MIDDLE EAST:The US military has introduced "religious enlightenment" and other education programmes for Iraqi detainees, some of whom are as young as 11, Maj Gen Douglas Stone, the commander of US detention facilities in Iraq, said on Tuesday.
Maj Gen Stone said such efforts, aimed mainly at Iraqis who have been held for more than a year, are intended to "bend them back to our will" and are part of waging war in what he called "the battlefield of the mind".
Most of the younger detainees are held in a facility that the military calls the "House of Wisdom".
The religious courses are led by Muslim clerics who "teach out of a moderate doctrine", Maj Gen Stone said, according to the transcript of a conference call he held from Baghdad with a group of defence bloggers. Such schooling "tears apart" the arguments of al-Qaeda, such as "Let's kill innocents" and helps to "bring some of the edge off" the detainees, he said.
As a result of the increased US troop presence in Iraq this year, the number of Iraqis in US detention has swelled from about 10,000 last year to more than 25,000. The effort to reshape attitudes among the growing detainee population is aimed at addressing a problem that has vexed US troops in Iraq for the past four years: military detention facilities have served as breeding grounds for extremist views, transforming some prisoners into hardcore insurgents, according to military analysts.
Maj Gen Stone said he wants to identify "irreconcilables" - those detainees whose views cannot be moderated - and "put them away" in permanent detention facilities.
Since May, he has released about 2,000 detainees "and we've not had any coming back". He said his goal is to keep those who are released from harming US troops or anyone else. - (LA Times-Washington Post service)