JOHN D MCHUGH
It is an odd strategy that Conservative MPs have chosen in boycotting, and thereby shutting down, a House committee examining the alleged torture of Afghan detainees. That strategy only reinforces the impression that the government is trying to obstruct efforts to get at the truth.
And the reports keep getting worse. Canada propped up a notorious Kandahar governor, Asadullah Khalid, diplomat Richard Colvin alleged yesterday in a letter to that House committee. The fudging of the truth went beyond the detainee issue, he said. Officials in Ottawa tried to conceal the deterioration of the security situation.
The senior bureaucrat David Mulroney told Canada's ambassador to Afghanistan, Arif Lalani, not to mention the deterioration of security in his reports to Ottawa. "The ambassador accordingly sent a report in which he said security was improving," Mr. Colvin says.
The government's message, as reflected in its talking points, is that Christmas is a season for worrying about Canadian soldiers. If Ottawa had dealt truthfully with the torture issue at any point in the past two years, its call for a pause might have been on firmer ground.
Instead, it has tried to evade, duck and otherwise hide from the obvious fact that everyone and her brother - except those in the upper echelons of the Canadian government and military in Ottawa - knew about the propensity of Afghan authorities in Kandahar to torture prisoners. Long before senior ministers claimed they learned about it by reading The Globe and Mail in April, 2007.
What everyone knew is summarized nicely in the letter by Mr. Colvin, a former senior official in this country's Afghan mission. In March, 2006, separate reports from the U.S. State Department and Kofi Annan, who was then the secretary-general of the United Nations, discussed torture and official impunity.
On concerns around detainee treatment, up to and including torture, the Canadian embassy and the Provincial Reconstruction Team reported to Ottawa on May 26, June 2, Sept. 19, Sept. 28 and Dec. 4, 2006. At the end of December, the embassy's human-rights report said torture was rife.
Canada tried very hard not to know, Mr. Colvin charges. For instance, its ambassador edited out "the most important information in the report, directly related to our detainee concerns, and from a highly credible source." And even when Canada did fix the problems in May, 2007 (after officially discovering it in The Globe and Mail), its fix didn't work properly for five months, and detainees were still exposed to a high risk of torture.
The Conservative government's handling of the detainee issue reflects poorly on its trustworthiness, managerial competence and ability to apply Canadian values abroad.