Demarchy

On June 22, there was a audible buzzing coming from Parliament Hill.

The press bounced off the walls, waiting for the deluge of information ordered by House of Commons speaker Peter Milliken. Last year, the Kingston MP had assembled an ad hoc committee to release thousands of pages of documents pertaining the issue of detainee abuse in Afghanistan.

The ensuing Tintamarre, to use the Acadian phrase for creating a lot of noise, was frenzied by midday, but by dinnertime coverage was all about the upcoming royal visit…

Here’s the whole story, on Rabble.ca

(Note: Not sure how well the torrent (linked to on the left sidebar) is working, so if you’re interested in getting access to the docs via Dropbox, send me an email (also to the left.)

So today I bring you a rather nice story.

A nice story that points to some of the absurdity of trying to put the detainee abuse scandal at the feet of the Canadian Forces.

Before I get to that, and I mentioned this already, but I insist on continuing to harp on the current media coverage;

A year-long, multimillion-dollar probe has failed to resolve one of the most heated political questions ever to dog the Harper government: Did Canadian soldiers knowingly hand over Afghan prisoners to torture? [Source]

That’s an excerpt from the main Globe story on the docs. The way I see it, the G&M had three angles tucked in their back pocket for this story

• Documents detail investigators reprimanding commanders for knowingly handing over detainees to torture-ridden prisons
• Documents somehow prove that torture never happened
• Documents show that torture happened, but Canadians didn’t know until after the fact.

And, to be clear, the first would never happen, the second is almost laughably implausible and the third is what happened.

For the first to be true, there would have to be numerous sets of circumstances that are either not reflective of reality or incredibly unlikely. Namely, there would have to be very few people involved in choosing which detainee gets transferred to where, they would need to have an intimate knowledge of the Afghan prison system up to and including which prisons are notorious for torture and which guards are known for abuse and that same knowledge could not also been known by the ‘good guys’ in the Forces.

That’s an absurd situation. First off, the transfer system was quite removed from the Forces. Generally speaking, the Canadians would capture a suspected anti-coalition force and would interview them. The three likely outcomes would be that they are deemed to be not a threat or innocent, so the Canadians would released them, they would be a possible or known threat, so they would be handed off to the Afghan, or they would be a possible intelligence source so they would be a follow-up for CSIS. The third appears to be quite rare, or (maybe more likely), not in these documents.

But let’s look at the circumstance where the detainee is deemed to pose a threat and is therefore to be given to the Afghans. The detainee is held at a Canadian transfer center for (generally) no more than 96 hours. They are then picked up by the NDS or Afghan police. That’s it. There is no autonomy for the Forces to say “We’re giving him to Nabil the Butcher” or whatever. And, while Canadians knew there was torture going on, it was certainly isolated and uncommon (albeit extremely serious) and, without the capacity to start their own prison system, pretty much had to pass along the detainees.

And, as I’ve already said, there was at least one instance where the Canadian Forces flat-out refused to hand over a detainee because they were concerned about torture.

In one document, Major Bernie Hudson explained how, seemingly before the detainee fervor erupting in Ottawa, a process was instigated to ensure that all Canadian-captured detainees were properly documented and kept track of.

The interview with Major Hudson is party of the Military Complaints Commission’s investigation. Same investigation as the interview a posted a few days ago. The interview is POA 0392 and Mr. Mills is the interview.

The interview with Maj. Hudson is the happy story I wanted to write about today.

An interesting bit in the interview is when he, I think inadvertently, singles out why the Forces seem to be generally comfortable with the NDS/Afghan forces.

MAJ HUDSON: …Also there was at least one occasion where they [the NDS] refused to take someone because he was still — they were saying he was convalescing. Our doctors gave him a clean bill of health to hand over, but they weren’t comfortable accepting him in the condition he was in. 

He still had some Band-Aids on him and that sort of stuff … the NDS colonel basically said that I can’t provide him any medical care in my facility, so you hang on to him for another couple of days until he’s completely healed, and then we’ll accept transfer. Okay.

MR. MILLS: Do you think on the NDS side of things they were concerned about having somebody that might be still in a state of injury or —

MAJ HUDSON: At that time, yes … they also knew that the eyes of the world were looking at them on some of these issues too.   

This, of course, isn’t to give the NDS a pass. The Afghans were torturing their own people, no doubt. The point being is this; the Canadian Forces knew there were rotten apples, but they were instructed to hand over detainees. The NDS seemingly seemed on-the-level at the point of transfer. The Forces had no recourse to inspect Afghan facilities until they heard of it second-hand from Corrections Services or DFAIT. 

So it’s really quite absurd to conclude that these documents leave the question unanswered. 

Check this out; 

MAJ HUDSON: They had more food and water then they could deal with … it came out of our kitchens, but it was chosen to be in accordance with Halal … Unlimited amounts of water … three meals a day. Everyone was given a Koran and a prayer mat. And we would also tell them if they needed — because we had to take away their watches and stuff, we would tell them when it was time to pray.  (Page 54)

Now, this sounds like pretty basic stuff, but this is quite luxurious compared to the Afghan prisons. Some had no beds, no access to water, only rice and potatoes for food, etc. 

