#bagram prison

[loudlylovingreview]

Maha Hilal: Carceral Imperialism

The legacy of the U.S. war in Iraq is, among other things, torture. “To this day I feel humiliation for what was done to me… The time I spent in Abu Ghraib — it ended my life. I’m only half a human now.” That’s what Abu Ghraib survivor Talib al-Majli had to say about the 16 months he spent at that notorious prison in Iraq after being captured and detained by American troops on October 31,…

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[shashiatnight]

[dailyshelter]

Pakistanis freed from U.S. custody

Pakistanis freed from U.S. custody

(Reuters) – Fourteen Pakistani detainees were released from U.S. custody in Bagram Prison in Afghanistan and repatriated to Pakistan on Saturday, a Pakistani legal firm representing some of the prisoners said.

Justice Project Pakistan has been representing several Bagram detainees since 2010 in a bid to force the Pakistani government to bring them home.

So far no information has been provided by…

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[qcrelcel]

Chapter 19 from my new novel - COMBAT FATIGUE

TAXI TO THE DARK SIDE




Saad’s computer is made in China and designed in California. I didn’t expect that from a math student; I would have thought he’d prefer a more elitist operating system. I’m so excited that I almost drop my water bottle. Last time…

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[theradiodispatch-blog]

[theradiodispatch-blog]

[theamericanbear]

This wasn’t supposed to happen. As far back as summer 2010, senior military officials in charge of the [Parwan] detention center [at Bagram air base] boasted to Danger Room outright that by January 2012, they wouldn’t be running the square-mile sized prison. They considered handing the detention center to the Afghans a mark of their own success at fostering a culture of law and order within the Afghan government.

Alas. A year later, the command in charge of the detention center, Joint Task Force-435, admitted that it wouldn’t complete the handoff until the U.S. ended combat in 2014. The reason? “The Afghans don’t have the legal framework or the capacity to deal with violence being inflicted on the country by the insurgency,” an official told the Financial Times.

But the expansion is only going to increase the caseload the Afghans will eventually deal with. This is no minor refurbishment. The Detention Facility at Parwan held 1,000 inmates in August 2010. The $35 million expansion will prepare it to double the detainee population.

That should underscore the amount of fighting still to come in Afghanistan ahead of 2012. Even though much of the U.S. military views Afghanistan as a war with an expiration date — as I learned during a brief trip to Fort Leavenworth, Kan. yesterday, where soldiers referred to the war in the past tense — there will still be 68,000 troops there by summer’s end, and it’s not clear how many troops will leave Afghanistan by 2014.

Nor will 2014 mark the end of the war. The U.S. wants a residual military presence in Afghanistan, keeping troops on bases run by Afghans, as an insurance policy against the country falling apart and to stage the shadow war in Pakistan. The war will become heavy on Special Operations Forces in lieu of conventional troops — and human rights workers allege that the commandos run an unacknowledged torture facility at Parwan.

Even if they don’t, there are few who believe the Afghanistan War is on the cusp of ending, even if the U.S. will — slowly, incompletely — cease waging it. Where there’s war, there’s wartime detentions. And Parwan isn’t the only detention center on the grow: the U.S. is spending up to $100 million building jails across Afghanistan.