Battling The Insurgency

It's not quite enough to just place troops directly in the line of danger from terror militias who have no use for the pretense that war is anything but a struggle to kill before you are killed. And who, incidentally, see little difference between targeting civilians; women and children, the elderly and the ill - or battle-ready troops.

The same IEDs that target foreign troops will maim and kill civilian Afghans. Throwing acid in the faces of schoolgirls, murdering their teachers, and threatening villagers to join them or pay the consequences is a useful way to deliver a message, both to the Afghan population and the foreigners.

The Geneva Convention holds that it is imperative that prisoners of war be treated humanely. Countries like Afghanistan, like Pakistan, like Iran; in fact, most Muslim-dominated and -administered countries have a reputation for human rights-abusive treatment of civilians, let alone political prisoners, or those taken as prisoners of war.

There is a tightrope of treading carefully between observing the convention, and protecting one's troops against harm, and not overloading them with responsibilities they are ill-equipped to discharge. Which responsibility in fact, they are incapable of taking on, since they haven't the manpower or the infrastructure to maintain a prison system for the Taliban captured in hostilities.

The host country, the country that has welcomed the intervention of foreign troops for the purpose of restoring some semblance of civic order absent the barbaric rule of the Taliban, must be responsible for being responsible. Foreign diplomats, NGOs, volunteers, and the foreign military cannot be expected do everything; Afghanistan must begin to pull its weight of self responsibility.

It must, inexorably, move itself away from endemic corruption, the oppression of women, and a tradition of torture practised in their prison system.

Canada sought guarantees, signed pacts that would permit its emissaries to visit prisons, speak with prisoners. Canada went a good deal further, in the dispatching of professionals to teach and mentor Afghan prison wardens and guards. The Government of Canada and its military personnel in the field, in Kandahar and elsewhere, are all well attuned to the pitfalls of relying on a primitively backward tradition of brutality meted out routinely to the incarcerated.

As pointed out by a Canadian academic and expert in international affairs, Wesley Wark, the situation is complex and disturbing in its negative complexity. When, realizing the level of corruption of both the Afghan National Police and the country's military, Canadian Forces chose the National Directorate for Security to receive captured Afghans. Which is to say insurgents, Islamist fanatics that are named Taliban. Which Canadian Forces, like their other NATO counterparts, were in no position to themselves maintain, monitor and imprison.

The National Directorate for Security answers directly to the President of Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai. This convoluted rational with its imputed guarantee of reliability appears to have backfired, with a mid-level political diplomat stationed to represent Canadian interests in Kandahar in 2006 and 2007 accusing his government and its military of deliberately turning a blind eye to prisoner abuse.

As though he had the inside track on precisely what occurred, because on interviewing some Taliban they claim to have been abused. Neatly performing as many jihadists have learned to do; to appeal to the sense of fairness and democratic guarantees of human justice on their behalf, while denying all of those ideals to those upon whom they prey. Claiming abuse where none may have occurred. Activating the proclivity to mea culpas. Self-aggrandizing interlocutors never fail to absorb those appeals.

"In every single instance, Canadian diplomats and Canadian soldiers, whenever they are aware of abuse, take the action they are required to take under international law because that is how this country acts and we are proud of those people", Prime Minister Harper informed his opposition critics in the House of Commons. "The fact of the matter is that whenever Canadian diplomats or Canadian military officials have concrete evidence, have substantial evidence of any kind of abuse they take appropriate action. That is what they have done in these cases."

But this is a blood sport in Parliament, with the opposition relishing the opportunity to wound the government by its accusations, yet refusing to accept testimony from other, highly respected and trusted diplomats and military personnel who are prepared to put the accusations of Richard Colvin, formerly with the Kandahar mission, to the test of actuality. "If the ... opposition parties are at all serious about getting to the truth, they will actually hear from those who want to testify before the parliamentary committee.

"There are a number of them. Let them be heard. What is the opposition afraid of, other than the truth?" Precisely. There is so much traction now on the levelling of accusations against the government, and the implications by association that Canadian troops are lending themselves to irregular, internationally illegal practises, that the opposition are on a roll, and don't want to let go. They contend with a straight face, that they have no intention of demeaning the actions of the Canadian military.

They're simply doing their thing, confronting, accusing, and putting the government on notice that opposition political parties have no interest in cooperation, or coordination of purpose in the greater interests of the country they all serve.