When it comes to women's rights, Pakistan has been in the news for all the wrong reasons. The list of wrongs perpetrated against women, which includes honor killings, domestic violence, sexual assault and acid attacks, is disturbingly lengthy. What is unfortunate is that the current state owes as much to the lawmaking agencies of the country who have been unable to enforce justice for women as those who perpetrate the actual violence.

But tangible progress is underway. The Prevention of Anti-Women Practices Act 2011, a twice-snubbed landmark bill demanding greater social protection for women, passed this November by the Pakistan National Assembly, is a major move in the right direction. Framed and amended by Dr. Donya Aziz, the bill was unanimously passed by the lower house, which is headed by speaker Dr. Fehmida Mirza -- the first female parliamentary speaker in the Muslim world. The bill is currently awaiting approval by the Senate, but civil society, women's rights activists and NGOs are optimistic that this bill will become law.

Outside of Pakistan, the bill is being hailed as a show of collective resolve by Pakistani political parties to counter societal taboos against women, dealing with issues such as forced marriages, physical violence against women, or depriving women of their inheritance. The bill deems all of the above as crimes that can lead to three to ten years' imprisonment or a fine of up to up to RS1 million (approximately $11,400). The bill also criminalizes the practice of ‘Haq Bakhshish' -- forcing women into giving up their right to marriage by marrying them to the Quran. While not a mainstream custom and mostly practiced in the rural areas of the country to prevent the loss of property if a woman marries someone who is not a relative, Haq Bakhshish has been an eyesore for women's rights and human rights activists in Pakistan for decades.

But things aren't all that straightforward. While supporters of women's rights in Pakistan revel in the recent development, 2011 also saw a notable setback for their cause. The Criminal Procedure Code Amendment Bill, passed earlier in the year and signed by President Asif Ali Zardari before becoming the Criminal Procedure Code Amendment Act 2011, reversed the right of women to bail. That right was granted under the Women's Protection Act 2006 and signed into law by then-President Pervez Musharraf. But come 2011 and bail can only be granted by the court, putting women again at the mercy of the criminal justice system.  

Under the Women Protection Act 2006, bail became the right of a woman accused of any crime except involvement in terrorism, financial corruption and murder or a crime punishable with death, or a minimum of ten years imprisonment. More simply, they were given the right to bail without going to the courts. Mostly meant to decrease the number of women in jail, especially those accused of zina, or adultery, the WPA 2006 made it harder for the police to hold women in custody. However, with President Zardari's recent amendments, that right has been taken away.

Women's rights activists are raking President Zardari's government over the coals at the hushed, sudden, revision. According to Farzana Bari, a civil rights activist in Pakistan, women may be detained on minor offences and even as a result of family disputes, and women will need to go through court hearings before being able to be bailed out of prison, thanks to the amendment. Speaking to a local English newspaper, Bari called the move a "dangerous reversal, as more than 80 percent of the gains achieved through the Women Protection Act 2006 have been lost."

The WPA 2006 was an attempt by the then-government to amend the heavily-criticized Hudood Ordinance laws in Pakistan enacted by military dictator Zia ul-Haq in 1979, which governed the punishment for rape and adultery in the country for decades.

Take "adultery" and non-marital consensual sex as a case in point -- both criminalized by the Hudood Ordinances. For many years in Pakistan, the laws made female rape victims liable to prosecution for adultery if they could not produce four male witnesses to the assault; however, the WPA 2006 brought rape under the Pakistan Penal Code, which is based on civil law and not Sharia (Islamic law). What that did was take away the right of law-enforcement agencies to detain people suspected of having non-marital consensual sex. Instead they were to require a ‘formal accusation' in court. Even though the amendments still treated adultery and sex outside of marriage as an offence, the judges could now deal with rape cases in criminal rather than Islamic courts. That did away with the practically impossible ‘four witnesses' requirement and allowed convictions to be made on the basis of proper circumstantial and forensic evidence.

