U.S. forces have turned over control of Bagram Prison and about 3,000 Taliban inmates to the Afghan government, in the midst of record levels of what are called green on blue killings - the murder of American troops by Afghan soldiers or police they have been training.
Bagram is the U.S. military's main military prison in Afghanistan.
“We have a serious trust problem with the Afghan security forces, as evidenced by the escalating ‘green on blue’ shootings,” said Robert Maginnis, a retired Army officer and an Army contractor. “Turn[ing] over Afghan prison keys to these same people will only make matters worse and cost more American lives.”
Afghan President Hamid Karzai celebrated the transfer as a victory for his country’s sovereignty and a step toward a planned NATO troop withdrawal by the end of 2014.
“Now, the Bagram prison is converted to one of Afghanistan’s regular prisons, where the innocents will be freed and the rest of the prisoners will be sentenced according to the laws of Afghanistan,” Mr. Karzai said.{..}
The mistrust on detention issues was evident at the transfer ceremony Monday.
The Afghan government dispatched its defense minister and armed forces chief of staff. The U.S. command sent an Army colonel as its senior representative, the Associated Press reported.
The AP said there are 2,000 Afghan police officers at the prison, and it quoted one of them, Ashna Gul.
“We are Afghan, and they are Afghan. They are Muslim. We are Muslim,” Mr. Gul said. “We can see each other through the steel windows. Sometimes we are laughing and joking with the prisoners and they are happy with our guys.”
I'll just bet they are. Since they're going to be tried (if that) under what passes for law in Afghanistan, shooting at a ferenghi is no big deal and most of them will be out soon, to kill again. Some of the Afghan police who want to be especially helpful might even see to it that the Taliban insurgents get American-provided arms and Afghan uniforms as they leave.
As a matter of fact, there are already signs that the Afghan government is prepared to ignore the agreement with the U.S.under which the prisoners are being transferred and simply set most of them as soon as possible.
It's worth briefly revisiting how this transfer came about. In March of this year, some U.S. guards at Bagram caught the Taliban prisoners using the Qu'rans provided to them at U.S. taxpayer expense to send secret messages to each other and to the outside, and confiscated them. The books were subsequently burned, and reportedly five American soldiers were involved.
The Afghan reaction was typical for the Muslim world - hysterical rage, and violence directed at people who weren't even involved.
At least four American soldiers were murdered, two of them American officers murdered inside the Interior Ministry building in a highly secured area by an Afghan security officer, and two other American soldiers were shot to death by a member of the Afghan Army at a base in eastern Afghanistan. A number of others, both military and civilian UN and NATO personnel were injured, and an even larger death toll was avoided when an Afghan cook at Bagram Air Force base was caught attempting to poison food scheduled to be served to American personnel at the base.
After a successful car bombing in front of Jalalabad airport that killed nine and injured nineteen Afghan civilians and law enforcement officers and four NATO soldiers (Jalalabad is used exclusively by NATO forces and the military) NATO Commander General John Allen ordered all NATO military and civilian personnel to leave the Interior ministry and a number of other strategic locations in Kabul and go into what amounts to virtual lockdown. And of course, both General Allen and of course, President Barack Hussein Obama promptly issued groveling apologies.
The apologies did nothing except to inflame the Muslim mindset. In that honor/shame culture, apologies are regarded as an admission of weakness, and Hamid Kharzai never apologized or expressed any regret whatsoever for the Americans who were murdered.
What Kharzai did instead was to use the cringing dhimmitude of the Americans to his advantage. He demanded sufficient baksheesh to grease the wheels, and control of Bagram Prison and its inmates, which will give him some major bargaining chips to use with the Taliban as prisoners are released in exchange for Kharzhai's own survival and ultimately, his escape along with all the aid money he's squirreled away.
At this point, the murder of Americans by their Afghan 'allies' - often with arms we've given them is so widespread and out of control that all joint training missions have been suspended.
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When confronting the Taliban and other Islamic terrorist enemies, at least two things have to be understood. 1.) The Taliban and other Islamic terrorist enemies pose a far greater threat to America than either Nazi Germany or Imperial Japan ever did or likely ever could have. 2.) While the threat posed by Islamic terrorists is many times greater than the threat posed by the enemies of WWII ever was or likely ever could have been, it is not the same enemy. Furthermore the USA of the second decade of the
21st century is not the same nation that it was in the early 1940s. As such our strategies for defeating or at least neutralizing this enemy will likely be very different than the strategies we used to win WWII.
Until these realities are recognized, it seems unlikely we will be able to develop a coherent strategy to defeat this enemy.
With these basic facts in mind this particular decision does not seem to be a particularly good one. UNLESS it is part of an agreement whereby American forces and equipment will be granted safe passage out of Afghanistan and through Pakistan in an orderly fashion out of the region all together. If this is so, it might be a worthwhile agreement, however, there would remain the matter of how to ensure the Afghans and the Pakistanis live up to their end of the agreement.
Once our forces are withdrawn, we can deploy them to positions that make sense for our national security needs, such as along our borders and off of our coasts. Also, develop all of our own oil and gas reserves and build more refineries. This would give us some leverage when dealing with OPEC and other aligned nations. Right now we have none. Also, in time, we may be able to find alternative sources of oil for those who rely heavily on Iran and Russia for their oil supplies. This might serve to weaken the influence of these enemy nations.
We can win this and good outcomes for our nation are still possible, even if they are not probable at this point but the window to achieve such outcomes is rapidly closing. In order to do this we MUST recognize the reality of the situation we are in and the dangers posed by this enemy.
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