On Wednesday, the first fires were started. “There are just too many bodies,” a policeman said. He jabbed at the fire with a branch, hoping to speed the impromptu cremation along. The official death count for the region is close to 2,000. In preparation for the corpses that arrive at frequent intervals, people have collected wood and as much gasoline as they can round up. The temple is surrounded with the stuff. Before each corpse is burned, a photo is taken in hopes that it can later be identified. But many of the bodies are so disfigured that it’s nearly impossible to recognize anyone as he or she was in life.

Victims’ families sit next to the funeral pyres, watching and mourning. Many here have lost more than one family member. Still, these impromptu funerals are marked more by shock than pathos. A few people have brought along straw mats to squat on. Others have placed a single memorial candle in front of them and sit in silence. All are wearing masks — once white, now yellowed — over their mouths to keep the smell away. Intermittently, people spit on the ground. It’s as if they want to keep from swallowing death.

Along the Phuket island coast — once a pearl of tourism — everything has been razed. Sprawled across the beach promenade are the scattered remains of what was once a booming resort area. Now everything is twisted into itself and coated in thick layers of mud. Cars, palm trees ripped from their roots, and pieces of beach huts litter the streets. The region is “finished,” said one of the main tourist guides.

Amid the Thai families surrounding the temple, a retired Swiss man sits on a plastic chair next to his son. Both are wearing masks. “This may sound strange,” said the father, white-haired Josef Vavrina. “But I was happy when I finally found my wife here.” He then grew quiet, staring into the fire.

Last Sunday should have been a perfect day for the retired couple. “My wife, Maria, was celebrating her 63rd birthday and the sun was shining,” Vavrina said. That morning, the two had felt the underwater quake as a little vibration. “On my nightstand, there was a glass of water and I saw how the water moved,” he said. But they hadn’t paid much attention to it. Maria even told him not to worry, that it was likely just a little tremor. When he saw the water moving quickly from the coast to form a deadly wave, he ran back to his bungalow, hoping to grab his camera and photograph the phenomenon. Many other tourists had the same idea. By the time he got back to the beach, the wave was getting ready to crash. It was at least 20 meters high. “I screamed as loud as I could,” Vavrina said. But his wife didn’t hear him. Within seconds, she disappeared in the sea of water.

He spent three days searching for her. He visited every clinic on Phuket. He walked into every room. All were packed with victims. His son, also named Josef, arrived Tuesday night to help search. On Wednesday morning, they arrived at the temple.

Wearing plastic gloves, they began ripping open the makeshift shrouds of the dead. Josef, the son, who is a doctor, had seen many corpses during his studies. But none like these, he said. At first, they tried scanning the deformed bodies for something recognizable like a wedding band or earrings. But soon they realized that thieves had scoured the coasts and ripped all the valuables from the dead before they arrived at the temple. Finally, the men came upon a body they thought was hers. The son studied the corpse, confirming her identity by a few unmistakable marks.

Father and son then returned to the ruins of the couple’s room at the luxury resort, hoping to find traces of Maria’s last days. Once, the room offered a picturesque view of the stunning Khao Lak coastline. Now it was mere debris. They found little solace. “At least now we know that when she died, my mother was wearing her orange bikini, not her blue one,” the younger Vavrina said.

No one is quite sure what will become of the bodies surrounding the temple or how they will be identified before being burned. Relief workers are resisting burning anyone who looks like a tourist or a foreigner before they have been identified and a death certificate has been issued. So far, there has been no sign of any foreign officials at the temple. Consulates have sent dozens of representatives to the island but they, too, are overwhelmed by the number of bodies. Even if detectives do manage to get DNA samples from bodies before they are burned, it will be days before any of the results come back — days before any of these terrified families get any news.

Outside the temple, the Vavrinas carried their corpse to the fire. “My mother spent three days lying dead in the heat,” said Josef the son. “Now, finally, she will find peace.” His father sat motionless. As the fire continued to burn, he got up and walked along the street, not caring in which direction he was headed.

