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BAGRAM AIR FIELD, Afghanistan – Walking out of the new detention center and out into the dusty courtyard, I’ve got one final question for Gen. Mark Martins, one rooted in the U.S.' post-9/11 history of detainee abuse: Is this all there is? Or, stripped to its subtext: Do you have any hidden torture chambers; and if so, can we pop in?
Martins, the Army one-star responsible for the day-to-day operations of the complex known as the Detention Facility In Parwan, drove from Kabul to escort me on a 90-minute tour of the place. His objective is plain: convince an American journalist that the abuse associated with the old detention site at Bagram is a relic of the past. Martins has moved me through Parwan briskly. But now he gets very deliberate.
Entering the back seat of the SUV that'll take us back within Bagram's main gates, Martins looks me in the eye. "You have looked at everything," he says.
For nearly a year, human rights groups have had trouble believing him. Ever since the New York Times reported that Bagram has an off-the-books, closed-to-the-Red-Cross detention center, there's been continued suspicions that the U.S.’s legacy of torture has survived President Obama’s January 2009 executive order banning undisclosed "Black Site" prisons. Those suspicions accelerated after the BBC claimed to have confirmed with the International Committee of the Red Cross in May that the new Parwan center has a "Black Jail." Human Rights Watch speculated in June that the military now calls it a "transit facility" to throw reporters and humanitarian monitors off the scent.
But Martins is categorical. "There are no black sites," he says. "There is not a 'transit facility.'" There are, however, "field detention sites" to which U.S. troops bring Afghans shortly after immediate battlefield capture, holding them for "a small number of days" before either releasing detainees or sending them on to Parwan. But, he says, those adhere to the Geneva Conventions as much as Parwan does. And they’re not a surprise to anyone: "All [field detention centers] are known to the Afghan government. All field detention sites are known to the ICRC," using the acronym for the International Committee of the Red Cross.
The ICRC backs Martins. Red Cross Simon Schorno tells Danger Room that the group "is notified by the United States of persons arrested by its forces in the framework of the armed conflict in Afghanistan, regardless of the structures in which they are being held. This has been routine practice since August 2009 and helps us monitor the fate of persons detained until they leave U.S. custody." That includes access "to detainees at U.S.-run field detention sites in Afghanistan," which the ICRC has had "since the beginning of 2008," though "the frequency of our visits to these sites varies."
But even if there's not a "Black Jail" at Parwan beyond the eyes of the Red Cross, that doesn't resolve the question of detainee treatment at Parwan – or what it'll be next year, after the Afghans take control.
Parwan opened its $60 million doors to detainees earlier this year, even as the U.S. announced plans to transition it to Afghan control in 2011. And despite the suspicions about continued detainee abuse in Afghanistan, the military wants to show Parwan off. (Within limits: I'm not permitted to photograph it.) Located within a square mile on the outskirts of Bagram, it centers around four large housing blocs, some of which are shaped like aircraft hangars, that currently hold slightly more than 1000 detainees. (Current Gitmo population: 176.) They stay at Parwan for an average of 22 months and they're out of their cells an average of 27 hours a week. The majority of them live communally, though there's a Special Housing Unit of 104 individual cells for the "uncooperative" ones.
The SHU, as it's called, feels like lockdown. Within the solid metal doors of a cell, there's a plexiglass ceiling with a camera in one corner for the guards, who monitor the facilities at all times. There's a western-style toilet in the cell, as well as a prayer rug, an arrow pointing the way to Mecca and a mattress placed on the ground. Outside the cells are placards indicating what earned its resident a stay. COMMUNICATING A THREAT, one reads, with ASSAULT ON A STAFF MEMBER outside the next door.
Outside the SHU, in the Bravo bloc, is the darkened hallway of interrogation booths. It's dark in order to prevent detainees from seeing through the one-way glass, even as tiny cameras allow analysts to discreetly peer in. A table and three folding chairs are the only furniture.