Now, let me be clear; I’m not naive. Hudson probably didn’t spend the entire day in the detention facility and I’m sure that things didn’t always meet regulations. When you send guys into war, they develop an adversarial mindset, as is to be expect. I don’t think that the detainees were tortured, but I’m not entirely convinced that they were living a five star hotel the entire time. There are some remarks made towards psychological trauma.

Having said that, Hudson also indicated that military personnel weren’t permitted to guard the detainees. He actually references several times that other officers were pulled from duty to “gofer” for the detainees. Military police were the only ones permitted to guard the detainees, as it should be.

But the list of good detainee practices is really quite great. They were provided with a doctor virtually immediately. And yes, they covered pre-existing conditions. 

MAJ HUDSON: …And these guys had never seen a doctor in their lives. A lot of them arrived with all kinds of infections and ailments and everything else. So the doctors used to take awhile.  (Page 52)

A far cry from Afghan facilities, where finding a doctor is a total crapshoot.

Occasionally detainees were forced to stay a few days past the 96 hour limit. Major Hudson explains that when that happened, they were provided with radios, backgammon or, if they were literate, books.

It cumulates in,

MR. MILLS: Well, we’ve certainly heard that with some detainees they weren’t interested in being released. They were being treated so well.  (Page 57)

Let’s be clear; the facility would not be so nice if it were an actual prison. It’s a lot easier to be nice to one or two detainees than it is to deal with two hundred. That being said, this information just doesn’t jive with the idea that the military was knowingly handing over detainees to be tortured.

At one point, in May of 2007, DFAIT instituted a ban on detainee transfers for almost the entire month while it worked up stricter transfer policies. And, again, here’s the issue; there was largely no problem with the transfer process. The problem was thugs in the Afghan system that we seemed unwilling to deal with.

And so, during this transfer freeze, Hudson recalls they had one detainee waiting for transfer who was stuck in their facility for around 15 days.

MAJ HUDSON:… I was very concerned about him. And we talked quite a bit about what we wuld need to do to this guy. they worked on varying his diet, give him different things to eat, to try. to at least provide some sort of stimulation to him, you know…

…Even when I talked to the guards, I mean, they were concerned about this guy…

…the troops were genuinely concerned. And empathetic about the guy’s plight. I mean, knowing full well that he could still be the nastiest terrorist we’ve ever had, but I mean, there’s — it doesn’t matter…

…people are entitled to some basic, you know, human rights…   (Pages 58-60)

Hudson pointed out that they guy is probably scared shitless, worried about his family, bored, and a realm of other things. Hudson says he was crying, and despondent. So they brought in translators once or twice a day to talk to him.

So, while not exactly a fairy tale, that’s a pretty encouraging note that the Canadian military is doing things different. As Hudson remarks earlier, in a report released on Abu Garhib, 50% of abuse happens at the point of capture. While there is relatively little information on that here in these documents, generally that seems to be untrue for the Canadians. 

As he explains;

MAJ HUDSON: …I would say, I mean, I was concerned about [abuse] all the time. And took whatever measures I could to … limit the time they were in custody with the Battle Group as much as possible, because I have a concern that, you know, you capture a few that just finished shooting at you or killing one of your buddies.   (Page 67)

Another nail in the coffin of this myth about the Canadian forces comes later in the interview when Hudson remarks that, in his area of command, the decision was made to only transfer to the NDS - not the Afghan National Police or any other groups. While the NDS, as I’ve noted, aren’t exactly the model of integrity, they do seem to be more trustworthy than the ANP (if you recall, other commands had issues transferring to them as well.)

Hudson says that initially, there was ambiguity about who they should hand off detainees to. They decided on the NDS. That was decided before Ottawa’s damage-control stunts a few years later.

But a lot of these accusations stem from exactly what Hudson references a few pages later.

MAJ HUDSON: …I never firsthand saw anybody doing abuse in [Afghan] facilities or in [Afghan] custody. So - but I mean, you’d anecdotally hear a lot. Hearsay, you know.

If i had received any concrete knowledge that someone was abused, I mean, I would have … reported that and tried to act on it within my power…  (Page 70)

And that’s exactly it. That hearsay became proof, somehow. Proof that Canadian Forces knew and did nothing. 

But, I suppose because they’re not the faces associated with the war, Corrections Services and DFAIT receive no blame. They seem to have a complete unwillingness, or I suppose inability, to do anything about detainee abuse other than file reports.

If you need an absurd story of bureaucracy, look no further. Hudson tells a story of the Defence Department’s National Investigation Service,

MAJ HUDSON: …there had been one occasion where we had an escalation of force with a detainee in the facility then. It was such a minor — basically [the NIS] thought a guy was trying to hurt himself with a plastic knife, so they went down and took it from him. Then they wrote … what we would do in Canada, we wrote an escalation of force report for ourselves. They did that, what we would do in Canada. And put it on the detainee file itself, for that detainee, because in Canada you put it on a SAMPIS…

…But we don’t put detainee information on SAMPIS, so we said, okay — what had happened, the platoon commander came and said, okay, this happened, what do we do?

MR MILLS: Right.