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As Azar later testified, he was forced to sit for seven hours, his hands and feet tied to a chair. He spent the night in a cold metal container, and he received no food for 30 hours. He claimed that U.S. military officers showed him photos of his wife and four children, telling him that unless he cooperated he would never see his family again. He also said that he was photographed while naked and then given a jumpsuit to wear.

A need for this sort of place

On that day, April 7, 2009, President Barack Obama had been in office for exactly 77 days. Shortly after his inauguration, Obama had ordered the closing of the Guantánamo Bay detention center and ordered the CIA to give up its secret “black site” prisons. He wanted to shed the dark legacy of the Bush years — there should be no torture anymore, no more secret kidnapping operations of terrorism suspects, no renditions. At least, that was what Obama had promised. He did not mention Bagram in his speeches.

Azar was in Kabul on business. His company had signed contracts with the Pentagon worth $50 million for reconstruction work in Afghanistan. On April 8, Azar was placed onto a Gulfstream and flown to Virginia to face charges. He was accused of having bribed his U.S. Army contact to secure military contracts for his company, and he was later found guilty of bribery.

It was a classic case of corruption, which is not the sort of crime for which a suspect is normally sent to a military prison. No one can explain to Azar why he was taken to Bagram, where the U.S. military treated him like a terrorism suspect and, in doing so, inadvertently provided him with an insight into a world it normally prefers to keep under wraps.

Bagram is “the forgotten second Guantánamo,” says American military law expert Eugene Fidell, a professor at Yale Law School. “But apparently there is a continuing need for this sort of place even under the Obama administration.”

From the beginning, “Bagram was worse than Guantánamo,” says New York-based attorney Tina Foster, who has argued several cases on behalf of detainee rights in U.S. courts. “Bagram has always been a torture chamber.”

And what does Obama say? Nothing. He never so much as mentions Bagram in any of his speeches. When discussing America’s mistreatment of detainees, he only refers to Guantánamo.

Classified location

The Bagram detention facility, by now the largest American military prison outside the United States, is not marked on any maps. In fact, its precise location, somewhere on the periphery of the giant air base northeast of the Afghan capital, is classified. It comprises two sand-colored buildings that resemble airplane hangars, surrounded by tall concrete walls and green camouflage tarps. The facility was set up in 2002 as a temporary prison on the grounds of a former Soviet air base.

Today, the two buildings contain large cages, each with the capacity to hold 25 to 30 prisoners. Up to 1,000 detainees can be held at Bagram at any one time. The detainees sleep on mats, and there is one toilet behind a white curtain for each cage. A $60 million extension is expected to be completed by the end of the year.

Unlike Guantánamo, Bagram is located in the middle of the Afghan war zone. But not all the inmates were captured in combat areas. Many terrorism suspects are from other countries and were transported to Bagram for interrogation after being captured. Since the military prison first came into operation, all the detainees there have been classified as “enemy combatants” rather than prisoners of war, which would make them subject to the provisions of the Geneva Convention.

Bagram’s most prominent temporary detainee to date was Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the self-proclaimed chief architect of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. After his arrest in Pakistan, Mohammed was initially taken to Bagram for three days and was then held at a secret prison in Poland before being flown to Guantánamo. He told representatives of the Red Cross that he was beaten in Afghanistan, suspended from shackles attached to his hands and sexually humiliated. “I was made to lie on the floor,” he said. “A tube was inserted into my anus and water poured inside.”

“In my view, having visited Guantánamo several times, the Bagram facility made Guantánamo look like a nice hotel,” says military prosecutor Stuart Couch, who was given access to the interior of both facilities. “The men did not appear to be allowed to move around at will, they mostly sat in rows on the floor. It smelled like the monkey house at the zoo.”