Unfortunately, however, the Criminal Procedure Code Amendment Act 2011 is a giant step back, almost to the Hudood Ordinances themselves. President Zardari's government believes getting custody of the accused is critical to investigations, especially in the scenario where it becomes easier for criminals to engage women in offences, as the WPA 2006 made it easier for female criminals and their co-conspirators or those who trapped them to get out of jail quickly.  However, the civil rights activists in the country remain perplexed as to why bail laws had to be reversed almost completely, especially when amendments could have been introduced to check potential misuse without ‘robbing' women of their previously hard-earned concessions.

Thus, for every step forward with women's rights in Pakistan, we take a giant step back. On the one hand, bills are signed to protect women in Pakistan from early marriages and physical abuse, while on the other, juvenile convicts detained for committing zina are exempted from being granted special remission, a standard practice around the Eid al-Fitr holiday where the President of Pakistan lessens the sentences of juvenile prisoners and others. Exempting those convicted of zina from these remittances puts them on the same level as terrorists, in the eyes of Pakistani law.

While Pakistanis both in Pakistan and in the United States appreciate the role of the Pakistan National Assembly in making this landmark legislation see the light of day, they are also skeptical over the future status of the bill and its implementation by local law enforcement agencies. Pakistani civil society groups have vowed to stage a sit-in demonstration outside the Parliament if the bill is blocked by the Senate. And while activists remain optimistic about this legislation, the fact remains that the gap between the theory of law in Pakistan and its practice has always been enormous. For now, one can only hope that the Prevention of Anti-Women Practices Act lives up to its name.

Rabail Baig is a Pakistani journalist based in Boston.

Last year, Qasim, a construction worker from eastern Afghanistan, was detained in a joint US-Afghan raid on his home in Kabul. He eventually ended up in the hands of the National Directorate of Security (NDS), the Afghan intelligence agency. For over a week, Qasim was hung by his arms, taken down only to go the bathroom and pray. Several times a night he was beaten with pipes and electrical cables, his head bashed into walls, and threatened with much worse. After a week and a half, he could no longer walk, not even to bring himself to the bathroom. My organization, Open Society Foundations, and its Afghan partners have interviewed many other Afghans who, like Qasim, have suffered acts of torture at the hands of the NDS, ranging from beatings, and burns, to electric shock, and sexual abuse.

In a ground-breaking report released yesterday by the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA), the true scope and severity of such abuse is made clear. The UN found evidence of torture and mistreatment in 16 Afghan detention facilities, including electric shocks, hanging detainees from ceilings, beatings, and threat of sexual assault. As a result of the report, the Afghan government dismissed several NDS officials implicated in the report, though it unclear whether there will be any criminal prosecutions.  The International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) has temporarily halted the transfer of ISAF detainees to the 16 facilities.

ISAF's halting of transfers to facilities identified in the UN report is an important first step. The Afghan government's initial response was certainly less positive, but will hopefully improve following now that the report has been publicly released. Looking forward, however, there is real concern that the ISAF and Afghan government responses will prove rather superficial, and ultimately fail to fully grapple with the depths of the problem.

One area that the Afghan government and ISAF should prioritize is accountability. Though perhaps politically difficult, accountability for abuses is key, and must be pursued vigorously and publicly. The UN report is an opportunity for the right signals to be sent, both within the Afghan justice system as well as to the Afghan public.

Without sustained efforts on this front, it's likely that even if those Afghan officials who are responsible for abuse are removed, they will only re-emerge elsewhere in the justice system or government. Shuffling the problem around only sows the seeds for future abuse, and reinforces perceptions of impunity that are at the heart of the Afghan government's struggle for legitimacy.

An independent, external body should be empowered to monitor facilities, receive complaints, and investigate allegations of abuse, with findings and remedial actions made public. Full, unfettered access should also be granted to outside monitors, including Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission, ICRC, and UNAMA. Those responsible for abuse should not only be removed from their positions, but also subject to criminal prosecution and civil liability.

