel keeps watch in Kabul June 8, 2006. Ahmad Masood / ReutersFrom Time Magazine:
The incoming Obama Administration says it wants to shut down the U.S. military prison at Guantánamo Bay. But even if Guantánamo closes, it won't end the controversial U.S. practice of jailing suspected al-Qaeda militants and other terrorists indefinitely. That's because such detentions continue on an even greater scale at the U.S. military base at Bagram, Afghanistan, 40 miles north of Kabul. Roughly 250 detainees are currently being held at Guantánamo; an estimated 670 are locked up under similar conditions at Bagram.
The Obama transition team has declined comment on whether detention policy for enemy combatants will change with a new Administration. Nevertheless, the U.S. military is building a new prison for what it calls "unlawful enemy combatants" at Bagram that won't be finished until Obama is well settled in the White House. "The Obama Administration is inheriting not so much a shrinking Guantánamo as an expanding Bagram," says Tina Foster, executive director of the International Justice Network, a New York-based non-profit legal group.
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My Comment: The reason why prisons exist on U.S. bases in Afghanistan is that they have learned that the Afghan penal system is either (1) corrupt to the point that it permits dangerous men to be regularly "released", or (2) prisoners are either executed or become one of the many "disappear".
The fact of the matter is that there are few if any good options for any U.S. administration when it comes to detainees. In addition, these detainees are Afghans, and there is an issue that they should be under the authority of the Afghan Government. Keeping them locked up on U.S. bases is only a stop-gap measure until something more secured and legal is established. But when this can happen in Afghanistan is anyone's guess.