Martins emphasizes that all interrogations comply with the 2005 Detainee Treatment Act, the Geneva Conventions and the updated 2006 Army field manual on interrogations (PDF) that's supposed to prevent future Abu Ghraibs. But the 2006 manual has come under fire from human-rights critics and anti-torture military interrogators for embedding what they consider abuse into its pages. Its Appendix M authorizes a technique called "Separation," in which a detainee gets removed from the general population "to keep him from learning counter-resistance techniques."
Martins acknowledges that Separation occurs at Parwan on "a small fraction" of detainees. As he tells it, it's an emergency technique that occurs within strict oversight. Separation needs to be "approved by a general officer," with specifics about how long interrogators will apply it, and alongside "what other techniques." Interrogators can use it for up to 30 days, but interrogation sessions employing separation occur "no more than a couple hours at a time," he says. That's intended to prevent Separation from shading into banned techniques like sensory deprivation or isolation. But it's not clear to me how different Separation and isolation really are.
Just outside the blocs, there's a big tent for hosting "reintegration" meetings with family and community leaders before a detainee is released. Near the entrance, there's a small plastic jungle gym for their kids to romp around when they visit. Literacy programs and the presence of moderate religious leaders at Parwan help refute insurgents' calls to violence couched in Islamic terms. It's part of Martins' efforts to win what he calls the "most important six inches of counterinsurgency – between the ears."
He doesn't have much time. Parwan isn't supposed to stay a U.S. military facility for long. Sometime next year, the Afghan Ministry of Defense will take control – a bureaucratic placeholder until the Ministry of Justice runs the place in 2014. At that point, Parwan won't be a detention center, where enemy fighters are held, according to the law of armed conflict, without charge. It'll be a jail, where prisoners serve their time after being sentenced according to a court of law – or what passes for it in Afghanistan.
That gives human rights groups pause. "The Afghan police and intelligence services are notorious for not treating prisoners humanely," says Daphne Eviatar of Human Rights First – full disclosure: a former colleague of mine at the Washington Independent – in an email. "So how the U.S. government plans to turn people over to the Afghans... and also meet its obligations to not hand prisoners over to governments where they'd likely face abuse and torture, is a big question."
The U.S. military's answer? Training. Would-be Afghan guards get 21 weeks' worth of instruction in "humane, effective, and legitimate detention operations that comply with Afghan and international law," says Navy Captain Pamela Kunze, a spokeswoman for the detention facility, before they start training alongside U.S. guards. Over 700 guards are currently in the training pipeline, with more on the way.
Training is one thing, but there's a higher-level policy decision that still awaits the U.S. and the Afghans: what to do about the acknowledged "less than 50" non-Afghans – mostly Pakistanis – caught up at Parwan, some of whom come from countries that torture their prisoners, complicating the U.S.'s ability to repatriate them under international law. All Martins says about them is that the U.S. is "committed to not having the Afghans deal with them alone."
Another unsettled issue is what happens to the U.S.' ability to detain Afghan insurgents once Parwan falls under Afghan control. "Soldiers must be given the opportunity to detain" during wartime, Martins says. But it remains to be seen how much of an impediment Afghan control of Parwan, operating under a law-enforcement framework, will present for the U.S.'s continuing ability to perform precisely those detention operations.
Those detention operations, by law and by policy, are supposed to be fully compliant with the Geneva Conventions. While the ICRC confirms that it has access to all detainees, it won’t publicly disclose anything about their treatment, in keeping with the group’s traditional bargain of trading access for confidentiality. "All our observations on conditions of detention and treatment of detainees are confidential and part of our ongoing confidential dialogue with the detaining authorities," Schorno says.
Other humanitarian groups aren't so sure. "We have not been allowed to interview the detainees," says Human Rights Watch’s Andrea Prasow, who visited Parwan in June, "so it is impossible for us to fairly assess the prison and its conditions."
As we drive back to the thin layer of Bagram gates separating the Parwan facility from the main air field – which will close for good after the Afghans control the detention center – Martins offers a bottom line. "We will continue to comply with the law," Martins says, whether at the field detention sites or at Parwan. "If that’s 'Black,' I think that’s not a particularly helpful use of language."
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