Prime Minister Stephen Harper vowed virtually all Canadian soldiers will leave Afghanistan by the end of 2011, making some of his most definitive statements yet on Canada’s future role there in an interview Wednesday with Canwest News Service.

Parliament has already decided the combat mission, involving about 2,500 troops centred around Kandahar, will end in 2011. The Department of National Defence has started preparing plans to bring the soldiers home.

But at various times over the past two years since that decision was made, there has been some discussion about using Canadian Forces personnel in a non-combat capacity or to station soldiers in a more peaceful part of the country.  Read more... (944 words, 1 image, estimated 3:47 mins reading time)

The debate concerning the alleged mistreatment of prisoners handed over by Canadian troops to local authorities in Afghanistan seems important, even noble, on the face of it. But as is often the case when moral issues turn into rabid political feuds, the moral crusaders have lost sight of the big picture: Their efforts threaten to undermine our entire military presence in Afghanistan, and thereby strengthen the Taliban, which has a record of “mistreating” Afghans on a far larger scale.

In the opposition’s relentless gotcha campaign against the government, in other words, we are witnessing a perfect example of the moral great becoming the enemy of the moral good.  Read more... (576 words, 1 image, estimated 2:18 mins reading time)

A foreign affairs source said a memo sent by Colvin in the winter of 2007 was searing in its criticism and indicated the governor was corrupt, dangerous, self-serving and deeply unpopular with Afghans. OTTAWA– A former governor of Kandahar who is accused of personally torturing Afghans might have been removed from office as far back as 2006 if Canadian officials hadn’t defended him, according to diplomatic memos that have never been made public by the Canadian government.

The revelation about Asadullah Khalid, who stayed on as governor two years after concerns about his reputation were raised, opens up another embarrassing avenue of inquiry over Afghan prisoner abuse.  Read more... (872 words, 1 image, estimated 3:29 mins reading time)

The unknown insurgent, if he’s still alive and somehow following Canadian politics, must be laughing at the chaos he has unleashed.

The unidentified Taliban fighter, rescued by Canadian troops from a severe Afghan beating more than two years ago, could end up seeing a public inquiry held in faraway snowy Ottawa and may yet terminate a Cabinet minister.

All this because he was detained by suspicious Canadian soldiers back in mid-2006 with a scratched nose and had his picture taken to prove he didn’t have any serious injuries before being turned over to Afghan police — where he was badly roughed up and promptly reclaimed by our sympathetic troops.  Read more... (756 words, 1 image, estimated 3:01 mins reading time)

Canada’s top soldier says he’s working to get to the bottom of what happened to reports from a senior Canadian diplomat in Afghanistan, which repeatedly warned that Afghan detainees turned over to local authorities risked being tortured.

Gen. Walter Natynczyk, chief of defence staff, said Friday he did not yet know where the diplomat’s reports landed back in Ottawa, who read them, and what was done with the information.

“That’s why I want to see the forensics, what actually happened,” Natynczyk said in an exclusive interview with Global National in Edinburgh, Scotland.  Read more... (402 words, 1 image, estimated 1:36 mins reading time)

OTTAWA — Canadian Forces personnel suspended the transfer of suspected Taliban insurgents to Afghan authorities three times this year on fears the detainees were being mistreated and possibly tortured after their transfer.

The Defence Department said Monday that the suspensions were each for “a brief period of time” and lasted until Canadian authorities were satisfied that the Afghans were living up to a 2007 agreement not to torture or mistreat prisoners captured by Canadian troops fighting in Afghanistan.

The transfers of suspected insurgents were also suspended once in 2007 after that agreement had been signed, the Defence Department said.  Read more... (899 words, 1 image, estimated 3:36 mins reading time)

OTTAWA — Senior diplomat Richard Colvin was far from being a lone wolf when he sounded alarms about detainee torture in Afghanistan soon after he arrived for a posting in 2006.

At the time, numerous reports in Canada and abroad concluded that torture and abuse was routine in Afghan jails, including warnings from the U.S. State Department, the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission and the United Nations.

There was even a 2006 report from Canada’s Foreign Affairs Department, which asserted that “extrajudicial executions, disappearance, torture and detention without trial are all too common” in Afghan prisons.  Read more... (1074 words, 1 image, estimated 4:18 mins reading time)

The list detailing the number of detainees taken into custody by Canadian Forces had grown to 36 pages by late 2007 as government officials tried to find out what happened to the prisoners and determine where they all ended up.

Some of the Afghans, ranging in age from 16 to 75, had been turned over to the U.S. government while others had been transferred to various Afghan detention centres, according to heavily censored records obtained by the Ottawa Citizen.

The capture of Afghans in 2002 and in some cases 2005 and 2006 are included, but most of the information on the pages is blacked out. One page has more than 35 instances detailing the capture of individuals.  Read more... (795 words, 1 image, estimated 3:11 mins reading time)

OTTAWA — The federal government released almost 200 pages of heavily censored documents about Afghanistan detainees on Wednesday, prompting critics to assert that the excessive secrecy highlights the need for a public inquiry.

“What we’ve seen from this government is a whole lot of redaction, in other words blacked out documents,” charged Paul Dewar, NDP foreign affairs critic. “It’s like reading tea leaves.”

Dewar produced his own document, obtained through an access to information request, showing that the government had blacked out a reference to torture in a 2006 report from its own Foreign Affairs bureaucrats on the state of human rights in Afghanistan.  Read more... (787 words, 1 image, estimated 3:09 mins reading time)

OTTAWA — Three cabinet ministers accused the opposition of “false, outrageous and insulting” allegations Wednesday as the Afghan detainees affair escalated after Canada’s top soldier reversed himself on the transfer of a Canadian captive to Afghan police.

Gen. Walter Natynczyk, chief of defence staff, ordered an investigation into a June 14, 2006, incident in which Canadian soldiers turned a captive over to Afghan police and took a photo before doing so in case he was assaulted. They took him back when they found him being beaten. Until Wednesday, the general had said the Afghan man was never in Canadian custody.  Read more... (817 words, 1 image, estimated 3:16 mins reading time)