Sleep deprivation and sexual humiliation

From the beginning, Bagram was notorious for the brutal forms of torture employed there. Former inmates report incidents of sleep deprivation, beatings and various forms of sexual humiliation. In some cases, an interrogator would place his penis along the face of the detainee while he was being questioned. Other inmates were raped with sticks or threatened with anal sex.

Omar Khadr, a Canadian inmate who was 15 at the time, says military personal used him as a living mop. “Military police poured pine oil on the floor and on me. And then, with me lying on my stomach with my hands and feet cuffed together behind me, the military police dragged me back and forth through the mixture of urine and pine oil on the floor.”

At least two men died during imprisonment. One of them, a 22-year-old taxi driver named Dilawar, was suspended by his hands from the ceiling for four days, during which U.S. military personnel repeatedly beat his legs. Dilawar died on Dec. 10, 2002. In the autopsy report, a military doctor wrote that the tissue on his legs had basically been “pulpified.” As it happens, his interrogators had already known — and later testified — that there was no evidence against Dilawar.

According to an internal military investigation of the prisoner abuse cases at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, which triggered worldwide outrage when it became public in 2004, the practices there were inspired by the treatment of inmates at Bagram.

Hundreds of innocent inmates

To this day, there are hardly any photos from inside Bagram, and journalists have never been given access to the detention center. Although exact numbers are unknown, there are believed to be about 600 detainees at Bagram, or close to three times as many as there currently are at Guantánamo. According to an as-yet-unpublished 2009 Pentagon report, 400 of the Bagram inmates are innocent and could be released immediately.

The detainees at Bagram still have no right to an attorney, which means that they have no legal recourse against their imprisonment and no opportunity to testify in their cases. Some have been there for years, without knowing why.

Obama has announced new guidelines for the treatment of the Bagram detainees, which would require that a U.S. military official provide assistance to each detainee — not as an attorney but as a personal adviser of sorts. This representative could then review evidence and witness testimony for the first time, and could request that a review board examine the case.

Worst abuse

However, attorney Tina Foster feels that the new initiative is just a cosmetic measure. “There is absolutely no difference between the Bush administration and the Obama administration’s position with respect to Bagram detainees’ rights,” she said during an interview.

Foster, a petite 34-year-old with dark brown eyes and black hair, took on the cases of Guantánamo detainees as an attorney with the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights. That was before she discovered that the worst prisoner abuse happened long before the detainees arrived in Guantánamo — at Bagram.

Since 2005, Foster has worked exclusively with Bagram cases. She has appeared in court to file habeas corpus petitions for three Bagram inmates. Normally, every prisoner is entitled to habeas corpus rights, which would give him the opportunity to petition a U.S. court to investigate the reasons for his arrest.

“This ugly chapter of American history”

In early April of this year, a judge ruled in favor of Foster’s petition, arguing that because her three clients, two Yemenis and a Tunisian, had not been “captured in a battlefield situation” in Afghanistan but instead had been taken to Bagram from a third country, they too had rights guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution. “That was a huge success,” says Foster.

Last Monday, the U.S. Justice Department submitted a 64-page brief to the appeals court, challenging the decision. The Justice Department lawyers argued that, as a military prison in a combat zone, Bagram constitutes a special case.

Foster, who supported Obama during the campaign and then voted for him, is disappointed by her former idol. “When I heard his announcement to close Guantánamo, I breathed a sigh of relief that perhaps this extremely ugly chapter of American history was finally being put to an end,” she says. “Unfortunately, since then, the Obama administration has completely failed in delivering the change that was promised.”

Left in the snow

Foster plans to continue fighting for that cause, even though one of her clients, whose witness testimony figured prominently in her case, is now dead. Jawed Ahmad, who was also known as Jojo Yazemi, was a journalist working in Afghanistan for a Canadian television station. He was 22 when he was arrested in October 2007.

