As if you needed any more evidence of the Liberal party of Canada’s singularly selfish strategy on Afghanistan, the front page of their website has a pretty snazzy looking map of the country, followed by a link to the Afghan detainee chronology.

Interesting chronology. Diplomat Richard Colvin features in it as some kind of central hero to a story, with the first mention coming in the sixth paragraph:

April 2006: Canadian diplomat Richard Colvin arrives in Afghanistan.

Richard Colvin then appears 26 more times on the same page.

But nowhere is there mention of the testimony given to the Parliamentary Committee for the mission in Afghanistan on April 28 from Gavin Buchan, Political Director of Canada’s reconstruction team in Kandahar from April 2006 to July of 2007, and representative of the DoD from October of 2007 to February of 2009. Nor does it mention the testimony of Major-General Timothy Grant on the same day, who served as Commander in Kandahar from November of 2006 to August of 2007.

Perhaps that’s because their testimony contradicts that of Richard Colvin’s and doesn’t provide quite the narrative of torture, war crimes, and rendition that the Liberal Party is looking for? I’m betting that’s it.

The picture on their website is almost a metaphor for their involvement in this mission. It’s some place on a map, slightly out of focus, coloured pink so that we can distinguish between it and the border of Pakistan and Turkmenistan. Anything beyond this vague notion of a faraway place where people are tortured isn’t essential to their central theme that the Conservative government is guilty of war crimes.

Photograph by: Ottawa Citizen

There’s a great article in the Edmonton Journal today about Afghanistan’s ambassador to Canada, Jawed Ludin, who says that the endless discussion about the treatment of Afghan detainees is terribly pointless.

“It’s a terrible waste of time, unfortunately.

“I’m very, very upset that the Parliament in Ottawa is so focused on this. First of all, it talks about a long time ago. If there weren’t any problems in Afghanistan, if there wasn’t human rights violations, if our police and prisons were perfect, why did we need your help? That’s why you’re there, helping us.”

The fact is that the entire Afghan detainee controversy is an odious piece of political gamesmanship perpetrated by the opposition parties. The truth is that despite what the opportunists tell you, everything about Afghanistan is better since western forces began helping, including “torture”.

The infamous NDS, says Mr.Ludin, has come a long way in recent years. And he also says that such debates may “tarnish the reputation” of Canadian soldiers abroad.

Do you think so? When you shout “torture” and “war crimes” a whole lot, I imagine that would have a tendency of happening.

And, Mr.Ludin said, the problem with obsessing on the Afghan detainees nonsense is that we’ve lost focus on the mission completely.

“We need discussion in Canada about where Afghanistan is going, how important it is that Canada supports us and how important it is that the support continues in some shape or form. That discussion is not happening because this story has totally dominated discussion in Parliament.”

I can only imagine some Afghans looking at the Ottawa press corp witch hunts and wondering why we’re volunteering to spend all of our energy on sympathy for an enemy who hasn’t even made a formal complaint of torture in the first place. Meanwhile, nary a peep about the men in black turbans who continue to earn a living by burning down girls schools and storing vials of acid for women who step out of their burqas.

I wrote an article for the National Post that appeared in the Friday edition about Afghan detainees. Due to constraints of space, they obviously could not print the full version. Here is that version now, for those who have wondered how the detainee issue plays in the minds of Afghans. Thanks to Terry Glavin for his assistance in this article.

Afghan patrol through the village of Teymurian. Photo credit: Master Corporal Matthew McGregor

The Canadian media has switched its focus on Afghanistan in recent months from what is happening overseas to what is happening right here at home involving government documents on Canada’s mission in Kandahar. The buzz word has been the alleged “torture” of suspected insurgents captured by Canadian Forces, precipitating the so-called “Afghan detainee abuse scandal.”

An EKOS poll released last week, however, indicates that Canadians haven’t been paying very close attention to the details of the scandal. When asked how closely they have been following how the federal government has handled the Canadian military’s transfer of detainees to Afghan authorities, 43 per cent of those surveyed said “not at all”, while 40 per cent said they have followed it “somewhat closely.”

The reason most widely cited for Stephen Harper’s prorogation of Parliament last December is that he was dodging politically damaging questions from the opposition about the handling of Afghan detainees. The subject has thoroughly dominated agenda of the House of Commons’ Special Committee on Afghanistan in recent months.

But while Canadians have been polled and questioned on how they feel about the mission in Afghanistan, there has been far less reporting on what actual Afghans themselves are saying about the so-called “scandal”, or whether it is resonating with any force over there.