The international community can play an important role in ensuring those responsible are truly held to account. Governments should not only apply conventional diplomatic pressure, but should think creatively and ambitiously about how to strengthen accountability. Funding, training, as well as military and intelligence relationships with the Afghan government and security forces should all be utilized to ensure those responsible for abuse are held accountable. The US is prohibited by the Leahy Law from supporting foreign security forces which engage in gross violations of human rights. 

The pervasive lack of due process also leaves detainees vulnerable to abuse. Detainees and defense lawyers we have interviewed consistently decry Afghan authorities' denial of legal counsel, in addition to preventing family notification or contact. In some cases we documented, defense lawyers have themselves been arrested or harassed simply for contacting their clients. The Afghan Government should implement measures to ensure detainees' access to legal counsel, and adopt strict rules regarding family notification (just as the Afghan government advocates for in ISAF detentions), while international donors should provide funding to Afghan legal aid organizations to represent conflict-related detainees. Ensuring detainees have their most basic due process rights respected while in detention provides an additional, necessary check on Afghan authorities' power and strengthens transparency and accountability.

For their part, international forces must acknowledge that there are no quick fixes for detainee abuse in Afghanistan. Detainee monitoring, for example, is too often posited as the solution to abuse, although it only focuses on detainees transferred by international forces, not the wider prison population. While monitoring is a potentially important part of protecting detainee rights, international forces must be honest about its practical limitations, and confront the fact that, in the current context, monitoring alone cannot satisfy their legal obligations to prevent torture.

Indeed, the fact that the UN has documented abuses despite the existence of various ISAF countries' monitoring mechanisms and oversight by organizations like the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC) speaks to the insufficiency of such measures. Given the sheer number of facilities and detainees, logistical and security challenges, and detainees' fears of reprisals for disclosing abuse, even the most well-designed monitoring mechanisms may in practice be incapable of ensuring detainees are free from torture.

International forces must also grapple with the problem of torture beyond the narrow issue of transfers, not least because they have been working so closely with the Afghan intelligence authorities, including using intelligence that may very well have been extracted through the use of torture. Appropriate assessment of the risk of torture will also always have to take into account treatment of all detainees at a particular Afghan facility-not just those transferred from international custody. Conceiving of the problem as one of detainee transfer also biases policy solutions towards bureaucratic box checking in order to resume detainee transfers-not actually halting abuse.

To be sure, there are real dilemmas and constraints facing the Afghan government and ISAF. There is a lack of professional capacity at every level of the Afghan justice system, from guards to judges to prosecutors. The sheer number of persons detained in connection with the conflict means the system is under severe strain, burdened further by the military as opposed to law enforcement nature of operations. But the Afghan government and all ISAF nations have strict legal obligations to refrain from and prevent torture, and as the UN report lays bare, they have fallen well short.

The looming troop drawdown and transition only give greater urgency to this issue. With more and more responsibility for security being shifted to Afghans, the strategic risk and political liability posed by abusive detention practices will only grow. Right now the US and other ISAF nations have the most leverage to shape the Afghan justice system and leave behind institutions, laws, and mechanisms that uphold the rule of law and protect Afghans from torture. As the war in Afghanistan marks its tenth anniversary, time is not on the side of either ISAF or the Afghan government. The UN report marks a perhaps singular opportunity to marshal momentum behind detention reforms that will be long-lasting and effective at protecting the most basic of human rights.

On the evening of March 1, U.S. helicopter gunships opened fire on a group of 10 Afghan boys gathering firewood in eastern Kunar province, killing all but one. A week after the incident, top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan General David Petraeus apologized for the incident and promised to review tactical directives to ensure civilian casualties are minimized. Afghan President Hamid Karzai reportedly refused Petraeus' apology over the killing of the nine boys, a snub made more obvious when Karzai later accepted an apology by U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates. The blunders that led to Karzai's rebuff of Petraeus's apologies are a rare public glimpse into what has become an all too common pattern of ISAF leadership mishandling civilian casualties incidents, exacerbating long-standing tensions over this issue. What is merited is not only a review of ISAF's tactical directives, but an overhaul of its attitude toward civilian casualty allegations.