MAJ HUDSON: I said well, what would we do in Canada? Do this report. Okay. But there’s no rule that says we have to do that in theatre, and there’s no mechanism to put it on SAMPIS and that was why we do it in Canada, is to put it on SAMPIS and so we said, well, fine, we’ll do the report, and we’ll just put it in the detainee file … It was such a minor — like I say, there was no injuries, no lasting — they just had to, you know, forcibly remove a plastic knife from a guy’s hand. It wasn’t a big, big deal.  (Pages 83 - 84)

Did that confuse you? Me too. Reads like it confused Hudson as well.

Point being; we’re throwing attention on the wrong spot. Our Forces are doing a damn good job of looking after their detainees. There’s not a lot of disagreement on that.

The real question is; why do these documents seem to issue a lot of accusations, suspicions, etc. but never actually demonstrate that our foreign service is stopping the torture? 

That’s the question the media should be asking. But, in case you haven’t noticed, I may be the only person left in Canada still writing about this.

So two posts ago I was talking about governor Khalid.

I forgot to mention a few details.

But let’s go back in time first. It’s 2004 and Kandahar province is still largely under Taliban control. The southern province makes up most of the country’s opium production and is therefore of strategic importance to the insurgents, as opium is a main source for their funding.

The anti-Taliban forces were a collection of locals, largely those who had participated in the anti-Soviet Mujahideen but crossed the Taliban government once they established power, were paid and supported by the American government. 

Gul Agha Shirzai was one of those guys. The CIA paid him well to assemble a fighting force. He used that force, with the aid of American air strikes, to establish a tentative grip of power on the province.

Once Shirzai and his men cleared the way for the Americans to come in, Karzai and the Taliban figured out an agreement to surrender governing control of the province. Mullah Naqib, one of the Mujahideen commanders, took control. The Americans, however, resented that he was partially chosen by the Taliban. So, they went with the bastard they knew and screwed over Naqib to put Shirzai in power.

Problem is, Shirzai had already been governor and was widely seen as a corrupt Opium lord. And, sure enough, after the Taliban had cut down production, Shirzai ramped it right back up again.

There’s a lot more in this Harper’s article. It’s a great read.

After a few years into his government, he had earned him the nickname “The Bulldozer.” It was due to his style; ruthless, but efficient. Problem was, Karzai was trying to gain some sort of legitimacy across the country and experimented with throwing out some warlords. So he created a decree that effectively removed Shirzai from power. Months later, Shirzai joined Karzai’s cabinet.

In 2006, he appointed Yusuf Pashtun as governor. A university educated, senior Afghan cabinet minister who, by all accounts, seemed great for the job. He also appeared to actively participate in an opium poppy eradication program. However, he recognized it as a valuable source of income for many Afghans, and thus only ordered half the crop destroyed.

And then, as quick as you can say what-the-fuck, Shirzai was back in power. On December 27th, 2004, President Karzai re-appointed Shirzai as governor. The move garnered about two dozen words in World in Brief section of the Washington Post. It was picked up in a couple of other papers, and a few carried the AP wire story.

Essentially, Karzai resented having the warlords in his cabinet, so he gave them jobs elsewhere.

For 16 months, the province had a real governor. Then they got Shirzai back. 

Alright, enough of the backstory. All of that was to set up the Canadian’s arrival in the Kandahar province. 

Eight months after Shirzai gets his old gig back, we show up. (We proceeded to name one of our camps after him. Go figure.)

So maybe this is a rather convoluted way of getting to the point; we give the Afghans an awful lot of leeway. While we, the English and the Americans essentially keep this government afloat with our security forces and development dollars, we’re letting them dick around at the expense of our men and women’s lives.

This sort of corruption and gerrymandering is typical of the Afghan government. And that’s why I’m amazed that the Conservative government maintains that we must respect the sovereignty of Afghanistan. It’s a rather absurd notion, simply because we invaded the damn country. As long as we’re putting our citizen’s lives in danger, we should have some say in how their government is structured. Namely, let’s not allowed corrupt murderers to be the governors.

Shirzai was eventually removed again in the summer of 2005. Where to? He became governor of Nangarhar, another big opium-producing province.

And, of course, Assadullah Khalid took over. He had been moved by Karzai from the Ghazni province. While governor, he was implicated in the killing of five UN workers and the torturing of Afghans underneath his house. I’ve written about that already.

But let’s go back to Shirzai. And I actually want to talk about something that’s not in these documents. And, what’s more, it’s being kept secret by the federal government.

CanWest, in some uncharacteristic spurt of real investigative journalism, uncovered that the Defense Department had given $1.1 million dollars to a company named “Sherzai.” 

A Kandahar warlord, with links to former governor Gul Agha Sherzai, earned $2.5 million since 2008 providing security outside of the provincial reconstruction base. [Source]

What’s more is that the contracts were for security purposes in Kandahar, suggesting that Sherzai was using his own militias from 2001. We’ve been in this country for a decade, I think we’ve moved past hiring corrupt warlords to do our bidding for us.

All-in-all, we spent $41 million on hired guns in Kandahar. We still don’t know the extent of their use, because the government is dragging its feet on releasing the data.

We spent money on US goons, too, the same one that are facing serious human rights abuses.

This certainly fits within in the purview of detainee abuse, because I think these documents show that the more we outsource, the more abuse that happens.

Furthermore, our complete unwillingness to exert political influence over the Afghan government has failed our own mission there. Our guys on the ground are not hired guns. They’re not there to snatch Afghans. They’re there to rebuild the country, and they can’t do that if they’re facing total unwillingness by local governments to engage in any meaningful manner. 