Najia Haneefi is the founder of the Afghan Women Political Participation Committee in Kabul, moving to Canada from Afghanistan in 2007. Canada has already paid too much attention to the detainee issue, she said in a telephone interview from her home in Ottawa.

Ms.Haneefi said she wishes Canadians would pay more attention to the threat of a sellout of human rights as Afghan President Hamid Karzai pursues negotiations with senior Taliban leaders.

When asked about the possible torture of detainees in Afghanistan, she answered by referring to the broader context of Afghans imprisoned across the country. A 2009 survey by the International Red Cross reports that 29% of respondents said they had experienced some form of torture, though that was down from 43% in a 1999 Red Cross survey.

Ms.Haneefi said she doesn’t think that the Canadian government is dodging a scandal on the issue so much as it is avoiding the subject of Afghanistan altogether.

“Harper does not want to deal with the issue because it’s a big headache,” she said. “He went on TV in the United States in 2008 and said that ‘Afghanistan is a grave of empires and we don’t want to be with them forever.’”

In Afghanistan, the issue of insurgent detainees barely registers with the people there.

Zaman Sultani is the Kabul representative for the Canada-Afghanistan Solidarity Committee. He said that the people he has talked to have not brought up the detainee issue.

“I am not sure if people would care much, because they are still suffering from insecurity, road side bombs, and suicide attacks from the Taliban,” he writes via email from Kabul. “Apart from the others, you may remember the two last explosions in Kabul, in which many civilians and innocent people were killed.”

It is difficult to get an overall sense of what Afghans think, if at all, about the detainee issue, Mr.Sultani said.

“In my experience, people are optimistic for the presence of international forces. And they think if the international forces are
not present, the situation may go back to civil war.”

As for torture, Mr.Sultani noted that it is certainly not confined to captured insurgents in Afghanistan. A recent Afghan Parliamentary delegation to Iran found that 5,630 Afghans – many of whom are poor people caught smuggling opium – are in Iranian prisons, and more than 3,000 of them have been sentenced to death.

But any consideration of torture in Afghanistan should be weighed in light of the widespread use of torture throughout the region, perpetrated by many different countries. It is wrong, Mr.Sultani said, to focus only on the treatment of the captured detainees by western armies.

Ms.Haneefi said that she has relatives who have been tortured in Iran, and that Iranian authorities treat Afghans there “worse than animals.”

When asked about the idea of reconciliation with the Taliban, Ms.Haneefi said she does not believe the Taliban will negotiate with Hamid Karzai’s government, because the Taliban know the Afghan Army is too weak to stand on its own. The Taliban merely have to outlast the resolve of foreign soldiers, she said, and then they will attempt to seize power again.

Mr.Sultani said that Afghans are apprehensive about the future of their country right now.

“I think we are in a vague situation, and there is not a very clear idea where we are headed on the issue of reconciliation with the Taliban. A law has been passed recently by the government known as the Amnesty Bill. This will give a blanket pardon for war criminals, not only for the past but also for the future.”

Afghans acknowledge that the rumours of detainee abuse hurts support for the mission in western countries, but the perception that Afghans don’t want us there is contradicted by numerous polls. Surveys conducted in the past year by the BBC, Red Cross, and the Asia Foundation, consistently revealed that at least 70 per cent of Afghans thought their country was heading in the right direction and would improve in 2010.

Afghans owe that optimism almost entirely to the continued presence of International Forces. Now if only they could get the average person in the west to listen to them, Afghanistan might prevail against the Taliban.

David Akin of Canwest reports that Sgt. Carol Utton gave testimony yesterday to the Military Police Complaints Commission that “the transferred detainees seemed “delighted” to be turned over to the Afghans.” If there were credible allegations of torture and abuse in Afghan prisons, those reports never made it to her or the “rank and file” based at Kandahar Airfield, Ms.Utton testified.

But Aaron Wherry of Macleans thinks he has a scoop of an answer for that. The following is from a transcript of Sgt. Utton’s testimony provided to reporters last night:

Q. You mentioned some of the detainees were quite happy—quite happy might be overstating it. I don’t suppose anybody would be quite happy to go off to prison, but they didn’t protest at being turned over—

A. Never.

Q. —to the NDS. Do you know why?

A. I believe because they could be bought out of the Afghan jails.

Q. They saw it as a way of getting a quick release?

A. I believe that is a way of life in the Afghan system. It is so corrupt that if you had enough money you could buy people out of jail.

I recently did a story on Afghan detainees by interviewing Afghans about prison conditions in the country, and whether such a thing registers on the radar of ordinary people there. In one of my interviews, I was told that the Taliban don’t really care whether they get taken into custody or not. If they’re held by ISAF they know they’ll get better treatment than they would if they were in an ordinary prison. But if they’re sent to an ordinary prison, they can easily bribe the guards to escape.

