THE CHRONICLE HERALD– Last Monday’s massive prison break in Kandahar essentially put the boots to any last hopes of a successful NATO mission in Afghanistan.
As straight-faced Afghan prison officials scratched their heads and pointed to the empty tunnel entrance, which apparently allowed at least 471 Taliban prisoners to escape, we are expected to believe their claim that this was not an inside job.
To back up that story, the Afghan guards stated that there was no need for the Taliban detainees to obtain the keys to their cells that night because it was common practice to leave all the cells open at night.
We are then to believe that some 471 prisoners — essentially an entire battalion of fighters — carrying their belongings and equipped with flashlights silently filed out through a 360-metre tunnel.
This was to have occurred sometime between 2 and 4 a.m., and during that two-hour time frame, not a single guard twigged to the fact that the crowded mass of snoring, farting, wheezing humanity had gone silent and that the cellblocks had emptied.
The tunnel itself is another amazing feat of surreptitious construction. Using a building about 400 metres from the bustling Sarpoza prison, the Taliban mining crew somehow managed to conceal their months-long digging, despite the fact that, in the estimate of one Afghan official, they would have extracted one thousand truckloads of dirt.
In all that time, not one guard or policeman found it untoward that truckloads of earth were emanating from the same dwelling?
As for the night of the escape, the official theory is that, as the 471 prisoners emerged from the tunnel, they were given a fresh set of civilian clothing and then whisked away in a convoy of waiting cars. Even if we are to accept the possibility that six prisoners crammed into each vehicle alongside the drivers, that would still amount to no fewer than 80 cars involved in the prison break.
Given that this central part of Kandahar City is subjected to a strictly enforced night curfew, heavily patrolled by the Afghan National Army and Afghan National Police, not to mention being in close proximity to NATO rapid reaction forces, how could such a monumental, nocturnal movement of people have gone unnoticed and unchecked?
If we are to accept that this was simply a lucky lightning strike by the Taliban, then we would have to accept that this is the second time that lightning has struck the same prison.
Read more about Tough To Secure Kandahar Prison, Afghan Loyalty
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If we are to accept that this was simply a lucky lightning strike by the Taliban, then we would have to accept that this is the second time that lightning has struck the same prison.
In June 2008, another massive prison break occurred after a suicide car bombing at the Sarpoza’s front gate. During that farcical incident, the Afghan prison guards claimed they engaged the Taliban attackers with small arms fire. Nevertheless, some 1,200 prisoners were able to escape through the gunfire — unscathed!
In just 34 months, more prisoners have successfully escaped from this facility in Kandahar than all the escapees combined in the history of penitentiaries in all of North America.
What is also worth noting is that after the massive 2008 breakout, Corrections Canada stepped up its mentoring efforts at Sarpoza prison. This did seemingly have at least one beneficial result. Of the 1,200 escapees during the previous breakout, it was estimated that only about 400 were suspected Taliban insurgents. The remainder were the usual assortment of murderers, rapists, thieves and petty criminals.
Of course, no one benefits when this sort of human low-life is released back into society. So following the 2008 breakout, it was decided to segregate such criminals from the “political” wing of Sarpoza prison. As such, it was only the Taliban prisoners who exited via the tunnel this time.
After a decade of training, equipping and mentoring the Afghan security forces, we cannot buy Afghan loyalty. And it appears that even our existing rental agreement is an open joke among those on our payroll.