The Americans accused him of being in contact with the Taliban. They incarcerated Yazemi at Bagram, where he became just another “enemy combatant” — detainee No. 3,370. They left him standing in the snow for six hours, beat him, threatened him and submitted him to sleep deprivation for weeks. It was only after fellow journalists in New York launched a major media campaign in support of Yazemi that he was released — after 11 months and without any explanation as to why he had been detained in the first place.

Just six months after his release, gunmen driving a white Toyota pickup truck, the kind favored by many Taliban, shot and killed Yazemi in Kandahar. “It was one of the most terrible moments of my life,” says Tina Foster. “He was a great person and a friend.” And he was also Foster’s star witness in her case against Bagram.

Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan.

This article has been provided by Der Spiegel through a special arrangement with Salon. For more from Europe’s most-read newsmagazine, visit Spiegel Online or subscribe to the daily newsletter.

After the polls closed on Thursday afternoon, the Afghan government made its first assessment of the situation — and it wasn’t exactly flattering. President Hamid Karzai’s authorities reported 73 direct attacks against polling stations in 15 provinces.

By contrast, voting in Kabul took place without significant disruptions. Following a shoot-out between two suspected suicide bombers and police early on Thursday morning, no further incidents were reported in the Afghan capital. The two Taliban fighters had entrenched themselves in a house and exchanged fire over the course of several hours with police. Five explosions were also heard on Thursday morning, but it has been difficult to determine what happened because of a government blackout on reporting on election day.

Karzai puts in a theatrical appearance

When President Hamid Karzai voted, he did so as theatrically as ever. Wearing his traditional green coat and accompanied by hundreds of bodyguards, he was escorted to a German school located near the entrance to the presidential palace. Like all other voters, he also had his index finger marked with indelible ink and called on Afghans to do the same. Karzai repeatedly called for “peace” and “no violence on election day.”

But not everyone heeded the president’s words. The government’s claim this evening in Kabul that the election went off relatively peacefully is a stretch. Indeed, dramatic reports of violence came from the northern part of the country. In Baghlan, about one hour south of Kunduz, Taliban insurgents stormed the small town and stopped voting altogether.

Police and international troops in Baghlan clashed violently with the Taliban, which attacked the town from numerous directions and seized control. The insurgents killed the local police chief and several other officers. Afghan sources report that U.S. troops later came to the aid of Afghan forces. They said 22 insurgents had been killed in fighting. Nevertheless, voting did not take place anywhere in the town.

Insurgents also perpetrated serious attacks in Kunduz. German officers said seven rockets were fired at the city and that injuries had been reported. They said one rocket struck a polling station and other shots were fired near a hospital. Provincial Governor Mohammed Omar said Thursday afternoon he estimated that there had been “more than 20″ attacks throughout the day.

The situation was especially critical in the district of Chahar Dara, west of Kunduz. Only one polling station was able to open, Omar said, and voters didn’t feel safe enough to go and vote. “Hardly anyone came while the polling station was open,” he said. Apparently the Taliban had set up checkpoints and checked every car. In the run-up to the election, the insurgents had threatened to cut off voters’ ink-stained fingers.

The violence did not prevent voting from taking place in Kunduz — but participation was very low. “We are assuming that only 50 percent of voters have cast their votes,” said Omar. “The others were too much in fear for their lives.” At the last election in 2005, participation was much higher, according to Omar. “We did all we could,” he said.

Afraid to venture out

The situation in Kunduz is representative of the situation in the rest of Afghanistan. Reports from the south of the country indicated that the turnout there was also very low, because many people were afraid to go to polling stations. Rocket attacks began in Kandahar and Helmand in the morning. Afterwards only a few people were brave enough to venture out of their houses to go and vote — a factor that will mainly hurt President Karzai, whose supporters live mostly in the south.

