KABUL: Afghanistan is set on Monday to take full control of Bagram military jail from the United States, drawing a line under one running sore in their relationship as US-led forces wind down more than a decade of war.
President Hamid Karzai has made the fate of the sprawling detention centre north of Kabul a litmus test of his ill-tempered push to regain sovereignty over key matters from the Americans ahead of next year’s pullout of combat troops.
The United States was long concerned that a total handover to Afghanistan’s weak and corruption-prone security forces would allow suspected Taliban and Al-Qaeda militants housed at Bagram to return to the battlefield.
But US Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel clinched an agreement with Karzai in a telephone call on Saturday, and the handover will take place on Monday, the Pentagon said. No further details were given.
