It's impossible to determine the degree to which fear and resentment of U.S. detention policies drives Taliban recruiting efforts; night raids, air strikes, frightening checkpoint encounters, and the U.S. role in enabling Karzai's corrupt government undoubtedly also play a role in inspiring armed resistance to what many Afghans view as foreign occupation. But it seems reasonable to assume that Afghan unhappiness with U.S. detention policy is part of that picture.
We thus have to weigh the potential costs associated with releasing Afghan prisoners -- some of whom will likely "return to the battlefield" -- against the potential costs of not releasing them. These costs include the distinct possibility that our continued detention of thousands of Afghans could inspire just as many new Taliban recruits.
This logic seems to have finally won out, as evidenced by this week's transfer of authority for the Parwan detention facility to the Afghans. But the fear of recidivism hasn't fully receded: According to the New York Times, the long impasse over Parwan was resolved only when U.S. officials received "private assurances" that Afghanistan would continue to detain those prisoners viewed as most dangerous by the United States.
"As of today, we don't have prisoners," Secretary of State John Kerry said on Monday. "Whatever is occurring here is under the control of the Afghan people." But Kerry forgot to mention that we didn't turn all detainees over to the Afghans: the Washington Post reports that even with the nominal transfer of Parwan to Afghan control, the United States continues to detain several dozen Afghan nationals deemed to pose "enduring security threats," along with a similar number of non-Afghan detainees (from Yemen, Pakistan, and elsewhere).
What will we do with the hundred or so Parwan detainees we're not willing to hand over to the Afghans? No one knows -- any more than anyone knows what we'll do with the more than 150 men who remain in detention at Guantánamo.
As with the remaining Parwan detainees, it's hard to pin down the precise numbers, identities, or status of men still held at Guantánamo, but they are divided into at least three general categories. First, there is a small number of detainees held pending military commission trials. Second, there are several dozen detainees who have been "cleared for transfer" or release, but who continue to languish at Guantánamo either because no country, including the United States, is willing to accept them inside its borders, or because the United States is not satisfied that -- you guessed it -- detainees won't "return to the fight" if transferred, say, to Yemen. Finally, there are several dozen detainees who are being held indefinitely, on the grounds that "evidentiary problems" (read: past torture and/or U.S. anxiety about revealing intelligence sources and methods) make it impossible for them to be put on trial, but they're just "too dangerous" to release.
Just as in the Afghan context, however, fears about detainee recidivism are almost certainly overblown. For one thing, most previously released Guantánamo detainees have not "returned to the battlefield" -- and of those who have, few appear to have posed a direct or severe threat to the United States. In a 2011 analysis, for instance, Peter Bergen, Katherine Tiedmann, and Andrew Lebovich found that U.S. government claims about Guantánamo recidivism rates often lumped together anti-U.S. activities with militant activities not directed at the United States.
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