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The late Obama administration envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan Richard Holbrooke sparked an uproar when he indicated in 2009 that U.S. development assistance would be channeled primarily through local Pakistani NGOs, instead of traditional partners: American contractors and the government of Pakistan. The Pakistani government -- one of a handful of governments receiving direct budgetary support from the U.S. government -- vehemently protested. American development contractors faced the cancellation of contracts and became concerned about losing business in Pakistan, and their jobs. Even a USAID official leaked a dissent memo to USA Today, stating that "very few Pakistani firms and NGOs can currently satisfy the stringent management financial management audit requirements for USAID project funding."

Lately, the dust seems to have settled. Recently, the USAID Inspector General released an oversight report, detailing 54 awards worth $269 million that have been made to Pakistani NGOs. Last week, USAID Administrator Rajiv Shah indicated that the emphasis on NGOs is a general shift in the way that USAID does business -- not just in Pakistan, but around the world: "We are now at a point where nearly 40 percent of our funding goes to non-government organizations. And in each of our countries, through all of our missions, we're setting specific targets so that we can increase the percentage of support that we provide to local organizations and local entrepreneurs and local NGOs."

The push towards partnering directly with local NGOs makes sense, at least in theory: locals understand their needs, their context, and potential solutions better than foreign contractors, and do not have the high overhead and security costs associated with Americans working abroad, especially in hostile environments.

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U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's trip to Pakistan, which culminated today in a full schedule of official meetings and town hall appearances, was the United States' best chance to hit the reset button with the Pakistani people. Clinton arrived with a long list of ‘deliverables' -- a total of $500 million in new development projects, aligned with the priorities of the Pakistani government. And she was clear on what that aid was intended to accomplish. At one town hall meeting today, she used the metaphor of a rocket to illustrate her mission: "We're trying to escape the bonds of gravity, leave behind an era of mistrust and launch a new period of cooperation."

But the United States is not loved in Pakistan, and even those Pakistanis who heard what Clinton had to say are likely to be skeptical. They can see clearly the pressure the United States is placing on the Pakistani government to do more to rein in the Haqqani network and other extremist groups. They may well doubt that the United States has the political and financial will to back its commitment to development support. Even the $7.5 billion of aid authorized over five years by the Kerry-Lugar legislation must be appropriated and spent one year at a time, after all. And the U.S. has a history of abandoning aid commitments to Pakistan when incoming governments violated nuclear norms, or when a bulwark against communism didn't seem to matter as much. As understandable as some of these decisions were at the time, they seem to make it clear that U.S. development aid was driven as much or more by diplomatic imperatives as by a long-run development vision for the Pakistani people.

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In November 2008, I received a phone call at my home in Afghanistan from Information Safety and Freedom (ISF) an Italian nongovernmental organization that supports free speech, notifying me that I (and Sayed Pervez Kambaksh, a journalism student at Balkh University), were the two international journalists to receive its award. The winners, I was told, would travel to Italy for an awards ceremony. But I knew that would be impossible -- Kambaksh was in Kabul's prison. In October 2007, Afghan police arrested him for blasphemy, after he allegedly downloaded and distributed information about the role of women in Islamic societies, and he was sentenced to death in early 2008. His sentence was later commuted to 20 years in prison, after outcries from Afghan journalists and right groups. I received the ISF award for my work on a weekly satire cartoon magazine and blog, which was shut down in 2004. I received numerous death threats and was forced to leave the country for seven months that year.

