Defining Detention

Imagine you're a high ranking US officer, an ex-Navy SEAL, who now has the less glamorous role of sorting out your country’s detention strategy in Afghanistan. Over the last eight and a half years your troops have picked up thousands of people, most of whom have either been released or handed over to the Afghan authorities, but you’ve still got a bunch of long-term prisoners whom you’re not quite sure what to do with. Your boss has made you aware, in no uncertain terms, that so far the handling of detentions has been a disaster: it’s led to increased radicalization inside prison and increased distrust of America outside it. To make matters worse, journalists and human rights organizations are always going on about deaths in custody, torture, abuses, secret detention, lack of judicial process and so forth.

You’ve just spent $60 million on a new building on Bagram Airbase to put your prisoners in and you really need to get some positive stories out there, so you break with tradition and invite the press in to have a look round. Unfortunately they don't just come and look, they also ask questions. It's annoying but it goes with the job. They're saying that apart from the nice new building, you've got another facility, a separate one on the same site which you don’t acknowledge. They're saying that they've interviewed, not one or two, but numerous ex-prisoners who passed through this site. These ex-prisoners are all giving remarkably similar accounts: they talk about being kept naked, cold, deprived of sleep for long periods. The journalists say that you use this secret site to interrogate – wait, let’s not call it that, let’s say – to “screen” prisoners, away from the gaze of the Red Cross, in manners that perhaps approximate to the notorious CIA “enhanced interrogation” and secret detention programme that President Obama shut down at the start of 2009. What do you say? Well, your conversation might go something like this:

Journalist: We’ve been over the last few months talking to a number of prisoners who’ve come out of the detention facility here. The majority of them say that these abuses took place in what they refer to as the Tor jail which …
Commander: The what jail?
Journalist: The Tor jail…
Commander: I never even heard of that phrase!
Journalist: … which translates as the “black jail”.
Commander: Let me tell you: this is the only US Detention Facility in Afghanistan. Period.’
Journalist: These prisoners have told us consistently, in interviews that were carried out in separate rooms, in separate locations, consistently, that the cells in this Tor jail measure about two metres by two metres, and they’ve told us consistent stories of abuses which include extensive sleep deprivation, extensive isolation, nudity…
Commander: Under the US? No. No. Does not exist. This is the only US Detention Facility in Afghanistan. Period.
Journalist: Is there any kind of screening facility that the detainees go through before they come to this centre?
Commander: The way … I don’t … Do you all understand how the process … If someone’s captured in the country they go to a Field Detention Site.
Journalist: Are there any of these Field Detention Sites here on the Bagram Airbase?
Commander: There are Field Detention Sites throughout Afghanistan, I’m not allowed to say where they are because they’d be attacked, they’re very small, so this is the only Detention Facility in Afghanistan.
Journalist: So if there is such a place you’re saying you wouldn’t call it a Detention Facility?
Commander: We have multiple, I’m saying there’re eight or so.
Journalist: So you’re saying there could be a Field Detention Site on the base but you’re not allowed to talk about it?
Commander: No, that’s not what I’m saying at all, I’m saying we have Field Detention Sites, we do not disclose where they’re at.

It’s quite simple really. Those who are in detention are those who are in the detention facility. Those who are held elsewhere – a field site or somewhere else – aren’t in the detention facility, so logically they aren’t in detention.

If you can maintain this position it can get you out of a lot of difficulties. For example, you could say something like “All detainees under my command have access to the International Red Cross” and not be inaccurate. Some detainees might not be under your command. And some prisoners  might not be “detained”: they’re just being “screened” for a few days, or weeks, or … but let’s not talk about them.