US expanding jails, rather than closing them

Faced with unremitting violence, the United States is building new detention facilities at Iraqi prisons, including the notorious Abu Ghraib.

President George W. Bush had declared that Abu Ghraib would be torn down in a symbolic gesture after shocking pictures emerged of Iraqi inmates being abused and tortured by American forces.

But the continuing insurgency and rising death toll has meant that not only can the US not hand over Abu Ghraib to the new Iraqi Government, according to a planned timetable, but other prisons such as Camp Bucca in the British-controlled south of the country are being expanded.

The numbers of prisoners being held by the US in Iraq has reached record levels this month - with 10,783 in custody, up from 7837 in January and 5435 at the same time last year.

Both American and Iraqi officials acknowledge that there is no sign of the resistance or the prisoners it produces abating in the near future.

"It's been a challenge," said Colonel James B. Brown, commander of the 18th Military Police Brigade. "Many of the people we have now captured have not given up the struggle."

US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was forced to admit yesterday that the fighting could go on for years, adding: "We are not going to win against the insurgency: the Iraqi people win against the insurgency."

The deteriorating situation facing the US and Britain was highlighted by suicide bombings which killed 33 people and wounded 27 others in the northern city of Mosul.

The decision by American commanders to add to the detention facilities will be seen as an admission of just how much the situation is out of control more than two years after invasion.

Major General William Brandenburg, who oversees US-run prisons in Iraq, said US forces would have been out of Abu Ghraib under an original timetable by the northern spring next year. But he now says, "I believed it until mid-December, but the numbers just weren't going that way. Business is booming."

Brandenburg added that even under a best-case scenario, the US will need to hold on to at least 2000 prisoners in the Baghdad area, and the eventual handover of Abu Ghraib to the Iraqis will have to take place after expansion of Camp Cropper, on a US base near the airport, where Saddam Hussein and other "high value" prisoners are being kept.

- INDEPENDENT