[Ppnews] Inside America's Second Guantanamo: Bagram Airfield, Afghanistan's "Black Jail"

[Political Prisoner News]

    Inside America's Second Guantanamo: Bagram Airfield, Afghanistan's
    "Black Jail"

    * Christopher Blakeley
      <http://www.policymic.com/profiles/63681/christopher-blakeley>
    * http://www.policymic.com/articles/58461/inside-america-s-second-guantanamo-bagram-airfield-afghanistan-s-black-jail

The prison in Guantanamo Bay has been a symbol of the War on Terror, a 
perverse enactment of justice upon those who attacked us on 9/11. Though 
the legal justification for the Bush-era institution is convoluted, it's 
not the only evolving relic of our overseas interventions in the Middle 
East.

Take Bagram Airfield <http://www.bagram.afcent.af.mil>, which currently 
houses over 65 Afghan prisoners 
<http://www.newser.com/story/172049/us-cant-close-bagram-either.html> 
who have been affiliated with Al-Qaeda, yet not formally charged with 
anything. With American troops leaving in 2014 
<http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2013/08/01/afghanistan-nangarhar/2578697/>, 
their fate is uncertain.

If Guantanamo has taught us anything, it's that our overseas 
interventions have serious ethical quandaries and dangerous 
consequences. These not only cost us financially, but strike at the 
morality of the legal relationship 
<http://www.nbcnews.com/id/6889654/ns/us_news-security/t/guantanamo-detentions-ruled-unconstitutional/> that 
Americans have with our government.

Bagram, also known as the "Black Jail" by local Afghans, is located 
about seven miles from Charikar in the Parwan Province of Afghanistan, 
one of the secured provinces in the country. Most attacks by insurgents 
in the area rely on roadside bombs or grenade attacks. The prison itself 
consists of windowless, concrete cells that are illuminated by a single 
lightbulb 
<http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/07/28/1226996/-A-Report-on-the-Black-Jail-at-Bagram%23>. 
The detainees have no human contact, except for two interrogation 
sessions per day. Other detainees claim to have been held in solitary 
confinement, photographed naked, and deprived of sleep 
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/27/AR2009112703438.html?hpid=topnews>.

If we are going to detain prisoners on foreign soil during a military 
occupation, they should have the right to legal process we have reserved 
for both citizens and non-citizens alike. The Bush administration's John 
Yoo successfully argued 
<http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/torture/interviews/yoo.html> 
that the Geneva Conventions do not apply to "enemy combatants" or 
individuals in country-less organizations like Al-Qaeda. In a positive 
and often forgotten action in 2009 
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/13/AR2009031302371.html>, 
the Obama administration retired that term, but still retained a broad 
"right to detain" those who provide assistance to Al-Qaeda and its 
associates around the globe.

This designation, while not specifically identifying any Islamic 
organization, could reasonably affect anyone in contact with a mosque or 
a madrasa. In light of the fact that the NSA has made it clear it needs 
the haystack to find the needle 
<http://reason.com/blog/2013/07/19/why-spy-on-everybody-because-you-need-th> 
in surveillance of the enemy, there should be serious concerns. The 
definition is so broad; it is meaningless.

This doesn't bode well for future foes of American foreign policy, both 
abroad and at home. While these detainees aren't "enemy combatants," 
they are still in murky legal territory.

It appears that the Obama administration doesn't have any really decent 
options, but they have three realistic choices: turn them over to 
Karzai's government, try them as soon as possible and unfairly, or 
transfer them to another location for further uncertainty.

Karzai has made it clear that he doesn't like U.S.-run prisons, but was 
under agreement to let the Americans run it until 2014 
<http://www.newser.com/story/172049/us-cant-close-bagram-either.html>. 
What happens to the detainees afterwards will probably be less severe if 
the first option is chosen. The second option is logistically unfeasible 
since it's August already. Therefore, the third choice is the most 
likely scenario. After all, the United States has network of domestic 
terrorism prisons 
<http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/11/us/beyond-guantanamo-bay-a-web-of-federal-prisons.html?_r=2&hp&> and 
undocumented immigrant prisons 
<http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2010/02/pris-f01.html>. If those don't 
work, we can siphon them off to other countries like the Obama 
administration did a couple of weeks ago when he transferred two 
detainees from Guantanamo to Algeria 
<http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/07/26/obama-administration-to-transfer-two-gitmo-detainees-to-algeria-as-part-of-presidents-goal-of-closing-the-prison/>.

But what the Obama administration does with those at Bagram may well be 
a precursor to his ever-verbalized desire to close Guantanamo, the 
prison in Cuba which currently houses 166 inmates and is currently 
enduring a waining hunger strike over indefinite detention 
<http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/07/31/us-usa-guantanamo-hunger-idUSBRE96U1FZ20130731>. 
The strike seems to be tapering off due to a pardon allowing prisoners 
to be with one another for the holy month of Ramadan. The irony of a 
country that espouses religious freedom not allowing people in prison to 
practice their religion is one that continues to be pervasive in the way 
we prosecute the War on Terror.

The reasons there is such uncertainty around these inmates is because in 
our rush to create a whole new kind of global conflict in the War on 
Terror, the country never stopped to ask ourselves the legal questions 
involved 
<http://www.theguardian.com/law/2013/aug/01/fisa-court-bill-us-senate>. 
As a result, Americans are stuck with the same issue that a drunken 
college student has the following morning: that glaring uncertainty 
about the repercussions of your actions, since you aren't quite sure 
what they caused. Until there is a publicly available, clearly defined 
legal process 
<http://www.foxnews.com/world/2013/06/14/guantanamo-court-holds-secret-session-without-accused-or-disclosing-subject/> 
on how America is going to deal with these situations, and our enemies 
both foreign and domestic, we will sit in this state of Orwellian limbo.

Obama would do an historic move if he were to step forward and present 
such a vision. He should clearly define the boundaries and rationale for 
trying these individuals and what their crimes are. Another extremely 
important question that must be answered is the role of religion in this 
process. The focus of the War on Terror has been squarely on Islamic 
terrorism, but what happens if there's another threat? Do the same legal 
rules apply? If Obama were to step up and provide a clear, human rights 
<http://www.policymic.com/articles/18987/obama-humans-rights-violations-we-must-demand-accountability-in-the-encore-term> 
based proposal, he would take a great step forward to ending key 
portions of our massive overseas interventions and illegal practices. He 
could, at least in one situation 
<http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/23/opinion/the-forgotten-victims-of-obamas-drone-war.html>, 
be a champion of global human rights. Providing such legal ideas 
shouldn't be that hard for a former constitutional law professor 
<http://www.factcheck.org/2008/03/obama-a-constitutional-law-professor/>.

-- 
Freedom Archives 522 Valencia Street San Francisco, CA 94110 415 
863.9977 www.freedomarchives.org
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://freedomarchives.org/pipermail/ppnews_freedomarchives.org/attachments/20130808/88e17fd3/attachment.htm>