Similar reports came from other regions too. A BBC stringer in Wardak, a province just half an hour’s drive from Kabul, reported that almost no one there came out to vote. The streets in the cities were empty, the stringer said, with few people daring to venture outside. Like many other parts of the country, Wardak is considered a Taliban stronghold. Here, too, militants had threatened potential voters with death if they turned out to vote.

Besides the low turnout, numerous reports of electoral fraud created doubts about the legitimacy of the vote. Eyewitnesses reported that local tribal leaders — particularly in the most dangerous regions of the country — had taken ballot boxes to their homes and then brought them back, filled with ballot papers on which Karzai had been chosen.

It was also apparent on election day just how sloppy the allocation of voter registration cards had been. A CNN reporter encountered a 13-year-old boy who had just voted — and whose registration card correctly stated his age. It may sound like a bizarre one-off case, but it confirms the fears of observers that more than 2 million of the estimated 17 million registered voters were wrongly listed on electoral lists, or that their names appear twice.

There were also serious doubts right from the start about the reliability of the supposedly water-resistant ink which was intended to prevent multiple voting. Afghans demonstrated to camera crews just how easy it was to remove the mark from their finger using bleach. Opponents of Karzai claimed that significant electoral fraud was carried out in the south of the country using just that technique.

Afghans will only discover the outcome of the election in the coming days. The first preliminary results will probably be made public this weekend, and the final result of the first round of voting will only be announced on Sept. 17. Observers expect that none of the candidates will achieve the absolute majority of 50 percent of the vote or more needed to claim victory in the first round. If that is the case, then there will be a second round of voting, in which Karzai will go up against his most successful opposing candidate in a run-off vote to be decided by a simple majority.

The uncertainty was finally laid to rest on Saturday afternoon, when Karzai issued a decree announcing his intention to hold the presidential elections in the spring, by April 21 at the latest. Always the statesman, the president, who lacks even the power necessary to protect Kabul from the Taliban, explained that he is bound to respect the Afghan constitution. Under Article 61, the election must take place at least one month prior to the end of a sitting president’s term. Karzai’s term ends on May 21.

In his decree, Karzai emphasizes that he wants to remain president. Instead of knuckling under to the West, he is provoking the NATO protective force and the United Nations — an approach that has always scored points among Afghans. “Even if I fail,” so goes an old motto of this proud Pashtun, “I will do so with my head held high.”

The United States distanced itself from Karzai’s decision to move up the elections. US State Department spokesman Robert Wood, speaking in Washington on Saturday, said that although the decree is based on the right principles, the US government still considers it advisable to stick to the Afghan Election Commission’s original plan to hold the election in August.

Karzai is driven by various motives. He has been under great pressure in Afghanistan, where he is criticized for having given in to the West. The election commission, paid for and controlled by the U.N., had ruled that the election should not be held until August. The tense security situation and the need to provide Afghanistan with more time to recover from what has been a harsh winter, the commission argued, would preclude an earlier election — and breaching the constitution, though unfortunate, would be necessary.

Experts Rule Out Earlier Election

The decision sparked massive resistance in the country, and Karzai was criticized by his opponents and supporters alike. They also made it clear that they would no longer recognize the president after the end of his regular term in office. Weeks ago, the Taliban warned all Afghans that anyone taking part in the vote, whether as a voter or a candidate, would be a legitimate target of attack. According to Western analysts, this threat makes elections virtually unthinkable, especially in the south.

These concerns remain valid today. The 17,000 U.S. troops and several thousand European ISAF soldiers meant to provide security for the vote will not be available until the summer. Besides, the preparations — voter registration and the compilation of candidate lists — are not yet complete. The U.N. has not even come up with the $200 million it needs to organize the election. It is still collecting donations.

Not surprisingly, reactions to Karzai’s decree were clear. “There will be no election in the spring,” said a U.N. insider in Kabul only hours after the announcement of the presidential decree, “even if that’s what Karzai suddenly wants.”