This isn’t breaking news. It’s only breaking news to reporters who never leave Ottawa:

A passenger needs to get to the airport quickly without any bothersome security checks? No problem, for a price of $20 at the first checkpoint.

You need a driver’s license immediately and without any tests? Such express service will set you back $180.

A family wants their son, in prison for drug smuggling, to return home? The necessary papers will be filled out the same day for a price of $60,000.

Gar Pardy wrote an op-ed in the Ottawa Citizen today about former Supreme Court Justice Frank Iacobucci and the enduring so-called “Afghan Detainee Affair” that has captivated the Ottawa press corp like a cheerleader in a tight sweater vest. Mr.Pardy indicates that after failing to kill the issue by discrediting Richard Colvin and proroguing Parliament, the government hired Justice Iacobucci in another attempt to hide the evidence.

After a lengthy preamble, Mr.Pardy gets down to the meat and potatoes:

Over the past several months, the executive arm of government has demonstrated that it is determined to prevent Canadians from having detailed information on whether or not Canada is in default of fundamental international obligations as detailed in the Geneva Conventions on War and the Convention Against Torture. As these conventions find full reflection in the Canadian Criminal Code, the matter strikes at the enforcement of Canadian law as well.

Well, you can bang your head against the wall all day if you like, but it still doesn’t change the fact that the “detailed information” being sought on the treatment of Afghan detainees mainly pertain to events which occurred before 2007. Mr.Pardy says that we need to confirm that Canada has been able to prevent, with 100% accuracy, any torture of detainees who may have passed through the hands of Canadian soldiers.

How selective the moral outrage of this former diplomat. To decide to be concerned about the mistreatment of suspected insurgents in a country where human mistreatment is the status quo, is called cherrypicking. The argument that a battle against an immoral enemy like the Taliban is invalidated by the complicity of Canada in turning over insurgents who may have been tortured, is impervious to logic. The only comparison I can come up with is to imagine Canada deciding to opt out of rescuing Jews from Nazi gas chambers in World War Two, because captured German soldiers were roughed up in custody.

Let’s face it. Most of the criticism of the government on this file is politically motivated. Mr.Pardy served as head of the Canadian Consular Service from 1992 to 2003, all but one of those years falling under a Liberal government. His radio silence on Afghanistan is notable until about 2009, when he helped secure the signatures of more than 100 former Canadian diplomats condemning the way the government has treated diplomat Richard Colvin. This sounds a lot like a former diplomat protecting “his own”.

Photo by Master Corporal Angela Abbey, Canadian Forces Combat Camera

We keep hearing how important the Afghan detainee affair is in our media, in our Parliament, and on the blogs of Canadians. But has anyone stopped to ask Afghans whether they’re bothered by the possibility that suspected Taliban detainees may have been subjected to rough treatment in lockup? Has anyone asked the people of Afghanistan whether they believe that the greatest humanitarian issue facing their country is whether men in black turbans have had a rough go of it in the penal system? I seriously doubt it.

As Nasrine Gross, an Afghan-American writer at Kabul University, recently said in an interview on CPAC, the detainee issue is an important one, but there are so many more important issues that need to be focused on. Not just in the way of dealing with security, infrastructure, and aid, but in addressing Canada’s post-combat role in the country.

In opinion polls conducted by international organizations, they all point to concerns other than the welfare of prisoners or the Taliban threat. Some of the largest concerns are based on endemic government corruption, the need for security, and the desire to earn a living.

The International Red Cross with Ipsos conducted a survey in Afghanistan in 2009, and then contrasted it with a similar survey taken from 1999. In almost every area, the lives of Afghans had been improved by interventionism, even if conditions in the country are still difficult.

The IRC have visited detainees and submitted reports to the detaining authorities on conditions of detention and treatment of prisoners since the beginning of the conflict between ISAF forces and the Taliban. In particular, the Red Cross has an agreement with Afghan, US, and NATO-led ISAF nations to visit detainees. These talks focus on conditions, treatment, and compliance with international law. They facilitate contact with families, collect allegations of violations of international humanitarian law, and make recommendations where applicable.

In a radio interview with Canwest Reporter Matthew Fisher on December 28, he told CFRA radio in Ottawa that in talking to the Red Cross, there are currently no issues they have with any ISAF nation, Canada included, in the treatment of detainees. Which is why most of this controversy is based almost entirely upon suppositions and assertions by human rights lawyers Amir Attaran and Paul Champ, which the media seems obligingly happy to print without evidence. Even Liberal bloggers have taken note of this fact.

