The news that the Bagram U.S. torture center is still operating at full capacity, and even expanding, instead of the not-really-constructed ANA facility, doesn’t bode well for the rule of law in Afghanistan. Bagram is far more spartan and less friendly than the much-heralded Guantanamo prison; yet it has received a fraction of the attention (which is unfortunately normal when it comes to Afghanistan).
They better get their act together: Mullah Naqibullah, one of the Taliban’s top commanders, has escaped from prison and given several interviews to reporters. He claims he escaped by bribing security officials—not impossible, but also quite probably calculated to undercut confidence in the Kabul government and the security forces. But it does underscore the structural problems facing Afghanistan’s internal security—the same problems that are delaying Bagram’s replacement by an Afghan-run facility.
This post was written by...
Joshua Foust – author of 1801 posts on Registan.net.
Joshua Foust is a Fellow at the American Security Project and the author of Afghanistan Journal: Selections from Registan.net. His research focuses primarily on Central and South Asia. Joshua is a correspondent for The Atlantic and a columnist for PBS Need to Know. Joshua appears regularly on the BBC World News, Aljazeera, and international public radio. Joshua is also a regular contributor to Foreign Policy’s AfPak Channel, and his writing has appeared in the New York Times, Reuters, and the Christian Science Monitor. Follow him on twitter: @joshuafoust
For information on reproducing this article, see our Terms of Use