“The Buck Is Being Passed to the Evil West”

Perhaps Karzai is even hoping for the West’s predictable rejection of his plan. And perhaps Karzai reasons that if the West does not manage to organize a spring election, he will be able to claim that at least he tried to obey the constitution. “The buck is being passed to the evil West,” says an EU diplomat, “which leaves Karzai looking good.” If this happens, an interim regime — led by Karzai as the “father of the nation” — could be installed until a later election date. A key advantage of this option is that Karzai could still be ousted in the election.

The election commission, playing for time, has not commented on the decree yet. Commission officials say that they cannot make a decision until they have received the official letter from the presidential palace. ISAF’s official response has also been scant. Internally, however, Karzai’s announcement has been met with concern.

Karzai confronted the West’s concerns in his decree. In its four articles, he appealed to the Afghan security forces — namely, the military, the police and the NDS intelligence agency — which are still in the process of being assembled, to do everything possible to ensure a safe election. He also called upon the “enemies of Afghanistan” to take part in the elections. However, many in the West doubt whether local authorities will be capable of providing security.

Karzai’s decision is a signal to critics at home and abroad. Under pressure at home for being Washington’s puppet, the president is looking for ways to distinguish himself. After fatal mistakes were made during NATO bombing attacks on supposed Taliban camps, Karzai was quick to level sharp criticism at the West. It was so sharp, in fact, that last fall then-U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice issued an unmistakable warning: Unless Karzai’s criticism stopped, the United States would end its cooperative relationship with him.

“There Are Plenty of Qualified Afghans”

“I will not be silent, and I will not stop promoting the interests of my people and their children,” Karzai allegedly fired back — at least according to the version his palace broadcast. But the criticism did not stop when a new administration came into power in Washington. On the contrary, President Barack Obama has, in fact, identified Afghanistan as a priority more clearly than his predecessor did, no matter who is in office in Kabul.

U.S. statements in recent weeks sounded practically like Karzai’s notice of termination. For example, when U.S. Special Envoy Richard Holbrooke was asked whether the Obama administration even supports Karzai anymore, he replied: “There are plenty of qualified, impressive Afghans in the country.” Obama had been in office for several weeks before he called his new counterpart in Afghan. Bush, on the other hand, had conferred with Karzai every week.

The opposition is already taking shape in Afghanistan. Former Interior Minister Ali Ahmed Jalali is one of Karzai’s possible challengers in an election. Karzai had removed the 68-year-old politician from his position after Jalali took legal action against the Karzai family for its alleged involvement in the drug trade. Jalali, who was often in the United States in recent months, has strong connections to the conservative camp and is claiming the role of the clean candidate for himself.

There are rumors that another man is the current favorite in the United States. Ashraf Ghani, like Jalali, holds a U.S. passport. He was an adviser at the World Bank and later served in Karzai’s cabinet as finance minister. Even though Ghani himself is suspected of involvement in nepotism, he could become Washington’s new man. Minor flaws haven’t deterred the Americans in the past. Other possible candidates are the governor of Nangahar Province and Interior Minister Mohammed Atmar.

Secret Pacts With Taliban Leaders?

But all of these candidates will not stand much of a chance if Karzai succeeds in his push for early elections. With Karzai’s envisioned election day less than two months away, none of them would have enough time to gain sufficient name recognition in the country, not even with U.S. support. This, too, is likely to have prompted Karzai to issue his decree. Whether or not the elections actually take place in accordance with constitutional rules, Karzai now enjoys an advantage.

Karzai’s sudden fondness for the constitution seems implausible, especially after the many times the president has allowed the constitution to be breached when it suited him. One of the best examples regards Foreign Minister Rangin Dadfar Spanta. Even though the politician, who lived in Germany for many years, was voted out of office by the parliament several times, Karzai kept him in his position. In Spanta’s case, the constitution was merely an impediment.

