Petraeus Discusses Future of Afghan Detainees

PARWAN PROVINCE, Afghanistan, Sept. 28, 2010 — The top U.S. com­man­der in Afghanistan toured the U.S. Deten­tion Facil­i­ty here yes­ter­day, and dis­cussed his vision for deten­tion oper­a­tions in Afghanistan.

Army Gen. David Petraeus, Inter­na­tion­al Secu­ri­ty Assis­tance Force and U.S. Forces-Afghanistan com­man­der, meets with an Afghan Nation­al Army sol­dier who works at the deten­tion facil­i­ty in Par­wan, Afghanistan, Sept. 27, 2010. The facil­i­ty is oper­at­ed by more than 100 Afghan sol­diers and 1,200 mil­i­tary mem­bers from the U.S. Army, U.S. Air Force, U.S. Navy and U.S. Marine Corps guard force, med­ical and legal sup­port fields. More than 600 addi­tion­al Afghan sol­diers are being trained for their assump­tion of guard force respon­si­bil­i­ties. U.S. Air Force pho­to by Senior Air­man William A. O’Brien Click to enlarge

“When I took com­mand of Multi­na­tion­al Force-Iraq in Feb­ru­ary 2007, we still had Camp Buc­ca with 17,000 detainees at that time and it grew larg­er,” said Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, com­man­der, Inter­na­tion­al Secu­ri­ty Assis­tance Force and com­man­der, U.S. Forces Afghanistan. “We still had all of the detainees in huge enclo­sures. It was just fenced-in enclo­sures of about 800 to 900 detainees per enclo­sure. Obvi­ous­ly, we have come a long way since then.” 

Com­bined Joint Inter­a­gency Task Force-435, in part­ner­ship with the Gov­ern­ment of the Islam­ic Repub­lic of Afghanistan, and U.S. inter­a­gency and inter­na­tion­al part­ners, con­ducts oper­a­tions in deten­tion, cor­rec­tions, the judi­cial sec­tor and bio­met­rics. Next year the CJIATF will tran­si­tion deten­tion oper­a­tions to Afghan con­trol while part­ner­ing with Afghan author­i­ties to pro­mote rule of law practices. 

Petraeus said his team had imple­ment­ed job train­ing and reha­bil­i­ta­tion pro­grams, rou­tine detainee review boards, inte­gra­tion of host nation legal activ­i­ties, and shuras, or meet­ings, to get com­mu­ni­ties to re-embrace detainees when they were released. 

“All that began a good bit of what you see today,” said Petraeus, who was joined by his deputy com­man­der for deten­tion oper­a­tions, U.S. Navy Vice Adm. Robert Har­ward, com­man­der, Com­bined Joint Inter­a­gency Task Force-435. 

Petraeus said when he left Iraq and assumed com­mand of U.S. Cen­tral Com­mand in 2008, one of his first acts was to send U.S. Marine Corps Maj. Gen. Dou­glas Stone to sur­vey the deten­tion oper­a­tions sit­u­a­tion in Afghanistan. Now retired, Stone served as Petraeus’ deputy com­man­der for deten­tion oper­a­tions in Iraq. 

“He came back in the spring of 2009 and had a num­ber of rec­om­men­da­tions — a num­ber of those have led to what you have seen right here,” said Petraeus. Parwan’s state-of-the-art the­ater intern­ment facil­i­ty opened in Decem­ber 2009. 

Petraeus said the focus was ini­tial­ly on detainee oper­a­tions, which, over time, expand­ed to train­ing Afghans to take on deten­tion facil­i­ty tasks. 

In Jan­u­ary 2010, Afghan gov­ern­ment offi­cials signed a mem­o­ran­dum of under­stand­ing that guides the process for the Afghan Min­istry of Defense to take the lead on assum­ing respon­si­bil­i­ty for the Par­wan deten­tion facility. 

In the memo key min­istries agreed to iden­ti­fy and assign per­son­nel to staff the facil­i­ty, work­ing along­side Amer­i­can per­son­nel through the tran­si­tion process. Cur­rent­ly more than 160 Afghan sol­diers have com­plet­ed required train­ing and joined the 1,200 U.S. ser­vice­mem­bers who make up the guard force. Anoth­er 600 ANA sol­diers are cur­rent­ly in train­ing to join their Afghan and U.S. counterparts. 

The deten­tion facility’s design accom­mo­dates detainee rein­te­gra­tion efforts and enables CJIATF-435 to bet­ter align deten­tion oper­a­tions with the over­all strat­e­gy to defeat the extrem­ist insur­gency in Afghanistan. 

“This is about doing it right. And I real­ly mean that,” Petraeus said. “The fact is that what we want­ed to do was do it properly.” 

Dur­ing his tour of the deten­tion facil­i­ty, Petraeus received a brief­ing on detainee rein­te­gra­tion pro­grams and he also vis­it­ed the detainee agri­cul­ture train­ing area. Eli­gi­ble detainees at the facil­i­ty may par­tic­i­pate in lit­er­a­cy and edu­ca­tion­al pro­grams. Ear­li­er this year rein­te­gra­tion offi­cials at the deten­tion facil­i­ty imple­ment­ed voca­tion­al train­ing for eli­gi­ble detainees includ­ing bread mak­ing, agri­cul­ture and tailoring. 

Rein­te­gra­tion, under Petraeus’ coun­terin­sur­gency strat­e­gy, includes remov­ing Afghan fight­ers by bring­ing those will­ing to renounce vio­lence and accept the Afghan con­sti­tu­tion back into their com­mu­ni­ties with hon­or and dig­ni­ty. It is about cre­at­ing con­di­tions through com­mu­ni­ty-based pro­grams, pub­lic pro­tec­tion, and sus­tain­able eco­nom­ic oppor­tu­ni­ties so fight­ers have incen­tives to live peace­ful­ly and return to their communities. 

As part of ongo­ing efforts to eval­u­ate the effec­tive­ness of rein­te­gra­tion pro­grams, last week, Har­ward and CJIATF-435’s Afghan Deputy Com­man­der, Maj. Gen. Mar­jan Shu­ja, met with mem­bers of the Afghan gov­ern­ment, com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers and 22 for­mer detainees to dis­cuss rein­te­gra­tion suc­cess­es and chal­lenges for the released men. 

Petraeus said he has seen progress in the short time since the Par­wan deten­tion facil­i­ty opened and imple­ment­ed rein­te­gra­tion and reha­bil­i­ta­tion pro­grams for detainees. 

“The recidi­vism rates so far on those who have been released are very low indeed,” the gen­er­al said. 

Source:
U.S. Depart­ment of Defense
Office of the Assis­tant Sec­re­tary of Defense (Pub­lic Affairs) 

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