For us to be complicit, through omission, in the corruption taking place is one thing. For us to be paying those linked with corruption is another. 

As a conclusion, let’s play a little ‘Where are they now?’ 

The corrupt strong-armed Shirzai was moved to become the governor of Nangarhar, where he is now facing calls to step down.

And Khallid is now the minister of Border and Tribal Affairs in Karzai’s government.

If we can’t deal with the bad guys in government, how are we supposed to deal with the bad guys trying to topple it?

I took the weekend off, okay?

So in a few conversations I’ve had this weekend where the Afghan Documents inevitably came up (because that’s what all the kids are talking about) I keep getting the question; ‘So, did the Canadian military hand over Afghans to be tortured?’

And I’m really curious as to where this bizarre idea stems from. I realize a lot of the media over the past year has passed along this line, and it makes for a really scandalous headline but it’s completely absurd.

First off, the department that deals with abuse allegations (DFAIT/CSC) is entirely removed from the Canadian Forces. And, by all accounts, abuse and torture was limited to selected regions. So, just on the surface, it would be hard for the Canadians to have a detainee, pass him along and say “Yes, this guy is going to get tortured” with any degree of certainty. 

Okay, that’s well and good. That’s what the Conservatives have (more or less) been maintaining for the past year. They’re right. 

What I don’t get is why the opposition and Canadian media has been so focused on this idea that the military must have been involved. Far and away, the military is the least responsible for this mess. And in trying to scrutinize the military, those wanting answers have allowed the Conservatives to relegate the debate to one of patriotism.

I spent most of today reading one document. It’s POA 0280, for those following at home. It’s an interview by the Military Complaints Comission with lieutenant colonel Tom Putt. The interview is centered around one incident where the Canadian military engaged in a firefight with insurgents and ended up taking the survivors as detainees. There is a wealth of insight in this interview. For example,

(FYI a ‘hot wash’ is military lingo for a debrief after an operation. In this case it was a firefight with insurgents.)

LCOL PUTT: It [the hot wash] was done within a day. Like when it was done, then we sat down and went through the process … we had a telecon with Otawa the next day on that, and then went through the whole thing from start to finish on the whole process. And it was much as trying to explain the realities on the gound as it was them tying to say, this thing has got to be faster … it wasn’t to get rid of the person. It was to follow the process as quickly as possible, but the detainee issue is an Afghan issue, not a Canadian issue … That was kind of their argument. And we were like, we understand that, but we cannot violate the fact that they need to see a doctor, they have to go through the process, some of them are - and nothing to do with the fight - they just came in sick as dogs. And we can’t move them, we cannot transfer them sick.  (Pages 97, 98)

and, again, later in the interview.

We have to understand their cultural sensitivities. We have to be prepared, for a whole host of reasons, to retain a person; an injury, an illness, intelligence … we’re handing him off to the right Afghan authority in our own eyes, and that’s what I talked about, the incident in Helamand where we weren’t prepared (to give them to the local [Afghan National Police] because. [comments were made with respect to concerns about mistreatment.])    (Page 162)

And that’s it in a nutshell. The Forces appear to be much more conscious about who they were handing these detainees over to than anyone else involved in the process. 

And that’s the profound irony of this whole process. The Conservatives have fought to not have these documents released, citing the whole “Support our troops” line, yet these documents largely vindicate the Canadian Forces. They do, however, make the bureaucracy look implicit and out-of-touch. 

It was Ottawa-based decisions that led to detainees being shoved through the system and to the Afghans. Let’s face it, while the detainee issue became a hot button issue (for all of a month), the Canadian Forces had more important things to worry about. Agree or disagree with the mission, as long as they’re there they may as well be doing their job and following protocol.

So, what is that protocol? 

These documents make it abundantly clear. Canadian Forces capture those who they deem to be a security risk, they pass them off to the Afghans (initially to the local Afghan police, but post-2006 increasingly to the NDS) and then Correctional Services Canada and the Department of Foreign Affairs would check up later (as is defined in many of these documents.)

The problem is, as I’ve written about already, how do you deal with a detainee who’s been abused? 

In the course of this interview, the interviewers were wondering the same. In the particular instance, Putt was in charge of the operation that netted the detainees. After the fact, several of those insurgents claimed they had been abused and beaten after the firefight. Putt tells the interviewers that he was not informed until after the fact - he says if he had been, he would have launched an investigation - and the interviewers ask how the soldiers could have seen the bloodied and bruised detainees without informing someone.

Putt puts it perfectly (sorry for the alliteration.) Well, in a haunting sort of way. He asks the interviewers how his men as supposed to determine who constitutes as “beat up.”

[if an officer] stepped forward and said ‘I think there’s abuse’ then it would have [triggered an investigated], but that didn’t happen … They were seeing a lot of really beat up people. And I don’t mean beat up as in physically beat up. I mean hit by bullets and heads ripped off. (Page 156) 

And that’s it, isn’t it? It’s not their responsibility. They’re expect to, day in and day out, see carnage that no human being should ever have to witness. They work 12 hour shifts. They put their life on the line daily. Protocol tells them to hand the detainees over to the Afghans, and to do it as quick as possible, so they do. What more can ask from them? Most of these guys come home with severe PTSD, to ask them to do anything more than what they’re sent there for is absurd. 

