Afghanistan: Obama's Camp Bagram Challenge

The New York Times turns its attention to the US detention facility at Camp Bagram in Afghanistan, the second lengthy article on the prison in the last three days. There are more than twice detainees there than there are at Guantanamo Bay, and the population has increased six-fold in the last four years:

Military personnel who know Bagram and Guantánamo describe the Afghan site as tougher and more spartan. The prisoners have fewer privileges and virtually no access to lawyers. Many are still held communally in big cages. The Bush administration never allowed journalists or human rights advocates inside.

The legal status of the detainees is even murkier than that of counterparts at Guantanamo Bay. Those who are prisoners of war should have been released after the Taliban were removed from power more than seven years ago. Those who are insurgents should have been transferred to Afghan custody. However, because there is still no effective Afghan judicial and security system, the US military won't let the detainees out of Camp Bagram.

Reporter Eric Schmitt notes the upcoming legal challenge: a US judge has given "the Obama administration until Feb. 20 to 'refine' the government’s legal position with respect to four men" challenging their detention under habeas corpus. And he is clear about the forthcoming political decision:

[Obama] must also determine whether to go forward with the construction of a $60 million prison complex at Bagram that, while offering better conditions for the detainees, would also signal a longer-term commitment to the American detention mission.

What Schmitt doesn't say is the obvious. If the US ramps up its military deployment from 30,000 to 60,000 men, Obama won't have any alternative to building Camp Bagram II and keeping the original fully-stocked: there are going to be a lot more "enemy combatants" under US supervision.