The Red Cross found in their 2009 survey that in the time period since the 1999 survey, less people have been displaced by war, less damage has been done to personal property, less people have lost contact with relatives, less people have been “humiliated”, less people have lost a family member to war; the list goes on and on. Significantly, there is a decline in the number of people who reported being “tortured”, from 43% in 1999 to 29% in 2009. 52% of respondents reported that the most serious effects of conflict occurred between 5-20 years ago.

The biggest concerns to Afghans are simple, universal ones. 37% worry about making a living, 36% worry about future uncertainty, 34% worry about being displaced by war; only 15% fear imprisonment. In terms of immediate needs, 63% of people said food, 53% said security, 48% said health care, and 46% said shelter. Corruption remains the largest impediment to helping people in Afghanistan with 52% saying it was the largest problem.

Other polls would seem to back up the idea that Afghans are happy that the ISAF is there to secure and protect civilians, and that the largest needs right now are humanitarianism and security. A BBC poll in January showed that 70% of respondents feel the country is headed in the right direction, with 96% favouring their country run by the current government, compared with 6% who said they favoured a Taliban administration. 71% approved of US Forces in Afghanistan, with 70% approving of the presence of the ISAF under the United Nations mission. Just 4% cited the US has the biggest threat to the country, in contrast to 69% who cited the Taliban.

A comprehensive survey by the Asia Foundation in 2009 found similar results in terms of humanitarian need, infrastructure, jobs, and security. Most respondents in that poll said they were significantly better off now than they were under the Taliban, but that most people are just concerned about the basics of life: food, shelter, security, and employment.

So now that we know what Afghans are actually concerned about, perhaps we could put this current detainee affair in the order of importance that it deserves.

The latest allegations against the Conservative government being circulated in the media are based on unsubstantiated, uncorroborated assertions made by none other than Amir Attaran, law professor at the University of Ottawa. The entire premise to this story is that Mr.Attaran has seen portions of the unredacted documents, so he says, and that within them contain the smoking gun of evidence for complicity in torture by Canada’s government.

It’s already been widely circulated today that Mr.Attaran has strong ties to the Liberal party. During the 2008 federal election, the Conservatives pointed out that the non-partisan professor had donated “at least” $1,000 to the Liberals and NDP since 2006.

While it certainly doesn’t make one a partisan because one donates to a political party, when a man is asserting, without proof, that the government is directly involved in “war crimes”, one needs to assume all potential conflicts of interest.

Although the professor has never been a member of any political party, Mr.Attaran donated to former Liberal leader Stephane Dion, and also to federal NDP MP Dawn Black, whom he met during his work on the Afghan detainee file. He’s also donated to his local MP, NDP MP Paul Dewar. Mr.Dewar, as many will note, is the NDP Foreign Affairs Critic, and has been calling for withdrawal from Afghanistan since the beginning.

He also donated to Michael Ignatieff, who was his boss when he was on faculty at Harvard University. Mr.Attaran was an adjunct lecturer in Public Policy at Harvard University, publishing research as part of the Center for International Development and the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government. As it turns out, Michael Ignatieff directly intervened in order to save Mr.Attaran’s job.

Amir Attaran has a history of stirring the hornets nest without proof. Whether that’s out of genuine concern for human rights, or to cast aspersions on the Conservative government, we can’t know for sure, since conclusive evidence has never been forthcoming.

Back in February of 2007, he began the whole Afghan detainee allegations when he said he obtained proof that three Afghan prisoners were abused based on government documents obtained under the Access to Information Act. Not only did Mr.Attaran accuse Canadians of complicity in torture, he accused the detainees of being beaten by Canadian soldiers themselves.

A military investigation was launched immediately, as Defence Minister Gordon O’Connor came under attack. Amir Attaran had sent the information on the Military Police Complaints Commission, a civilian-run body that investigates complaints. There was no evidence of any mistreatment at the time of the investigation.

An April 23, 2007 article in the Toronto Star said of the investigation that Mr.Attaran was casting a “serious shadow” on Canada’s human-rights credibility, the latest blow to an oft criticized agreement “signed in the waning days of Paul Martin’s Liberal government.”

But along with Amir Attaran, another professor made his way into the spotlight in 2007, saying that the door had been opened for Canadian troops to be tried as “war criminals” if prisoners had been found to be tortured in Afghan prisons. Michael Byers, professor of political science at University of British Columbia, urged the Harper government at the time to build its own prisoner detention facility.

