Canada and Afghanistan Detainees
| 4/24/2007 | Posted by Patti under Afghanistan, Military |
A month ago I was willing to cut Defense Minister Gordon O’Connor some slack in regards to the treatment of detainees after being turned over to Afghan authorities. I’m not now.
After misleading parliament either deliberately or through sheer ignorance of his own portfolio he traveled to Afghanistan and worked out an agreement with the head of the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission,
The Globe & Mail has written an in depth article about 30 Afghans who claim they were tortured after being turned over to Afghan authorities by the Canadians. (I’m linking to another blog who has copied the article as the link at the Globe will likely end up being behind their subscription wall) Now, there is no indication in the article over how long of a period these detainees had been captured or if any of the alleged abuse took place in the last month. That doesn’t make the allegations any less serious and O’Connor should have been aware of the severity when he made this rather tenuous agreement.
It is rare that I can even remotely agree with Taliban Jack Layton but while Harper and O’Connor are dismissing the reports of abuse as “allegations” and “rumours” this is a serious matter involving the treatment of detainees. While NONE of those interviewed reported any abuse by the Canadians, it is against international law for us to be handing over detainees to criminal treatment. Transfer of any detainees needs to be halted immediately and yes, this time round, O’Connor needs to go. So far, Harper is defending him.
Two Canadian professors have been garnering themselves lots of air and press time on this issue, Amir Attaran and Micheal Byers. While many of their points are valid in that the Geneva Convention prohibits turning prisoners over to abuse or torture and that doing so is tantamount to a war crime. There is no specific evidence that Canadian troops and indeed the command structure has knowledge of this happening.
It is interesting to note that Byers appears to have an axe to grind when it comes to Canada’s involvement in Afghanistan and in particular against General Rick Hillier. One that beating hell out of the truth to grind doesn’t seem to bother him, Daimnation has an interesting piece on an earlier torture of the trust by Byer.
As for Attaran, he is a lawyer and immunologist who has written extensively on a range of subjects. It is interesting to note that he has been both a paid and unpaid consultant for NGOs (non governmental agencies), most in siding with NGOs on this issue. The timing seems almost fortuitous that this issue is back before the public at the same time that a controversy between the Afghan government and NGOs is heating up over who knows best what is good for Afghanistan. The Afghans are not happy with NGOs tendency towards paternalism and self serving methods of keeping their recipients dependent on them.
Attaran’s call for Canada to build our own detention facilities in Afghanistan is not necessarily to be rejected out of hand. Doing so could solve several problems in the long run. NATO’s approach of engaging Afghans in taking part in projects in order to learn could be employed here. Locals could be engaged to build the centre and the Canadians could undertake to train Afghan security forces in the proper handling of detainees while keeping those same detainees under careful watch.
We’re training their army, their police, their justice system and even their bureaucrats. It seems pretty obvious that training the jailers how to treat detainees in a democracy is part of the puzzle that needs to be addressed.
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