One of the unheralded heroes of the past year in Iraq is Major General Douglas Stone of the U.S. Marine Corps, who has just ended a stint as commander of detainee operations. His most notable innovation has been to institute “COIN behind the wire” — that is a counterinsurgency program aimed at weaning detainees away from terrorism. It is too soon to tell to what extent this program has succeeded, but early indications are positive. The program is now being put to the test because the U.S. command is reducing the number of detainees in American custody. The total has already dropped from 25,000 to 21,000, as noted in this Washington Post article,   yet the amount of violence for the past three weeks has been at its lowest level since early 2004.

Eventually the total will continue to fall. But there is a hard core of detainees, estimated at some 8,000, who are the worst of the worst. These are stone-cold Al Qaeda and Special Groups killers who can never be released, yet in most cases there is not sufficient evidence to convict them of crimes in an Iraqi court. It is doubtful that the Iraqi criminal justice system is capable of handling such dangerous terrorists, in any case, and it is unclear if it will ever be up to the task.

But how long can the U.S. continue to hold them? Our authority to detain them at the moment comes from a UN Security Council resolution that is due to expire at the end of the year. Negotiations on a bilateral status of forces agreement between the U.S. and Iraq governments that would provide continuing authority have been tortuous. It is uncertain whether and when they will be concluded. No doubt some short term expedient can be worked out, but the long term question remains: What do we do with these thugs? That is not a question that has been debated much, but in many ways it is much more pressing than the fate of the facilities at Guantanamo Bay, which hold only around 300 prisoners at the moment.