Afghanistan = Failure in Progress

[xoxoxoBruce]

The article explains why the coalition is failing in Afghanistan, and will continue to do so.

Today the political block in Sarposa is full again. In fact, it is overfull. When I last visited, there were 707 suspected insurgents living there. The maximum capacity for the entire facility is only 800; as of February, it held 1,550 prisoners. Now that number is certainly much higher. "There has never been so many," General Dawari, the current warden, told me in February. "Every twenty days we receive seventy new prisoners. The government thinks of this prison as a bottomless well." While new prisoners steadily arrive, few leave. Among the 707 suspected insurgents, Dawari said, only thirty-seven had ever appeared in court. "This means the courts and the government don't care," he said.

Dawari had clearly grown disillusioned with the system he'd devoted most of his life to. His son was recently kidnapped and held for more than a month, he received constant threats on his own life, and he lived essentially as a prisoner himself. "Since I've come to Kandahar, I've made many, many enemies," he said. "My house is here in Kandahar in a safe place, but I haven't been home in twenty days, because I'm scared. I stay here day and night. My superiors don't allow me to leave, either. Every day there is new intelligence that there will be an attack on the prison. Once I didn't go home for three months." Despite his sacrifices and his thirty-one years of service, Dawari told me, "tomorrow my fate could be the same as General Mayar's."

Before I left Sarposa, I returned to see Mayar once more. At some point I asked him whether he still believed in the government and justice system he says betrayed him. He thought for a while before answering: "What is unbearable is that so many people have been killed here. My own countrymen and many young Americans and people from other countries have been killed here. They are sacrificing their lives here. But no one is helping with the law." Mayar estimated that "at least 20 to 25 percent" of the Afghans doing time in Sarposa were innocent. The implication, however subtle, was clear: What kind of government has such a legal system? And for what purpose have so many lives been lost protecting such a government?

More