AMERICAN officials are drawing up plans to de-radicalise inmates in Afghanistan's prisons, which have been described as a breeding ground for insurgents by the top US commander in the country. Ideas under discussion include establishing religious rehabilitation centres and sending prisoners on the Haj pilgrimage.

US officials also want to overhaul the notorious prison at Bagram airbase, allowing prisoners kept isolated for years to see their families and to start releasing prisoners held without charge. Former Taliban officials have been recruited to advise the new taskforce on ways to revolutionise the country's poorly funded and badly organised prison system, where political prisoners are often held alongside petty thieves.

The men have already helped with an assessment of prisoners in Pol-e-Charkhi, a notorious, crumbling, Soviet-era prison in eastern Kabul, where authorities have at times battled for control.

Gen Stanley McChrystal, the US commander of Nato forces in Afghanistan, believes the prisons are a big problem in the fight against the Taliban. In a leaked assessment of the eight-year campaign in the country he concluded that since 2001, the Taliban have moved from “inaccessible mountain hideouts to recruiting and indoctrinating, hiding in the open, in the [Afghan corrections system].

“There are more insurgents per square foot in corrections facilities than anywhere else in Afghanistan. Unchecked, Taliban/Al Qaeda leaders patiently coordinate and plan, unconcerned with interference from prison personnel or the military,” he said. He called for a taskforce to be established to take responsibility for US-held prisoners and to help improve Afghanistan's prison and judicial systems.

Arsala Rahmani, a one-time Taliban education minister, said prisoners were mistreated and rarely had access to lawyers. “It means the Taliban are getting stronger in the prisons as well as around the country where they are more popular than [Nato forces],” he said.

Taliban and Al Qaeda prisoners are thought to represent about 2,500 of the 14,500 inmates in Afghanistan's jails, although in Pol-e-Charki and others there is no certainty about the exact numbers or what crimes inmates are being held for. Abdul Baqi, the prison governor, said he had “somewhere between 4,500 and 5,000” inmates.
— The Guardian, London