Michael Byers also has strong ties to the opposition parties in Canada. On July 2, 2008, Mr.Byers announced he was seeking the NDP nomination for the federal riding of Vancouver Centre, a seat held by Liberal Party of Canada incumbent Hedy Fry since 1993. After losing in the election, Mr.Byers then suggested an alliance between the Liberals and NDP, in order to assure that the left wouldn’t split the vote in ridings that the Conservatives could win.

A military police commission finally ended the controversy started by Mr.Attaran, declaring in early October of 2008 that Canadian military police did not abuse three suspected Taliban prisoners in April 2006.

In an online question and answer period from March of 2007 on the Globe and Mail, however, Mr.Attaran clearly had preconceived notions about our performance in the field:

It pains me to see the Canadian Forces reneging on their policy and obligation to uphold the Geneva Conventions, and it appalls me to see my government making excuses — some of them which are now proved untrue — to have stuck with torturers.

Amir Attaran contacted me recently via email, lawyer in tow, over comments I made about him in the National Post, referring to him as “hardly a human rights expert”, because he has a case before the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal to get OHIP to fund his wife’s invitro fertilization.

He threatened me with defamation and asked for a retraction. But what I found very interesting was the email address of Mr.Attaran’s lawyer, whom he had carbon copied in his correspondence with me. It’s none other than Paul Champ, the representative for Abousfian Abdelrazik, and public advocate in the case of Omar Khadr and Maher Arar. Talk about bringing a bazooka to a fair comment fight.

Mr.Champ has been vocal in the media on the Afghan detainee file as well, condemning Rick Hillier publicly for “trivializing torture”. Mr.Champ, representing Amnesty International and the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association, and retired diplomat Gar Pardy, former head of consular affairs, testified in December at an informal hearing of the Afghan detainee committee.

Mr.Champ was questioned by Liberal MP Bob Rae, their Foreign Affairs Critic, who responded:

“In my view, it’s an absurd statement to make and it’s a trivialization of what’s happening in Afghanistan and the absolutely terrible conditions in Afghan prisons. It’s not being frustrated with a prisoner and you hit him with a truncheon or something like that… This is planned, systemic torture. And to compare it to a Canadian prison, I would suggest, is indicating someone is not taking this matter very seriously at all.”

As of this writing, no evidence of Canadian complicity in torture has been provided.

Update

A little backgrounder. Damian Brooks had this right back in 2007.

Amir Attaran expressed “concerns” at a University of Ottawa conference in March of 2006:

“Soldiers risk involuntarily becoming accessory to torture, a war crime.”

This is a sort of cart before the horse thing, since the allegations of torture surfaced after Amir Attaran went looking for evidence of them. Any evidence.

Maybe a Canadian citizenship would suffice. Then we could bring them here to Canada where we could mend their ways through several healing seminars with Jack Layton.

Okay, I’m not seriously suggesting that should happen. But I have to ask. Just what does Amnesty International want from us? According to this source [you have one guess who], the number of Afghan detainees who have been transferred into local custody by Canadian soldiers and thus face the prospect of torture, is five times higher than previously thought.

Amnesty International, citing sources, says it believes Canadians have detained up to 200 Afghans and passed them over to local prison officials, or to the country’s secret police. The National Directorate of Security, which reports directly to Afghan President Hamid Karzai, has been fingered as the primary culprit behind the majority of prison torture allegations.

The Canadian government will not say how many people it has detained while fighting Taliban insurgents, citing national security concerns. A former commander of the Canadian mission in Afghanistan, Col. Steve Noonan, has said “more than 40″ Afghans have been detained by Canadian soldiers and transferred into local custody.

First of all, what sources? It’s not enough to say “citing sources”. Secondly, who other than Afghan prison officials or police should Canadian soldiers turn over enemies of the state? Is anyone seriously suggesting that Canada feed, clothe, shelter, and provide counsel for every detainee they catch trying to blow the head off one of our soldiers? It’s only common sense that they be turned over to custody. Otherwise wouldn’t we be accused of imperialist gulags like the United States and Guantanamo Bay? It’s like we can’t win.

Amnesty International believes as many as 200 detainees may have been transfered to Afghan custody, but a Canadian official says it has only been 40. The human rights group then refused to cite the source of the figure [contradicting the Star in their own article], but “as far as we’re concerned it’s reliable.” Amnesty and the B.C. Civil Liberties Association have argued no detainees should be turned over until we can guarantee there will be no torture. Which is sort of like refusing to give Afghanistan responsibility for self-governance and determination, and then accusing it of not taking responsibility for self-governance and determination.

It doesn’t make any sense to me.