Bagram, Afghanistan: The next Guantanamo?

After initially lauding Obama’s steps toward closing the detention facilities in Guantanamo Bay, human-rights lawyers have criticized the administration’s actions regarding the detention center at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan.

The Obama Justice Department has quietly said that hundreds of detainees in Bagram have no right to trial, “embracing a key argument of former President Bush’s legal team,” The New York Times reported.

As civil-rights lawyer Glenn Greenwald explained, the Bush/Obama position is that prisoners of war captured in an active “war theater” are not entitled to a trial. But Greenwald notes that many individuals in Bagram were captured far from Afghanistan (i.e. Thailand), and were not engaged in fighting. POWs are also guaranteed Geneva Conventions protections, which lawyers say are absent in Bagram.

Barbara Olshansky, who represents several detainees there, told the BBC that in terms of due process and prison conditions, “Bagram is far worse than Guantanamo,” adding, “It’s quite a severe situation, and yet the U.S. is planning a $60 million new prison to hold 1,100 more people there.”

There are currently about 600 detainees in Bagram.

NYU professor Jonathan Hafetz said that after a landmark 2008 Supreme Court ruling giving Guantanamo detainees habeas rights, the Bush administration started sending detainees to Bagram precisely because they could be held there indefinitely without judicial review. Human-rights campaigners fear the recent ruling will prolong and expand those extra-judicial methods instead of curtail them.

It’s too soon to tell, Jack Balkin of Yale Law said to The New York Times, whether this is a “transitory policy” by the Obama administration or whether it is saying “we can just create Guantanamo in some other place.”

Study: Rich countries’ invisible emissions

Much of China’s increase in carbon dioxide emissions can be attributed to producing goods for export, the majority of which go to western countries, according to a new study by the Center for International Climate and Environmental Research (CICERO).

The report stated that there’s been a 45 percent increase in Chinese carbon dioxide emissions between 2002 and 2005. Half of that has been the result of production for exports, 60 percent of which was due to exports to Western countries. Electronic goods, chemicals, metals and machinery contributed most to the increase.

Goods produced for the United States were responsible for 9 percent of the total emissions while all of Europe accounted for 6 percent. The study found that only 7 percent was the result of Chinese household consumption. The second leading factor in the emissions rise was primarily construction as a result of “capital formation.”

“This makes us reflect on how we are a part of a global system, and how we partly drive emissions in other countries,” said Glen Peters, a researcher at CICERO.

Reach columnist Aditya Ganapathiraju at news@dailyuw.com.