Bryan Denton for The New York Times
Inmates at the Helmand Central Prison in Lashkar Gah, Afghanistan, in an outdoor area.
LASHKAR GAH, Afghanistan — The first thing one notices about the new prison here is the smell, or rather the absence of it. Helmand Central Prison does not reek of sewage or sweat or old clothes or rancid cooking oil, the typical odors of an Afghan lockup. The air smells, dare one say, fresh.
Also noteworthy are the bathroom floors, which are sparkling, and the outer walls, which are made of concrete, not mud, like so much of this country’s prison infrastructure.
Built in the insurgency’s southern heartland with $6.5 million from the British government, there is no doubt that Helmand Central Prison is impressive. The only question is how long it will stay that way once Western forces leave and Western money dwindles.
That prospect is not something that Col. Hajji Raz Mohammed, the deputy warden, even wanted to contemplate as he proudly walked visitors through every corner of the prison, the bathrooms included.
Asked what will happen when the British Provincial Reconstruction Team that is a few miles away packs up in the coming year or so, he squinted in the bright winter sunlight of the prison yard. “It’s very early to comment on this,” he said.
He went on to detail all that the British are supplying to the prison — air-conditioners, refrigerators and even computers that allow the inmates, many of them former Taliban affiliates, to learn PowerPoint and Excel. There is also the clinic that treats those with tuberculosis, depression and a variety of other illnesses. The British team even provided two minivans to act as ambulances for prisoners who need transport to the hospital.
As for the Afghan government, which has been managing the prison since mid-2011, it pays for the salaries of prison employees and food. Colonel Mohammed expressed grave doubts about whether the prison could keep up its standards solely with Afghan government backing.
“No, our government will not be able to afford this,” he said. “Our government is poor.”
If a prison is, in some measure, a mirror of the larger society, then the Helmand Central Prison offers a glimpse of southern Afghanistan just as the surge in Western troops is ending. It not only shows the largess and aspirations of the Western militaries, but also the fragility of their efforts against the Taliban, whose presence in the prison reflects its prevalence in the province.
In 2009, the British razed the run-down structure that used to house prisoners here, with its poor plumbing and its dirt yard that turned to mud in the rainy winter. The new prison is just the first piece of an ambitious complex that will include a modern juvenile detention center, a women’s prison and, with the aid of the Danish government, a rehabilitation center.
A walk through the prison with Colonel Mohammed reveals conditions far removed from the dungeonlike atmosphere that still exists in some places in the rest of the country. The prisoners, who wear traditional Afghan dress, live in groups of 8 to 10 in bunk rooms with the television tuned to local channels. Afghan news and music seemed to be favorites.
The hallways are swept clean, and the floors washed. The prison yard accommodates several hundred prisoners who sit in large groups, some reading the Koran, others taking literacy classes and still others standing in a line to use a communal cellphone — monitored by the intelligence service.
Colonel Mohammed said the prison had 37 surveillance cameras, which helped employees keep track of what was going on. When one breaks, “the P.R.T. pays to repair them,” he said. What will happen when the Provincial Reconstruction Team is no longer there? “We will do it,” Colonel Mohammed said, though he looked less than certain.
Gen. Bismullah Hamid, who runs Helmand Central and is described by the Westerners who work with him as a “visionary” in the Afghan prison system, recalled that when he was assigned to the prison, it was a squalid, crowded place filled with gangs and drugs. (Helmand Province leads Afghanistan in opium production.)
“Drug addicts were easily manipulated by subversive inmates, and they would start protests and rebellions,” he said.
Lashkar Gah Journal: A Pristine Afghan Prison Faces a Murky Future
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Lashkar Gah Journal: A Pristine Afghan Prison Faces a Murky Future