After that phone call, I knew I had to tell Kambaksh about his award. I talked to Kambaksh's brother, Yaqub Ibahimi, who advised me not to say I know him or his case because authorities might not allow me to meet him, or I could be questioned myself. So, later in November, I had to make up a story. My cover story -- that my father, a pious man, had asked me to visit Kambaksh on the Muslim holy day of Friday -- got me past a few checkpoints at the prison, and I emerged with a series of stamps and signatures on the skin of my right hand. Inside the prison, there was a police office who held a handy loudspeaker to call prisoners by their names and cell numbers. After waiting half an hour, Kambaksh, appeared behind the bars. While two police officers were accompanied me, I moved forward and leaned on the bars so Kambaskh could hear my voice. After saying, "Salam and how are you," I was roughly pulled back by the officers and told to keep my distance. When I protested that other visitors were allowed to reach that point, one of the officers shouted that Kambaksh was not a normal prisoner. Amidst the noisy uproar of inmates chattering and doors clanging, I told Kambaksh he had won a freedom of expression award. He smiled, a grin full of bitterness. "I need help to get out of here," he told me. The officers pushed me back and asked me to leave.

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Over the past four years or so, Pakistanis have become addicted to Facebook. The social networking website is home to local celebrities, including former President Pervez Musharraf, who recenctly began using the website as a way to update his "fans" about his speaking engagements and his new political party. It has spawned a culture of its own -- fashion designers and musicians use Facebook as a marketing tool, tagging pictures is a full-time activity, and local telecom operators have used Facebook's mobile services as a selling point. After former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto was assassinated and curiosity about her children grew, British tabloids published images of her son, Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari, that were taken from his Facebook page. Pakistani grandparents use Facebook as a way to communicate with grandchildren living outside Pakistan, and the five Americans who were arrested on suspicion of involvement in terrorism last year reportedly used it to try and get in touch with militant groups.

But all that has come to an end -- until May 31, at least. Earlier today, the Lahore High Court ordered that access to Facebook be blocked in Pakistan. The move came after a petition was filed in the court by a forum of Islamic lawyers protesting a Facebook page called "Everybody Draw Mohammad Day," which began as a protest itself against a radical group which had objected to a depiction of the Prophet Mohammed on the animated U.S. television program South Park. Facebook users in Pakistan had campaigned on the social networking website to "report" the page to Facebook authorities, but no action was taken.

Not surprisingly, Pakistanis across Pakistan have protested against Facebook. Pakistan sees protests on a daily basis against issues ranging from the electricity crisis to mass layoffs to Aafia Siddiqui's case.

While one Indian Twitter user joked that the difference between Jamaat-ud-Dawa and Facebook in Pakistan was that the front group for the militant organization Lashkar-e-Taiba is banned, it highlighted Pakistan's ironic tendency to act only when it comes to blasphemous content and not content that affects the state's security. Hateful and derogatory literature is available openly in Pakistan, and the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority has not attempted to block YouTube channels such as that of the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan or videos of hate-laden speeches by Jaish-e-Muhammad leader Masood Azhar. Objectionable content is available on scores of different websites. Facebook was not the first to be blocked in Pakistan. What might be next?

Pakistan has an unfortunate history of blocking websites it believes are objectionable for blasphemy reasons. In 2006, Blogger.com and all blogspot.com addresses were blocked in Pakistan in the wake of the Danish cartoons controversy. Since the cartoon images had been posted on blogs hosted by Blogger, the entire website was pulled down for at least two months.

This February, YouTube was temporarily blocked for almost an hour. Once service had been restored, Internet users in Pakistan discovered that the video that had been blocked was of President Asif Ali Zardari allegedly screaming "shut up" to someone while addressing a crowd.

Ever-enterprising Pakistanis will undoubtedly find a way around the Facebook ban. When blogspot.com was blocked, a rerouting address was created for blogs hosted on the website. At least this time, Pakistan's ban did not affect the website in question the world over. In 2008, a Pakistani government attempt to block YouTube caused hours of downtime for YouTube users around the globe.

