Getting Out of the Detention Business in Afghanistan by the Fall of This Year?

The Times has an important story from Alissa Rubin this morning describing the ongoing negotiations between the US and Afghanistan regarding the future of the US presence there.  We have frequently heard that the two big issues clogging the negotiations involved Karzai's desire to end night raids and to have all detention operations immediately handed over.  Today's story in the Times suggests that the US has offered to address the latter concern by turning over detention operations to the Afghans as soon as six months from now.  This obviously presents a range of problems.  Here are the key paragraphs on that front:

However, the challenges to a transfer are enormous, presenting serious security risks both for the Afghan government and American troops. Many of the estimated 3,200 people being detained cannot be tried under Afghan law because the evidence does not meet the legal standards required to be admitted in Afghan courts. Therefore, those people, including some suspected insurgents believed likely to return to the fight if released, would probably have to be released because Afghanistan has no law that allows for indefinite detention for national security reasons. Further, the Americans have a major interrogation and intelligence operation at the detention facility in Parwan, north of Kabul, and any agreement would have to outline a gradual transition of that capability so that the Afghans, as the Americans do now, could use the intelligence gained to mount raids quickly before suspects moved on. In addition, the Americans have obligations under international law not to hand over detainees to a country that uses hardship or torture. Afghanistan’s record in its Interior Ministry jails and its intelligence detention centers is not particularly strong, with detainees in a number of sites complaining of beatings, electric shocks and worse, according to a United Nations report released in the fall. Not yet clear is what happens in the absence of an agreement. It appears that at least for a short period, the Americans could legally continue to run the detention centers and conduct night raids, but the antagonism between the countries over such an approach would most likely only worsen relations.

I fear this will not end well.  I hope that key decisionmakers will recall the mess that we had on our hands in Iraq in connection with Daqduq--i.e., the problem that arises when you want to keep a person incapacitated for the long term but have been counting on just continuing to use an overseas detention facility that one day goes away--and that they are giving very serious thought to disposition options for the set of detainees in Afghanistan who are most dangerous but also least likely to be successfully prosecuted and incarcerated for the long term in the Afghan criminal justice system.   Not that there are many good options on hand, given the state of our politics.  Half of Congress will erupt if anyone new is brought out of Afghanistan into the United States (whether for detention or trial), and half will be just as unhappy should anyone be brought out to GTMO.