Only a fool would bet on the outcome of this race, but it is already clear that Karzai will not go without a fight. He is believed to have concluded various pacts throughout the winter with high-ranking Taliban officials and tribal leaders in the south to secure him a majority of votes. No matter how big a role U.S. support and U.N. money play, a president still has to be elected, even in Afghanistan.

According to diplomats, there are indeed some interesting details to be found. The paper illustrates a new train of thought developing within NATO: For the first time, a step-by-step outline has been sketched — with substantial help from Germany — for when the 47,000 NATO troops currently in Afghanistan might be pulled out. According to diplomats, concrete benchmarks are laid out — though any withdrawal, they make clear, would not be immediate.

It is no accident that Germany has played a big part in the drafting of the paper. It has long been clear in Berlin that Germany’s involvement in the mission has a limited shelf life given widespread opposition among the German populace and growing doubts in Parliament. Were there something of a “master plan” for the operation, politicians in the chancellery and Defense Ministry would be able to offer the prospect of German troops returning from Afghanistan. Benchmarks for what must be achieved before that happens could also be clearly defined.

German Defense Minister Franz-Josef Jung began thinking aloud about an Afghanistan master plan last autumn during a NATO meeting in the Netherlands. The current paper being circulated in Bucharest is largely based on his deliberations on the possibility of an exit strategy. In an early draft, the concepts of “networked security” and reconstruction played prominent roles. The “fight against insurgents” was only mentioned in passing. The current draft of the communiqué maintains a similar focus — though a demand for “burden sharing” among NATO allies has not been left out.

The authors of the secret paper seem to have been quite realistic when formulating their list of NATO benchmarks. They sketched out very concretely just how strong the Afghan security forces had to be before they could start taking over security responsibilities from NATO. The number of soldiers needed in the Afghan army was set at 80,000. The minimum level of competence the soldiers must achieve was also spelled out, as was a list of the army’s logistical capabilities. Given those criteria, say experts, any pullout couldn’t begin before 2015.

Indeed, diplomats say that the new plan avoids mentioning a specific date at all. There were fears that setting such a target could weaken NATO’s resolve and stoke false expectations. Furthermore, it has repeatedly become apparent just how difficult it is to meet specific goals in Afghanistan. Germany, for example, admitted just recently that its training program for police in Afghanistan has not proceeded according to plan.

Still, the new paper signals a clear and completely new direction in Afghanistan for both NATO and Germany. It calls for soldiers to gradually focus their attention more on training Afghan police forces and to hand over responsibility for actual conflict situations “as soon as external circumstances and Afghan capabilities allow.” It is precisely for this reason that several NATO countries want to expand their training programs. Defense Minister Jung has even mentioned tripling Germany’s training efforts.

But the paper also alludes to some problem areas that NATO has been studiously ignoring. Diplomats say that the paper would provide very clear benchmarks for Afghan officials in the areas of combating illicit drugs and creating an independent, accountable judiciary, for example.

Several diplomats believe that such benchmarks make the outlook for a swift withdrawal even bleaker. Indeed, Jung has completely avoided using the taboo phrase “exit strategy” in reference to the paper, but he has nevertheless been quick to praise the draft plan. He has referred to it as an “objective we can all set our sights on.”

“According to everything I’ve seen and to everything that other countries have added,” Jung said of the paper, “I am very hopeful that it can be achieved in the foreseeable future.” Specific timelines, however, remain taboo.

What the new secret plan really means for NATO in Afghanistan will become clear only in the months to come. In June, a number of NATO member states will gather in Paris for an Afghanistan summit. Only then will we know just how prepared NATO is to increase reconstruction aid.

Still, despite the paper, it is clear that NATO will not be leaving Afghanistan anytime soon. The mission, the alliance has repeatedly made clear, remains a “long-term mission.”

This article has been provided by Der Spiegel through a special arrangement with Salon. For more from Europe’s most-read newsmagazine, visit Spiegel Online or subscribe to the daily newsletter.