US-Afghan row over inmate shift deepens

The US refusal to turn over about 40 Afghan detainees to Kabul government, as previously agreed, and Afghan president’s angry reaction to the breach has prompted the top American commander in Afghanistan to beef up security measures.

The dispute over the transfer of the Afghan inmates held by the US military in the country, amid a persisting American demand for legal immunity for its forces in Afghanistan, has further disrupted negotiations between Kabul and Washington over a so-called long-term security agreement, allowing US to maintain a military presence there after 2014, The Washington Post reports on Friday.

While the US refuses to turn over what it deems as especially dangerous inmates unless official Afghanistan guarantees to keep them in prison, Afghan President Hamid Karzai has lashed out that Washington is breaking an agreement on transfer of prisoners from its Bagram military base in the country to Afghan authorities.

Karzai further warned on Tuesday that his government may act to take over the US-run prison at the military air base, where the Afghan inmates, captured and imprisoned by American troops there without charges or trials, are being held.

The Afghan president has also accused the invading American troops of torturing Afghan civilians and colluding with radical Taliban militants in a bid to further prolong its war in Afghanistan.

Meanwhile, there is already opposition “in some quarters” in Washington to accepting the cost for “continued operations in Afghanistan, according to the report, which further cites a “senior administration official” as saying that Karzai’s intransigence “is going to diminish our support at home.”

This is while the top US commander in Afghanistan General Joseph Dunford ordered his troops on Wednesday to intensify security measures out of fears that Karzai’s remarks may generate “a greater risk of attack from rogue Afghan security forces and insurgents,” the report says.

Moreover, while American officials complain that the Afghan president has linked US acceptance of Afghanistan’s legal sovereignty with Washington’s demand that Kabul grant legal immunity to American forces within its borders after a major troop withdrawal in 2014, Karzai’s spokesman Aimal Faizi has emphasized that the “lack of trust” displayed by the US over the prisoners and other issues “certainly will have a negative impact on the Bilateral Security Agreement (BSA).”

The daily cites American officials as saying that those inmates the US refuses to turn over to Afghanistan are considered by the US military as “enduring security threats” and “likely to return to battlefield if released.”

They further note that there is not enough “unclassified evidence” to convict the American-held captives under Afghan law, “which means they could go free if transferred to Afghan control,” the report adds.

The daily also reveals that a “verbal agreement” to turn over the high-threat prisoners was reached during Karzai’s January visit to Washington, however, “with explicit mention of the larger issue of immunity for US troops.”

“In exchange for us finally granting respect of his sovereignty he was looking for,” a senior administration official is quoted as saying, Karzai agreed to an immunity provision and “finally said yes, you’re going to get your BSA.”

However, when Afghan and US officials came back together in Kabul “to put the prisoner accord in writing,” they tried to “find a way to guarantee that the high-risk detainees would remain in custody” but ‘failed to come up with language that was acceptable to Karzai.”

According to the report, the prisoner transfer was scheduled for March 8, but “the US military command called it off after Karzai refused to sign the written version of the transfer agreement.”

Meanwhile, the report adds, plans on how many US soldiers to keep in Afghanistan remains unclear, although the head of the US Central Command, Gen. James Mattis proposed to members of Congress last week that nearly 20,000 military forces, including 13,600 American and 6,000 NATO troops remain in the war-torn nation, considerably more than what the Obama administration is reportedly considering.