The Afghan government has moved to release 80 percent of the high-security detainees who were handed over this year by the US military and evaluated by an Afghan review panel, according to a US Defence Department report released on Friday.
Many of the recommendations for release have been opposed by the US military on the grounds that the detainees, some of whom were apprehended in dangerous raids of insurgent redoubts, pose an ongoing risk to Afghan security forces and government officials. US officials had hoped the Afghan review board would endorse continued incarceration, but it has decided instead to free most of the detainees whose cases it has examined on the grounds that insufficient evidence was collected to prosecute them in court.
The US military transferred authority for operating a high-security, American-built prison near Kabul to the Afghan government this year. The handover included 880 Afghan detainees accused of conducting insurgent attacks and other serious crimes.
The review panel has examined 461 detainees and recommended prosecution in 77 cases, according to the report. The other detainees were recommended for release.
Detentions have been a long-festering source of tension in President Hamid Karzai’s relationship with the US. He and his advisers have maintained that US and NATO forces have swept up many innocent Afghans in their raids.
The report, a semiannual Pentagon assessment of the war provided to Congress, also noted that the US military now has fewer than 40,000 troops in Afghanistan. The military has shuttered 290 of 349 bases in the country and reduced its stockpiles of materiel by about 45 percent, the report said.
Afghan security forces now conduct 95 percent of all conventional military operations in the country. The US drawdown and the growth of the Afghan army has been reflected in combat injuries and deaths: Afghan casualties have increased by 79 percent over the past six months, while US casualties have fallen by 59 percent, according to the report.
The increase in Afghan casualties has helped to fuel a significant increase in the number of people leaving the Afghan security forces. One in three soldiers has quit or deserted over the past 12 months, the Pentagon found.
