Gareth Porter: Ninety Percent of Petraeus's Captured "Taliban" were Civilians.

During his intensive initial round of media interviews as commander in Afghanistan in August 2010, General David Petraeus released figures to the news media that claimed spectacular success for raids by Special Operations Forces: In a 90 day period, from May through July, SOF units had captured 1,355 rank and file Taliban, killed another 1,031, and killed or captured 365 middle or high-ranking Taliban. The claims of huge numbers of Taliban captured and killed continued through the rest of 2010. In December, Petraeus's command said a total of 4,100 Taliban rank and file had been captured in the previous six months, and 2,000 had been killed. If true, these figures created a new media narrative hailing the success of SOF operations as reversing what had been a losing US strategy in Afghanistan. However, it turns out that more than 80 percent of those called Taliban fighters were found to be innocent civilians. Even more were later released from our detention facility in Bagram airbase, after their files were reviewed by a panel of military officers. An Afghan detained by US or NATO can only be held in a Forward Operating Base for a maximum of 14 days, before a decision must be made about whether to release the individual, or send him to Parwan for longer-term detention.