Unfortunately the situation in Afghanistan continues to get worse. The latest bad news was the Taliban assault on the main prison in Kandahar, which freed some 400 militants. The story has gotten a fair amount of coverage but an important element has been missed: namely, why were so many terrorists being held by Afghan forces who obviously do not have the capacity to keep them locked up? The answer is that most NATO countries operate under rules that forbid them to hold detainees for any length of time. They have to turn over whomever they capture either to Afghan or U.S. forces pronto.

But, as the prison break proves, Afghan forces don’t have the capacity to hold large numbers of detainees in safe and secure conditions. The U.S. has spent more than three years and $30 million to build a high-security detention facility for the Afghanistan government outside Kabul, but the project has not succeeded in creating room for very many detainees. The U.S. continues to hold over 600 detainees at its own facility in Bagram Air Force Base.

That may sound like a lot, but keep in mind that Afghanistan is a country of some 31 million people. It’s bigger than Iraq, yet in Iraq the U.S. is currently holding more than 20,000 detainees at two facilities, Camp Cropper in Baghdad and Camp Bucca in southern Iraq. That total swelled to almost 30,000 at the height of the surge last year. (The Iraqi government holds a substantial number of prisoners in its own facilities.) Granted, there is less terrorism in Afghanistan than in Iraq, but is there 33 times less? It seems to me that, with violence on the increase in Afghanistan, it is imperative to lock up more wrong-doers-and not in revolving-door prisons. This should be a top priority for General David McKiernan, the new NATO commander in Afghanistan.