The new Facebook ban reflects the laws of Pakistan, where blasphemy is punishable by death or life imprisonment. But it also leads me to question the sense of a legal system that ordered an entire website blocked for the content of one page and points to the inanity of those who believe blocking the website in Pakistan will somehow stop would-be cartoonists. I also have to ask what this judgment will do to the morale of the thousands of young students who in 2007 mobilized to campaign for the restoration of Pakistan's judiciary and organized protests of then-President Musharraf's imposition of emergency rule -- using Facebook.

Saba Imtiaz works for the Express Tribune, an English-language newspaper in Pakistan.

Closing Guantanamo and deciding what to do with future international terrorism suspects has been harder than expected. According to the LA Times, some U.S. officials are considering expanding U.S. detention operations in Afghanistan and creating a prison similar to Guantanamo to hold terrorism suspects in order to avoid trying them in U.S. courts due to lack of evidence. This is a bad idea -- a very bad idea.

Although it may be tempting to suggest Afghanistan as an alternative holding site for suspected terrorist from places like Yemen and Somalia, I can say with certainty that establishing mini Gitmos in other countries is not a solution. If we go that route it would undoubtedly lead to a public relations disaster for the U.S. military still trying to mend relations with the Afghan people, and put a strain on diplomatic relations with the Afghan government. Not to mention such a move is legally impermissible. 

I went to Guantanamo in 2007, 2008, and 2009. I have also been to Afghanistan and looked at U.S. detention operations closely. Many former detainees I interviewed in 2009, who were from the southern and eastern parts of Afghanistan, were captured in their homes during night raids U.S. forces that terrorized extended families and often involving destruction of property. Some detainees I interviewed had been held for 2 years and some up to 5 years without any opportunity to review the evidence against them or to produce tribal elders or other witnesses who could vouch for their innocence and character.

From what I've observed these actions have undermined U.S. efforts, both military and political, in Afghanistan. In my conversations with Afghans and Afghan officials in 2009, the anger over night raids and arbitrary detention by international military forces are second to that of civilian casualties and has alienated the Afghan people. In 2009, however, top commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley McChrystal unveiled a new strategy that prioritizes protection of civilians, reforming U.S. detention practices, and winning back the support of the Afghans. To establish a "Gitmo" in Afghanistan could potentially undo all of this. Which might explain why Gen. McChrystal, is against establishing U.S. detention operations in Afghanistan.  

Presently, the United States military in Afghanistan is already dealing with close to 800 detainees being held at the newly built Detention Facility in Parwan, including the small number of detainees captured outside Afghanistan and rendered to Bagram, during the Bush administration, some of whom are litigating their right to habeas in U.S. courts. (The previous Bagram Theater Internment Facility, which was the site of detainee deaths in 2002 and 2003 and abuse is no longer being used).

In September 2009 the Obama administration announced new detention reforms that include a new Detainee Review Board mechanism which for the first time allows detainees to bring in witnesses to rebut the military's allegations, although detainees don't have access to counsel. Detainees are eventually released, transferred to tribal elders under a reconciliation program, or tried in Afghan courts under Afghan law. (See Hidden justice: Do Obama's detention reforms in Afghanistan go far enough?). In 2009 Gen. McChrystal stated that the end goal is for the United States to transfer all detention operations to the Afghan government provided they have the capacity to process and try detainees fairly and in accordance with Afghan and international law. Task Force 435, which is responsible for U.S. detention operations in Afghanistan, plans to transfer the Parwan detention facility to the Afghan government in 2011, although the U.S. will still be involved in detention operations in some capacity. These plans, at least publicly, do not include expanding U.S. detentions in Afghanistan for future captures of terrorism suspects from Somalia, Yemen or elsewhere. But as the LA Times reported some White House officials are considering this as an option.