If I may editorialize a little more (that’s free license to skip this paragraph) what we really need is a protocol that details how the detainees are passed along to the Afghans and how they’re treated immediately after. Sure, we can show up a month after their capture and check on how they’re doing, but that’s all moot if they’ve been whipped with electrical cable and beaten unconscious. We need to have people in the Afghan prisons. We need to exert our influence and make sure those guards who have been implicated in torture are removed. We need to revoke funding to facilities that do not comply with international standards. And, most importantly, we need to make sure the legal process around processing these detainees is efficient, thorough, and transparent. As Putt phrases it,

We were basically…detaining the local yokels and handing them off.   (Page 161)

Sounds callous, but that’s exactly what was happening. Putt had mused on it earlier in the interview,

…the intelligence folks would have a look at [the detainee] and say, well, they’re of no intelligence value. There’s nothing to harvest here. This guy’s a farmer. Got 250 bucks to take his AKA and pock some shots at us … So, you know, we’ll hand him over to the [Military Police] and they can have him.  (page 156-157)

How can you be expect to look after the wellbeing of the guy who was just shooting at you? They shouldn’t have to. That’s not to say, however, that the Forces have been careless or reckless. On the contrary, the Forces seem to be the most responsible on the issue. 

Putt sums it up, saying they were “Just following the process.”

And the national media has been so quiet about everything here. They didn’t get their ‘smoking gun’, so they moved on. These documents are so important, and so insightful. 

Coming from a socialist, and ardent pacifist and someone who cringes when someone cites “support our troops” in an argument - we owe it to those Canadians serving in Afghanistan like Putt who were conscious of this issue before it became a hot-button political football to tell the real story. Not the politically convenient or the sensation story, but the real story. The one that has domestic and geopolitical ramifications. The one where we are failing our own efforts by letting the Afghan security forces torture their own people.

If we could have one positive impact before we leave, I think passing along a regime based on human rights would be a pretty damn good one to claim.

Bonne Fête Nationale!

This wasn’t supposed to be a big update, but…it is.

Yesterday I briefly wrote about Governor Khalid, the one running a private torture facility (or “prison.”) Well, I did a little more digging, and I suspect that information around Khalid may be the most heavily redacted in all the documents. For example, the summary (of redacted info);

(Allegations regarding a private detention facility allegedly maintained by the Governor of Kandahar were discussed)

appeared, by my count, in eight different documents. That’s not including the ones where allegations against him were redacted all together. So, basically we just know that they discussed allegations against him - no specifics.

But there are a few interesting tidbits. One document talks about a phone call from the lead Globe journalist in Afghanistan,

Graeme Smith phoned half an hour ago to convey his concerns that he and/or his staff may be at risk from Governor Asadullah Khalid. Smith has heard reports that [REDACTED]  (POA 0148)

Oh, so Canadian journalists are being threatened by the politicians we’re keeping in place? Splendid. Oh, and those same politicians are torturing people while we’re trying to get the human rights situation under control? Wonderful.

The email also goes on to point out that these allegations are not new.

One document, from May 7, 2007, refers to a report on Khalid that explicitly conveyed concerns that he was not just torturing his detainees, but putting their lives in danger.

Keep in mind that he’ll stay in power until he gets forced out in August 15th, 2008. More than a year later.

What’s so surreally sad about this, is that there was still confusion in the Canadian ranks about the very existance of the jail. 

Yeah.

Allegations regarding a private detention facility allegedly maintained by the Governor of Kandahar were discussed. proposed enquiries into the existence of the alleged facility, and confirmation and reaction to those enquiries were discussed.   (POA 1018)

That’s from May 28, 2007.

Yet earlier in the month, on May 7th, there was a report that reads,

Graeme Smith, Afghanistan correspondent of the Globe and Mail, has told us that, in the course of his recent investigation on detainees, he interviewed a number of detainees who said they were personally tortured by Governor of Kandahar Asadullah Khalid. Smith said that he will wait for a suitable opportunity to publish, but will do so “within a few months.” 

2. Smith said that [REDACTED] this issue directly relates to Canada’s engagement in the south and therefore in his view raises serious public-policy issues.

3. As has already been reported, [the number and consistency of allegations of human rights abuses by the Governor was discussed]

4. [It had been reported by multiple sources that the governor maintains a private detention facility. It had been reported that Khalid had admitted to keeping detainees there.]

…

6. We will have to have a position on the governor soon…    (POA 0455)

So we knew. We knew! We knew with some certainty that Khalid was torturing people. By many reports, it was underneath his damn home. There is no evidence here that we looked into it. We didn’t even know if he had any of the detainees we had captured (but, given the way that detainees were moved around, he probably did.)

In fact, in POA 0462, there are paragraphs and paragraphs of redaction information about the governor from both our people and from Canadian UN representative Chris Alexander. While this document doesn’t reveal what Alexander said, CBC found out.

The documents also reveal that Chris Alexander, a top Canadian official working with the United Nations, alleged that Asadullah Khalid had ordered the deaths of five United Nations workers in a bombing.

One internal Canadian document from the spring of 2007 states that “allegations of human rights abuses by the governor are numerous and consistent.

