Karzai’s Ultimatum Complicates U.S. Exit Strategy

President Hamid Karzai’s

denunciation last week of abuses at the main American prison in Afghanistan — and his abrupt demand that Americans cede control of the site within a month — surprised many here. The prison, at Bagram Air Base, is one of the few in the country where Afghan and Western rights advocates say that conditions are relatively humane. American officials, caught off guard by the president’s order, scrambled to figure out the source of the allegations. Now they have at least part of an answer: the Afghan commission that documented the abuses appears to have focused mainly on the side of the prison run by Afghan authorities, not the American-run part, according to interviews with American and Afghan officials. Mr. Karzai was, in essence, demanding that the Americans cede control of a prison to Afghan authorities to stop abuses being committed by Afghan authorities. But the American snickering subsided quickly as it became apparent that the Afghans were not backing off their demand, the officials said, and instead appeared intent on turning it into a test of their national sovereignty. “We have the right to rule on our own soil,” said Gul Rahman Qazi, the chief of the Afghan commission that investigated the prison, at a weekend news conference in which his panel listed accusations of abuses. The matter is exposing the deep vein of mutual mistrust and suspicion that runs beneath the American and Afghan talk of partnership, and officials characterize the prison dispute as a critical complication for the United States’ intent to withdraw from the Afghan war on its own terms. The prison plays a key role in the war effort, housing almost all the detainees that forces from the American-led coalition deem “high value,” including Taliban operatives. Transferring the prison to Afghan control is a central issue in the on-again, off-again negotiations between Washington and Kabul over the shape of the relationship between the two countries after NATO ends combat operations in 2014. “It doesn’t make it easy to keep talking when you’re getting ultimatums,” said an American official who did not want to be identified for fear of straining already delicate relations. “This isn’t a side issue or something that we can just let go and see what happens.” It is the latest — and one of the most serious — case of how increasingly frequent and unilateral outbursts by Mr. Karzai and his allies indicate growing resentment of the Americans, even as he is trying to negotiate some sort of American military support past the 2014 deadline. Afghan and Western officials close to the matter describe Mr. Karzai as increasingly suspicious about being cut out and worked around by the Americans, and anti-Western advisers have been gaining in influence in his circle, for the moment at least, the officials said. They spoke on the condition of anonymity because they did not want to harm relations with the president and one another. That has become apparent in the past two months, as the positive talk heard at an international conference on Afghanistan’s future in Bonn, Germany, has given way to a markedly more hostile tone. Mr. Karzai is again demanding an immediate end to the night commando raids that the United States consider vital to getting at insurgent field commanders. Another presidential commission late last month publicly condemned NATO forces for killing civilians without mentioning that the Taliban killed far more innocents, according to United Nations assessments of Afghan casualties. Mr. Karzai came close last month to disrupting the latest American move to jump-start talks with the Taliban when he abruptly rejected a plan for the Persian Gulf state of Qatar to host an insurgent negotiating office. He has since acquiesced, but his aides say the overtures to the Taliban are another example of the Americans’ trying to sidestep Mr. Karzai’s administration. Statements from the presidential palace about the talks have pointedly made reference to foreigners as the source of Afghanistan’s troubles. Then, on Thursday came the sudden demand for control over the American prison, known as the Parwan Detention Facility. The Americans were given no warning the order was going to be issued. Asked about the timing, Aimal Faizi, a spokesman for Mr. Karzai, said: “It was decided, and then we issued it. I don’t think it is not clear.” American officials planned to meet with the Afghans to discuss the matter on Saturday after a scheduled news conference, waiting to see whether Afghan officials changed their tone. They did not. Mr. Qazi, the chief of the Afghan commission, told reporters that Afghan officials considered transfer of the prison a critical matter of national sovereignty. The commissioners said prisoners had complained of torture, humiliating strip searches, being held in freezing cells and a lack of due process. The commission’s legal adviser, Ahmad Hanif Hanifi, stood and recited a list of suspected abuses during the news conference. But when pressed for details, especially about under whose watch the abuses might have happened, the Afghan officials began backing away. Mr. Qazi acknowledged that “we do not have a lot of information on the details” of what had taken place in the American side of the prison, which the commission visited briefly only on Dec. 27. During an earlier visit, in May, the commission was not given access to the American side of the prison, a statement American officials did not dispute. Despite the lack of details, Mr. Qazi said, “what has happened there will become clear” in time. Afterward, the commission’s deputy chief, Abdul Qader Adalatkhah, said in a brief interview that most of the abuses documented so far were from the Afghan side of the prison. No matter, he said, there are “problems in the international side,” as well. He would not elaborate. Despite the tenor of the news conference, a Western official said the meeting later Saturday between Afghan and American officials about the prison had been “productive.” The official would not provide details. Built as part of the Obama administration’s revamping of American detention facilities and policies, the $60 million prison abuts Bagram Air Base, one of the main coalition bases in the country. It replaced an older prison that was housed in a Soviet-era machinery hangar inside Bagram and was the site of well-documented abuse cases. Conditions at the new prison are markedly better, according to independent Afghan and Western assessments, although arbitrary detentions and a lack of due process remain serious problems. It is unclear how the Afghan officials will proceed in pressing their authority to take control of the prison. Whether they have the capacity is another question. The Americans have been slowly training Afghan guards and administrators, but the efforts are said to be behind schedule. Mr. Faizi, the presidential spokesman, brushed aside concerns about Afghan readiness. He said the government was only sticking to an agreed upon plan to hand over the prison by the end of 2011. Yet, even that is in dispute. American officials said there was never a hard deadline. An internal Afghan government document about the prison in 2010, obtained by The New York Times, appears to back up their point. “The transition will be based on demonstration of capacity rather than a specific time table,” the document reads. It is signed by a number of government officials, including the minister of defense, Abdul Rahim Wardak. American officials said they believed the prison’s fate would ultimately be decided in the talks on the so-called strategic partnership document, which is intended to spell out the relationship between Afghanistan and the United States after 2014. The next round of talks has not yet been scheduled.