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The issue of Afghans being detained by Canadian soldiers and sent to Kandahar's notorious jails has once again exploded in Canada, after a Globe and Mail report this week where prisoners described being beaten, whipped, starved, frozen, choked and subjected to electric shocks during interrogation.
The Globe's Graeme Smith interviewed 30 detainees and toured several Afghan prisons over the past few weeks. His reports are compelling and disburbing.
Do you have concerns about Canada's role in Afghanistan? Are you concerned about the treatment of Afghan detainees in prisons?
Mr. Smith, who spent most of 2006 in various reporting stints in Kandahar, was online today (Tuesday) and answered your questions on the prisons and detainees, or anything else about Afghanistan.
The Globe's Graeme Smith
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Your questions and Mr. Smith's answers appear at the bottom of this page.
Mr. Smith, The Globe's bureau chief in Moscow, joined The Globe in 2001 after previously working at The Toronto Star while attending Ryerson University in Toronto. In 2003, he won the Edward Goff Penny Memorial award, which is given to the best young journalists under the age of 25. He also was part of a team that won a Canadian Association of Journalists award for investigative journalism in 1999.
Editor's Note: globeandmail.com editors will read and allow or reject each question/comment. Comments/questions may be edited for length or clarity. We will not publish questions/comments that include personal attacks on participants in these discussions, that make false or unsubstantiated allegations, that purport to quote people or reports where the purported quote or fact cannot be easily verified, or questions/comments that include vulgar language or libellous statements. Preference will be given to readers who submit questions/comments using their full name and home town, rather than a pseudonym.
Sasha Nagy, globeandmail.com: Graeme, thanks for taking time from your difficult assignment in Afghanistan to answer reader questions. Your series on the treatment of Afghan detainees is compelling reading and it has generated many reader questions.
Given what you have told us about the Afghan prisons and the treatment of the detainees. What do you think the Canadian soldiers feel about turning over these people over. Do the rank and file soldiers have misgivings?
Graeme Smith: Hi Sasha, thanks for doing this. Part of the reason for investigating the detainee system here in southern Afghanistan was to protect the rank-and-file soldiers. They should not be placed in a position where they're ordered to do something that violates their own sense of personal ethics. Until we published our findings, some people on the front lines of the Canadian mission seemed entirely oblivious to the tortures that happen in Afghan custody. Others told me they had trouble sleeping at night. In my opinion, though, the questions of who knew, and how much they knew, really belong in Ottawa. That's where the policy is written.
Patricia F. from Berlin Germany writes: Although I remain informed (I read both English & German newspapers & media daily), I remain puzzled. What does Canada believe its mission to be in Afghanistan? What does the USA, Canada and all of their allies think they will accomplish militarily that the Soviets couldn't?
Graeme Smith: Hi Patricia. I'm a reporter here in Kandahar, and most of my work involves trying to keep track of what's happening on the ground. That said, I can guess at the motives of the NATO allies. At its most basic level, they're trying to make Afghanistan into a country, that is, a territory where a government has a monopoly on the legitimate use of force. Why bother? Well, the world has already witnessed what happened when Afghanistan fell apart. Particularly in the early 1990s, there was real neglect on the part of the international community. The consequences of that neglect were spectacular, not only for the thousands who died in September, 2001, but also for the tens of thousands slaughtered during the bitter civil wars in this country. As for the Soviet parallel - in fact, I'm reading a history of the Soviet occupation now, and although some of the echoes are worrisome (especially the attempts by both the Soviets and NATO to change the role of women in Afghan society) the differences are also striking. The NATO troops never take revenge on entire valleys, wiping out villages as punishment for supporting the insurgents. Their approach seems far more nuanced, and, usually, humane.
Lindsay Keir from Langley Canada writes: I am very confused about all of this. Where am I wrong? (1) Afghanistan is a democratically elected government. (2) Afghanistan requested UN assistance fighting their terrorists, (3) The UN requested that NATO provide the troops. (4) Canada, as a member of NATO and the UN, accepted the responsibility.
What legal right would Canada have to anyone captured? Wouldn't the legal responsibility flow upwards? We're at the bottom of the list - retaining anyone would be equivalent to kidnapping. Under the Geneva convention we could execute the terrorists (as non-uniformed combatants); but keeping them is not an option.
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