“According to multiple sources, including the U.K. embassy, the private detention centre is located under the governor’s guest house.” [Source]

We knew, in 2007, that he killed UN workers We knew he tortured people in his own house. Three quick questions;

1. Why the fuck didn’t we remove him.

2. Are these documents released this week reflective of genuine ignorance on the part of some in the foreign service (which would be appalling) or have these documents been creatively redacted as a means to cover up political unwillingness to remove the governor? (which would be appalling.)

3. Why the fuck didn’t we remove him.

While the foreign service finally caught on to his game, Khalid had sat down with CTV at the beginning of the month.

Kandahar province’s governor rejects allegations that Canadian-captured prisoners endured abuse at the hands of Afghan police and intelligence officers.

“I know this (did) not happen but still, it is not a joke. We have to investigate, we have to see,” Asadullah Khalid told CTV News on Monday [Source]

These people are laughing at us. Seriously, we are a joke to them.

By October 2007, Richard Colvin came out and pointed out that it was time to take a stance on the governor. Mind you, that opinion is heavily redacted for some reason. The summary reads,

[An assessment of Governor Khalid was reported. Khalid’s leadership abilities, allegations of human rights abuse, allegations of other criminal activity were discussed, along with reports that some had expressed the opinion that the Governor should be replaced.]    (POA 0465)

It concludes with (some) of Colvin’s unredacted opinion,

Rather than tackle this (governance issue) Canada has systematically avoided it. It is now generally acknowledged that we need to ‘get serious’ about governance in Kandahar. [REDACTED] [Canada’s position the governor was discussed.]

That says it right there, doesn’t it? Canada’s “position” was to not take one for another year.

You can betcha that directive came straight from Ottawa.

In fact, one document dated January 22, 2008, praises the Governor.

However, after the removal of Governor Shirzai in August 2005, former ghazni Provincial Governor Asadullah Khalid is taking the appropriate steps to eliminate corruption and increase security and infastructure improvements. [REDACTED] is an example of such [REDACTED] (POA 0322)

That last redaction goes on for the rest of the paragraph. Interesting, too, because in the CBC article written upon his removal, it says,

Khalid had been considered a strong leader, but in his three years as governor he faced criticism that he wasn’t effective enough against Taliban insurgents. [Source]

By April of that year, Khalid was still in power. Foreign Affairs minister Maxime Bernier, however, pointed out that it was probably time for him to go. The Prime Minister disagreed.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper publicly upbraided his foreign affairs minister Monday for creating a “misimpression” that the governor of Kandahar should be fired for corruption.

The prime minister’s strong language capped what could prove to be a politically damaging trip to Afghanistan by Foreign Affairs Minister Maxime Bernier. Bernier told reporters that a key Canadian partner in Afghanistan — the governor of Kandahar — should be replaced. A short time later, the Foreign Affairs Department in Ottawa issued a statement in Bernier’s name retracting that comment, suggesting that Canada has no right to opine on the internal affairs of a sovereign country.

The discrepancy sparked the opposition to call for Bernier’s firing and Harper’s own characterization of Bernier’s performance.

“As you know, minister Bernier very quickly corrected a misimpression that I think had been left from some earlier comments,” Harper told reporters in Winnipeg. [Source]

That is absurd.

Note: If you want to follow along on the docs, you can download the ‘afdocs’ torrent by clicking the link on your left. If I write “(POA/DFAIT ####)” it’s referencing a document in that package. All italicized font indicates where the original report was redacted and a summary was written in. 

“The allegations of abuse and mistreatment should be taken very seriously but should be addressed strategically.” (POA 0267)

That, in my two days of reading these documents, is the most damning thing I’ve come across. And damning it is.

Not because those who wrote it did so maliciously, or were caviler about detainee abuse. No, rather, they were following protocol. And, as best as I can tell, there was no effective recourse for dealing with abuse. There were quite detailed standard operating procedures that dealt with how Canadians were to monitor, track and document the detainees - which they did a relatively good job doing - but as to what they should do once that abuse was found? There were very few instances I came across in these documents where Afghan guards were reprimanded for their behavior. In many cases, detainees were blindfolded during their abuse and were unable to single out certain guards. 

No, in this case, the report recommends

In order to maintain confidentiality and prevent retaliation against the detainee that we interviewed today, [the Kandahar Provincial Reconstruction Team] should conduct an additional visit within 2 weeks and conduct interviews with several detainees before we raise the issue.”  (POA 0267)

And that would be fine for a minor problem such as ugly wallpaper or a broken door handle, but the “allegations” they’re talking about are also detailed in the report,

He indicated that that [sic] he could not recall the first interrogation in any details as he was allegedly knocked unconcious early on. He alleged that during the second interrogation, 2 individuals held him to the ground with his shawl while the other 2 were beating him with electrical wires and rubber hose. He indicated a spot on the ground in the room we were interviewing in as the place where he was held down. he then pointed to a chair and stated the implements he had been struck with were underneath it. Under the chair, we found a large piece of braided electrical wire as well as a rubber hose. He then showed us a bruise (approx. 4 inches long) on his back that could possibly be the result of a blow. (While we did not ask, after the interview was completed and before we left, the senior official told us that [REDACTED])    (POA 0267)

So his allegations were corroborated and they learned undisclosed information from a (presumably Afghan) senior official.

