Responding to an appeal for more forces in Iraq to help manage a rising number of detainees, the Pentagon is dispatching an additional 700 troops from the 82nd Airborne Division, defense officials said yesterday. The previously unscheduled deployment is intended specifically to bolster prison operations, the officials said. It is not part of a temporary increase in U.S. troop levels in Iraq that commanders have said is likely to enhance security for a planned constitutional referendum in October and governmental elections in December. "The basic fact driving this deployment is the steady rise in the prison population," said Lt. Col. Barry Venable, a Pentagon spokesman. "There need to be some additional resources devoted to this."The number of prisoners held in U.S. military detention centers in Iraq has more than doubled since the autumn, climbing from 5,400 in September to more than 10,800 now, according to the latest Pentagon figures. The surge has filled existing prisons to capacity and prompted commanders to embark on an unanticipated prison expansion plan. Military officials have attributed the influx of detainees to intensified counterinsurgency operations by Iraqi as well as U.S. forces. But the burgeoning prison population also appears to reflect the persistence of the insurgency itself.
| Also means less catch-and-release. |
The U.S. military runs three main detention centers in Iraq: Camp Bucca in the south and Abu Ghraib and Camp Cropper in the Baghdad area. But anticipating a continued influx of detainees, a fourth prison, called Fort Suse, is being built on the site of a Russian-built former Iraqi military barracks near the northern city of Sulaymaniyah. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, during a visit to Iraq last month, expressed interest in handing responsibility for detainees to Iraqi authorities "as soon as is feasible." But no date has been set for such a transfer.