The business of capturing and transporting individuals from different countries to Afghanistan, which is an area of conflict, for warehousing beyond the rule of law and access to courts in laymen's term is kidnapping -- something that the United States should not be promoting as a matter of policy and constitutes a crime. Forcefully removing an individual from the territory of a state without an extradition process or judicial oversight violates that individual's right against arbitrary detention and as demonstrated in the post 9-11 rendition cases led to abuse and secret detentions. (Khaled al-Masri, a German national was transferred to CIA custody and held in Afghanistan where he alleged he was abused until U.S. officials realized that his capture was a mistake and released him in Albania. Abu Omar was captured from the streets of Italy and sent to Egypt where he alleged he was tortured. CIA agents responsible for his abduction were convicted for kidnapping in abstentia in Italy in 2009).

The debate about what to do with terrorism suspects not captured in a theater of combat is not new, but international law provides guidance. The international law of armed conflict, involving two or more states, allows the detaining authority to detain an individual with minimum legal processes until hostilities end. The Geneva Conventions does obligate the detaining authority not to remove civilians from occupied territory, to protect Prisoners of War, or, under Common Article 3, to provide certain protections to all prisoners detained in armed conflict. Whereas under the law of non-international armed conflict, which is not a war between two states, international human rights law imposes substantive and procedural constraints on a state's authority to detain and allows detention only if it is grounded in law, is not arbitrary, and subject to judicial review. Transfer of individuals from one country to another must be done through judicial oversight.

Putting aside the legality of authorizing future transfers to indefinite detention in Afghanistan, from a policy perspective such a decision would be an affront to the Afghan people and government whose sovereignty the United States recognizes and has been supporting, and would further damage U.S. counterinsurgency strategy of wining support of the Afghans against the Taliban.

Individuals captured anywhere outside Afghanistan should be lawfully transferred if evidence exists for either trial in U.S. federal courts, released or repatriated. They should not be rendered to a country where they are not citizens for indefinite detention and beyond the rule of law. Afghanistan should not be used as America's playground to warehouse alleged unsavory characters because the U.S. government chose not to gather the necessary evidence for fair prosecutions in U.S. courts or just needs these alleged bad guys off the streets. The United States should not be in the business of kidnapping and promoting global lawless enclaves.

Sahr Muhammedally is a humanrights lawyer based in London.

By Brian Glyn Williams

Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan, has recently requested 40,000 additional troops to help fight an increasingly aggressive insurgency in the country. Below are three reasons why Democrats who have soured to the war should support his request.

1. Al Qaeda and the Taliban are one.

In the past few weeks Vice President Joe Biden has offered an alternative plan for Afghanistan that could be summarized as "fight terrorists not insurgents." Instead of sending McChrystal the 40,000 troops he has reportedly requested to wage a full blown counterinsurgency against the Taliban, this "limited" strategy calls for waging a counterterrorism campaign against al Qaeda. Rather than slug it out with the local Taliban, we should focus on the al Qaeda terrorists who attacked the U.S. on 9/11, and since al Qaeda is in Pakistan, American forces should simply rely on unmanned aerial drones to kill them there, according to this argument.

Republican writer and strategist George Will summed up this strategy by stating American forces should be "substantially reduced to serve a comprehensively revised policy: America should do only what can be done from offshore, using intelligence, drones, cruise missiles, air strikes and small, potent Special Forces units, concentrating on the porous 1,500-mile border with Pakistan, a nation that actually matters."

Putting aside the absurd assertion that Afghanistan somehow does not "matter," this call for monitoring a 1,500 mile "porous" border using fewer than 200 Predator and Reaper drones overlooks the logistical limitations of such a campaign. If America cannot stop Mexicans from entering America in the millions, how can it monitor the mountainous border between Afghanistan and Pakistan from afar ... using only drones? Most importantly, how can we look the Pakistanis in the eye after calling on them to go after the Taliban and al Qaeda on their own side of the border when we talk of withdrawing "offshore" to fight them on our side of the border? For the hammer (the U.S. in Afghanistan) and anvil (the Pakistani army) approach to work to prevent cross border raids the U.S.-led coalition needs to hit the Taliban from the Afghan side of the border while our Pakistani allies pressure them from the other side.