WASHINGTON has expressed concern about a plan by the Afghan government of President Hamid Karzai to release scores of prisoners considered by the US to be dangerous, and currently imprisoned in what was the US’ Afghan version of the Guantanamo Bay concentration camp.
The Karzai regime now states that there is not enough evidence against 72 of 88 prisoners, described by the US as ‘dangerous criminals’ and previously held by US forces at the Bagram air base prison.
The release of these prisoners will put an even greater strain on US-Afghan relations, which are now strained to breaking point.
This is after President Karzai refused to sign an agreement that allows some US troops to remain in Afghanistan and to have immunity from prosecution by the Afghan authorities.
Karzai says that he will not sign this treaty until next April, when there will be new Afghan elections and he will cease to be President.
By then the Taleban will have a representation, at the least, in the new parliament and government.
A US spokesman said yesterday: ‘We have expressed our concerns over the possible release of these detainees without their cases being referred to the Afghan criminal justice system.
‘These insurgents could pose threats to the safety and security of the Afghan people and the state.’
The US has already stated that it has evidence implicating all 88 in the deaths or wounding of 60 coalition forces and 57 Afghan forces.
Last week, US senators met President Karzai in Kabul to warn him that any releases from the Parwan Detention Facility at Bagram would be a ‘major step backwards’ for US-Afghan relations.
A statement released by the US last week said it would constitute a breach of a memorandum of understanding agreed between the two sides at the time of the Bagram jail being handed over to the Afghan government.
President Karzai has commented: ‘We cannot allow innocent Afghan citizens to be kept in detention for months and years without a trial for no reason at al. We know that, unfortunately, this has been happening at Bagram, but it is illegal and a violation of Afghan sovereignty and we cannot allow this any more.’
To stop their release, US forces will have to seize the prison and kill the Afghan government forces that are guarding it, an action that would get an immediate response from the entire Afghan people.
In fact, hundreds of prisoners at the Bagram jail have been freed since the Afghan government took over the running of the prison in March 2013, and it became clear that the US and UK imperialists had lost the war.
Karzai will have to live and survive in Afghanistan when the US forces and their British accomplices are long gone.
All his current actions are a form of taking out life insurance for the time when the Taleban either enter the government or move in to form the government.
The US and UK imperialists now face ignominious defeat and even rout, since they have mountains of vastly expensive military equipment that they will have to get out of Afghanistan, perhaps with the entire country against them.
Already, US and British generals are saying publicly that the moment that their withdrawal is under way the Taleban will take over Helmand province, where drug production boomed under British rule, before marching into the centre of Kabul and Kandahar.
If, in fact, the ‘Security and Defence Co-operation Agreement’ remains unsigned between the US and Afghanistan, the US and UK may well have to leave part of their military equipment behind them as they flee.
The US and UK ruling classes have been routed in Afghanistan. The moral for the US and UK workers is that if they can be smashed in Afghanistan they can be removed at home, and their capitalist system replaced with a socialist order of society.