And, as luck would have it, after writing that last sentence I checked my Twitter feed, only to see that Terry Milewski was writing about the same damn paragraph. Go figure. He points to the same document having been released already, which clarifies much of the redacted part in the last line. It reads, 

…[the senior official] told us that the detainee had allegedly fallen on the steps the other day due to his [REDACTED]   (doc)

Well, we get the jist of it. The indelible Mr. Milewski sums it up in his clever way,

It’s a staple of every bad prison movie you ever saw. Right after the beating scene comes the coverup scene. Some do-gooder demands to know, how come the prisoner is black and blue?

“Heck,” drawls the warden, “he just fell down the stairs!”

My vision of the events is a little darker. See, to my mind, we’re stuck in early 90’s, post Cold War rebuilding all over again. We send our foreign service into these countries that just came through decades of autocracy where power was largely devolved, just so long as they got the job done. So what you see is a prison regime entirely stuck in 1970 Soviet mentality. One where torture is acceptable, money can’t be spared to keep jails in acceptable conditions and international regulations (and regulators, for that matter) are merely the product of lofty Western ideations about justice and democracy. Those corrupt regimes, however, do not want to lose the influx of development dollars, so they pay lip service while in actuality doing the bare minimum to improve the conditions of the detainees. 

But I think there’s a cynicism on the part of the West, where we know that getting in bed with Afghan forces isn’t going to be pretty. There are quite a few instances in these documents where the Canadian officials essentially say; ‘we know they’re not going to do anything about it, we’ll have to find a plan B.’ Unfortunately, that plan B is often to pass it off to another Afghan department or to pawn it off to NATO or the International Red Cross. 

As is often the case with military matters such as this, there’s also a worrying amount of neurosis about information getting out to the public. For example, there are pages and pages of (redacted) analysis on Globe and Mail journalist Graeme Smith’s articles. Smith was probably the most influential writers on the detainee file, and while there isn’t much released about the Forces’ reactions to his articles, in one instance they heavily site the NDS (Afghan security forces.) The documents point to several points of information in his stories, including where Smith gave the wrong name for an Kandahar NDS chief. The paper ran a correct not long after the story was released.

(Note: While I’d love to provide a link to the story, it no longer appears to be online.)

But on other stories, there is more of a ‘he-said, she-said’ going on.

In “Detainee Watchdog”…the chief investigator for the AIHRC [Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission] in Kandahar, Amir Mohammed Ansari, is quoted as saying that the NDS does not allow the AIHRC to visit its detention facilities. The senior official denied this and said the AIHRC had always been free to visit.   (POA 0147)

The official goes on to say that Red Cross was allowed to visit, so why wouldn’t they allow the Afghan agency?

What follows is more back-and-forth about the nature of relations (or lack thereof) between the NDS and the AIHRC. It turns out the AIHRC never filed a complain about not being allowed into any facilities. It goes on,

[Head of the AIHRC Kandahar office] Engineer Noorzai never requested our [the Canadians] help…Noorzai indicated that her [sic] preferred to try to solve any difficulty through informatal channels first before seeking outside assistance. He further indicated the the challenges faced by the AIHRC were more likely the result of (interpersonal issues) than broader and more serious policy concerns. As a result, it came as a surprise to many of us when his staff went public with the G&M   (POA 0147)

Okay, well and good - but this doesn’t address the underlying issue that the AIHRC appears to have problems accessing prisons. Whether they wanted to apply for help or not is irrelevant, and Smith’s points never appear to be refuted. This “senior official” seems to diffuse the criticism by launching far-flung excuses to get the Canadians out of his hair. It seems to work, too.

The most interesting bit about this page is when the “senior official” goes through four cases of alleged torture in Smith’s article.

(The senior official) said that an individual by that name is currently in the custody of the NDS. He claimed that this [REDACTED] has been involved in the planning of 45 suicide attacks. Since evidence against him is overwhelming, even the most zealous of interrogators would never have needed to retort to torture or beatings…(Comment: our records show that three individuals witht hat name have been transferred by the CF to Afghan authorities. The [REDACTED] discussed by the senior official is probably not the one that Graeme Smith interviewed.)   (POA 0147)

The next cases break down much the same way. The official flatly denies the torture, but the Canadians have doubts about the authenticity of those claims.

The solution? The Canadians organized a meeting with the AIHRC. Yay!

I’ll have more tomorrow.

Note; if you’re looking for the Afghan docs, they can be found here, or via my torrent here. If I make a reference such as (DFAIT.27, it’s referring to one of the docs in that package.)

So I spent most of today huddled over my laptop, with my kitchen in various stages of disrepair, pouring over the 4000+ pages released today as part of former speaker Peter Miliken’s ruling that the government must come clean about potential torture in Afghani jails.

The Twittersphere was largely quiet, apart from a few journalists musing on the political ramifications of the dump.

You can follow the whole coverage (including my own) here.  Keep in mind that I’ve only gotten through roughly half the documents.

And while some outlets, such as the Globe, ran with rather with ominous and ambiguous headlines such as “4,000 pages on Afghan detainees leave question of torture unanswered” - the reality is a bit more mundane, but equally important.

