Fearing more jailbreaks, Afghanistan rushed inmates out of Helmand

KABUL - Reuters

Reuters Photo

Afghan authorities rushed 150 "dangerous" inmates from a prison in the insurgency-racked southern province of Helmand to the capital Kabul at the weekend, officials said, after Taliban militants orchestrated two major jailbreaks in recent weeks. 

Government forces clashed with Taliban fighters on Oct. 27 on the outskirts of the provincial capital Lashkar Gah, where fighting has been going on for most of the past week. 

Since mid-September, Taliban fighters have broken out hundreds of inmates, many of them fellow militants, from two prisons amid mounting insecurity across Afghanistan. 

The fighting in Lashkar Gah sparked fears of a possible repeat of what happened in Kunduz, the northern city that fell briefly to the Taliban last month, when insurgents freed hundreds of inmates from the city's prison. 

Just two weeks before, the Taliban sprang hundreds of prisoners in an attack on a detention centre in central Ghazni province. 

"There was a rumour that the Taliban would attack the main prison when they were fighting with Afghan forces on the outskirts of Lashkar Gah," said Helmand police spokesman Shah Mahmood Ashna. "We transferred some of the most dangerous prisoners to Kabul." 

Concerns over further raids on the country's substandard prisons added to the government's worries over the spreading Taliban campaign. 

If the Lashkar Gah prison were breached, the release of Taliban prisoners into Helmand, an insurgency stronghold, could bolster their position in the fiercely contested region. 

In the last year, militants have repeatedly attacked prisons in restive areas. Most have been repelled, but after Ghazni and Kunduz, security was ramped up, said Sediq Sediqqi, a spokesman for the Ministry of Interior. 

"The minister was very serious to instruct police to provide maximum security to prisons in vulnerable areas," he said.   "They are on high alert." 
 
Worrying pattern 

On Sept. 14, Taliban stormed a prison in Ghazni, central Afghanistan, releasing over 350 inmates, more than a third of whom were deemed a threat to national security, officials said. 

Fighting had intensified in the province, but the audacity and scale of the attack took authorities by surprise. 

When militants pulled off an even bigger feat and successfully took control of Kunduz weeks later, freeing inmates from the city's prison was among the first things the fighters did. Of the 600 who escaped, more than 100 were known Taliban fighters, officials said at the time. 

After the Ghazni break, the city's deputy governor said security at the facility, a mud building, was well below recommended standards, a problem observers say is widespread. 

"We're concerned that what happened to prisoners in Kunduz and Ghazni may happen around the country," said Rafihullah Bedar, spokesman for the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission. "Our information shows there are few standard detention centers in Afghanistan. The rest are in old buildings, or rental houses." 

The government is aware of the problem and plans new detention centres in every province. So far, 15 new facilities have been completed and four are under construction. 

Dangerous prisoners have also been transferred from areas deemed to be vulnerable to attack to high-security facilities in the capital region, said Sediqqi, who declined to say how many inmates have been moved so far. 

That process is 85 percent complete, and prisoners who have yet to be moved to maximum security jails are secure, he said. 

In Helmand, hundreds of high-risk prisoners have already been moved to the capital, but as security forces struggle to keep the insurgents at bay, there are still others who have yet to be transferred.