The great escape

Today Walt is reading reports out of Kabul -- capital of the sandpit known as Afghanistan -- that forty dozen (= 480) Taliban prisoners escaped from the local hoosegow over the course of some four or five hours yesterday.

How did they do this? Through a thousand-foot-long tunnel that took approximately five months to dig. All this happened under the watchful eyes of the Afghan police, the same police to whom NATO is handing over responsibility for national security.

An Afghan government spokesthingy confirmed the tunnel was dug from a house within shooting distance of the prison [Did he/she really use that phrase? Ed.] and that the inmates had somehow gotten out of their locked cells and disappeared into the night. Kandahar remains relatively warm even during winter and the ground would not have frozen while insurgents were digging the tunnel.

It is unclear how the Taliban were able to move so many men out of the prison so quickly. Also unclear is why guards would not have heard the diggers punch through the cement floor, and whether they supervise the inside of the perimeters at night. The word "bribery" remains unspoken.

The picture at the right is supposed to show an Afghan policeman looking into the escape hatch. Walt can reveal that the hole is actually the prison toilet, hence the presence of the fan just behind it. The fan [made in China? Ed.] was probably purchased with western "humanitarian aid" money.