On the tail end of Pres.
Obama’s trip throughout the Middle East, Secretary of State John Kerry made his
first trip to Afghanistan in his new position, during which he announced the
turnover of Bagram Prison (or Parwan Detention Center, as it’s now known) to
Afghan control. The detention center has been a hotspot in US-Afghanistan
relations since President Karzai began his repeated demands for the prison and
associated air base to be placed under Afghan jurisdiction during President
Obama’s first term. Yet during Pres. George W. Bush’s terms in office, Bagram
was infamous for more than causing political tensions: it was known as the
“Afghan Guantanamo,” a stopover spot for suspected terrorists to be vetted
before they went to Cuba. Allegations of torture and other inhumane treatment
abounded from prisoners, many of who were later cleared of any wrongdoing.
Prisoners and guards inside Bagram. Source: AP
The New York Times brought
national attention to the mistreatment of prisoners in Bagram when it published
a 2005 investigation into the 2002 deaths of two detainees: Habibullah and
Dilawar. Both men suffered extreme beatings at the hands of US service members
who were both undertrained and undersupervised as they reached beyond the
bounds of acceptable interrogations. Their methods of full-body suspension,
threats with attack dogs, sleep deprivation, peroneal strikes, and more would
later turn up in the case files at Abu Ghraib. In many ways,
Bagram appears to have been the staging ground for many interrogators' later
careers in the Gulf. While Habibullah was almost certainly guilty of supporting
terrorists, Dilawar turned out to be a hapless taxi driver who was simply in
the wrong place at the wrong time, and died for it. Several US military
personnel were charged for the deaths, yet if the torture was systemic (as it appears to have been), it will
take more than uprooting a few bad seeds to fix the problem.
