Source: Reuters (Blogs)
Author: Sanjeev Miglani
As in any conflict, the prisoners that the players in Afghanistan hold are a key part of their political and military strategy as they head into 2014. For the United States, the more Taliban fighters or even potential Taliban are kept off the battlefield, the better it is. For years it has been running a regime of administrative detentions under which it can hold not only suspected combatants but even people it thinks could be a potential threat for an indefinite period.
For the Taliban, getting its commanders out has been a top priority and indeed its officials say securing the release of some of them held in Guantanamo is the starting point of the talks that it has had with the United States for more than a year now. A former frontline commander and cousin of the Taliban’s main negotiator in the talks with the United States told me in an interview that the Taliban would resume the negotiations only when the United States carried out its promise to release five senior Taliban figures held in the U.S. military prison in Cuba. A prison committee is ready with the names of more comrades that it wants freed.
For the Afghan administration, which wants the Americans to hand over Afghan detainees, it has long been an issue that impinges on the sovereignty of the nation when it cannot tell its own people where the prisoners are or when will they be freed because they are not in their control. But even more than that, as the administration faces up to to the formidable challenge of looking after its own security, control of the prisoners is a bargaining chip with the Taliban.
Categories: Afghanistan, Americas, Politics
The Internal Audit Director of the Election Commission of Iraq was held by the Americans in jail for 6 months. How did it happen? At the time of his arrest he was Finance Director in a Private Company. Among other things they imported bananas. They had gas cylinders, because the morning when the bananas went to the market they were ‘greened’ a bit by gas heat. A competitor wanted to get them out of the way. So they informed the Americans that ‘that company is actually a terrorist outfit: look at the gas cylinders’. The Americans duly arrested the all the employees of the banana importer. It took them six months to admit their mistake.
I would assume that in Afghanistan things are similar. One war lord wants to get rid of his competition – and the Americans are complying (as they do not really know what is going on in the country).