The prisoner deal capped a violent week . An Afghan teacher brought in to teach basic reading and writing to Afghan security forces, along with two Afghan soldiers, turned guns on American soldiers today, killing two, NATO officials said. Days later, a U.S. soldier walked off his base in Afghanistan and opened fire on local villagers Sunday, Afghan and U.S. officials said, killing 16 people.
The weekend killings come on the heels of the accidental burning of Qurans at a U.S. military base. The action sparked a wave of violent protests that left scores of Afghans and six Americans dead.
During a phone call of apology from President Obama to Karzai, the Afghan president is quoted as having told the president he doesn't trust the Americans.
Meanwhile, US public enthusiasm for the war is reaching new lows. A sizable majority of Americans are telling polling organizations they don't think the war was worth fighting.
Obama has announced a time-table in which all US and NATO troops will be out of Afghanistan by 2014. Other senior administration officials have suggested the pullout might come earlier than that.
Most human rights organizations and prisoner advocacy groups take the view that the Afghan Government does not possess the professional and technical resources, much less the discipline, to supervise a prison housing more than 3,000 people.
In fact, Human Rights Watch (HRW) believes that "greater police involvement in jails is likely to lead to more torture, not less." This is the view of HRW's Asia Director, Brad Adams.
Despite Karzai's insistence on the transfer of all prisoners to Afghan control, "Criminal justice in Afghanistan will not be improved by giving the police free rein of the prisons," said Adams.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