The conclusion I’ve drawn from the released documents I’ve been through so far (keep in mind that this is merely the tip of the iceberg, as thousands of pages were held back and redacted) is that the Canadian foreign service did not hand over Afghans to the NDS (Afghan security forces) with the understanding or implication that they would be tortured or abused. 

That has been the most controversial allegation so far. 

I should also give credit to the Conservatives - they said as much, and they are (in my mind) correct. Furthermore, it comes through rather strongly that the protocols that they implemented (at the bequest of the Department of Foreign Affairs) certainly saved many prisoners from being tortured. 

That being said, I think there is so much more depth to these documents and to the policy implications than the bite-sized political spin applied to the issue.

The real issue is whether the Canadian foreign service oversaw the management of detainees - ones captured by Canadian forces or otherwise - with proper vigor. This is not an indictment of the Forces (as some have tried to charge) but rather of the senior bureaucrats and politicians in Ottawa.

Much of the document dump revolves around the status of individual prisoners as observed by Canadian officials (a wide variety of agencies were involved in this process, including the Canadian Forces, the Department of Foreign Affairs, Correctional Services, the RCMP and CSIS.) In these documents, there are many instances where prisoners came forward with allegations of abuse. They range from being forced to stand up for days at a time (as many as 10) to being whipped with electrical cables or being slapped and punched by guards and interrogators. There are also charges that the prison accommodations are often below international standards - be it the quality/quantity of the food, the access to fresh air, access to basic hygiene or (very frequently, and against international regulations) the need to wear leg shackles constantly for weeks, if not months. 

In every case I came across, the Canadian official writes that an investigation has or will be launched into the allegations. That’s good. In some cases, the investigations were launched through Afghani channels. That’s bad.

For example, on several occasions, Correction Services officials witnessed detainees in shackles. They informed NDS officials that this was not compliant and, although the detainees were uncomfortable but unharmed, that arrangements should be made to get them out of shackles. The NDS officials agreed. That didn’t happen. Over multiple visits to multiple facilities, the issue arose again and again. Excuses ranged from the size of the facility to the guards having not been provided the keys to the locks (which Canadian officials determined was probably false) and, ultimately, very little changing. At one point, the Canadian officials’ reaction, having become frustrated, was to offer international standards training.

This sort of scenario appears to be rather common. Afghan forces fuck up, Canadians follow protocols to try and remedy the situation, Afghan forces don’t give a shit.

And perhaps that’s the root of this entire issue; protocol. Those in the foreign services seem, generally speaking, to be doing a great job. Given, that’s what these documents would be showing regardless, but I’ve yet to see the “smoking gun” that politicians are touting. However, said gun seems to be one that incriminates the foreign service and I’m not sure that’s exactly the right target.

I think there’s a misconception here, in that people are expecting to find that one Canadian Forces or DFAIT official that handed over a detainee with the full knowledge that they would be tortured. That, to my knowledge, didn’t happen. If it did, it wouldn’t be in these documents anyway.

The really incriminating stuff here is where Canadian forces handed over prisoners and made regular visits, only to find that their prisoner had been moved without their knowledge or had been lost in the files. Or when recommendations are made and are never followed through on.

Those who should be scrutinized the most are not those Canadians on the ground. Rather, it is the protocol-setters in Ottawa and the Afghan forces.

While I’ll be making another post tomorrow with more detailed information, the thing that struck me the most was the outright corruption present in the Afghani ranks. They, on several occasions, turned away or delayed Canadian and international officials on mere technicalities. In some cases, prisoners that claimed to had been abused (and had the marks to prove it) told Canadian officials that the Afghan guards explicitly instructed them to say nothing to “the Canadians.” Given some of the other accounts that implicated Afghani guards, I think that’s a likely scenario and I think it sheds doubt on many of the interviews. One prisoner was described as “traumatized” and, according to the Corrections investigators, was smiling and pleasant about his jailing situation. Others did not want to give their names for fear of reprisal.

Furthermore, a disturbing amount of accounts tell of prisoners who had no idea why they were being held. They claim that, despite being held for weeks or sometimes months, they were never told their supposed crimes. This didn’t seem to bother Canadian officials, who, in one report, passingly mentioned that detainees should be told their crimes.

One of the most worrying stories that spanned several documents is the story of Asadullah Khalid, then-governor and now government minister, who runs a private prison. When officials heard allegations about human rights abuses at the prison, they first had to confirm the existence of it before they could address the abuses. (More on Khalid here)

I think this is the perfect illustration on exactly what’s wrong here; the Afghans know they can get away with so much while we oversee their transition to (supposed) “democracy” - but I think these instances show that we give them far too much credit. They are essentially a warlord-run autocracy with the trappings of a democracy, that we bestowed onto them. The reality is that if we’re going to stay, which I fundamentally disagree with, is that we need to pull back from our military role and focus on cooperative, ground-up skill building. The current circumstance appear to be that we assume they share our core beliefs and values, then we offer them human rights training when they show utter disregard for those beliefs. Maybe it’s just cynical me, but there are numerous interviews in these documents where I believe the Afghani official on the other end is, underneath, laughing at our optimism.

Like I said, I’ll have more tomorrow. You won’t find a smoking gun, but you will find some interesting questions about what exactly we’re doing in that country.