Muddying the waters over torture

Torture in a far off, turbulent land such as Afghanistan seems grimly foreign to us.

Yet parts of the allegations raised by diplomat Richard Colvin have an utterly familiar Canadian air about them.

For one, there is the effort by senior Canadian officials to — when confronted with a difficult and embarrassing issue — delay, obfuscate, round on any whistle-blower and hide any paper trail behind the veil of bureaucratic secrecy.

The British call this time-honoured technique "muddying the waters," but Canadian politicians and senior bureaucrats are now the true masters of the practice.

And because a good deal of muddying has been going on in Ottawa over the past week we should take a closer look into some very odd Canadian actions in Afghanistan in 2007, when allegations of torture were running at their height.

Foot-dragging

First, there was unaccountable foot-dragging by Canada when it came to reporting detainees who were handed over by our troops to the notoriously brutal Afghan security and intelligence services.

Inevitably in this kind of insurgency, where foreign troops sweep the countryside for guerrillas, some innocents get scooped into the same net as actual enemy fighters.

All the independent military commands at that point — including the Canadian, Dutch and British — knew that under international law they were responsible for the well being of all Afghans they picked up, even after they were handed over to Afghan prisons and interrogation centres.

It was therefore important that the International Red Cross be alerted as soon as possible in order to try to head off any possible torture sessions.

The Dutch were concerned enough to report immediately any handover to the local Red Cross officials. Britain acted within 24 hours.

But Canada? In stark contrast it created what the whistle-blowing Colvin calls "a very peculiar six-step process."

Six long steps

It was peculiar especially in that it initiated a slow dance of bureaucrats that seemed almost designed to leave detainees in the maws of Afghan interrogators for weeks and even months at time before the Red Cross intervened.

When Canadian soldiers brought in the usually hooded and tightly bound detainee, our military police on the spot would first inform the colonels and generals in the Kandahar mission control centre.

But instead of alerting the Red Cross right away, like the Dutch and British, these commanders, following orders, sent the information to CEFCOM, the Canadian Expeditionary Force Command in Ottawa.

This information would then be passed over to Defence Headquarters and to Foreign Affairs.

It's difficult to understand why this action had to precede notifying the Red Cross. And the next step seemed odder still.

Instead of CEFCOM sending word back to Kandahar to immediately engage local Red Cross officials, the file instead was forwarded to the Canadian Embassy in Geneva.

Only then did Canada inform the International Red Cross, suggesting that it check up on some Afghan civilians our troops had detained and handed over to Afghan interrogators.

At most risk

It was while this odd Kandahar to Ottawa to Geneva to Kandahar shuffle was going on that detainees would be under the greatest threat of torture and other abuses.

It was also the time when detainees tended to become "lost" within the system, as it would often take weeks to track down their whereabouts and establish just who exactly the Canadians were talking about.

This is one aspect of a paper trail that needs to be followed and examined. For it would be difficult to conceive of a slower way to bring Red Cross protection to a detainee.

I know I am still puzzled by it and senior Afghan veterans I've talked with admit they can't figure this system out either. 

Was it just a case of bureaucratic hyper-caution, flowing possibly from the micro-managing style of the Harper government? Or was there something more sinister at play?

If you wanted to ensure your detainee was grilled to the hilt over days, weeks, or months, would this not be the kind of play-for-time system that you would devise?

Follow the puzzle

What makes this convoluted reporting system seem worse is our official taste for secrecy.

Canadian officials in Kandahar, acting as always on orders from Ottawa, have refused to even reveal the number of Afghans our forces have detained and handed over.

The usual excuse was given: It would violate operational security.

But the British have made their detainee total public, while the Dutch even informed their Parliament as soon as a detainee was taken.

So our modesty about divulging even total numbers, particularly given that we took far more prisoners than either the Dutch or British, is not convincing and only invites suspicion that something is wrong.

I expect the military will make it clear that any bureaucratic foot-dragging that may have resulted in the torture of detainees was not of its doing.

Generals remember too well how Ottawa left soldiers to carry the whole can for the Somalia affairs of 1993 that led to the disbanding of the Canadian Airborne Regiment.

This time they're certainly not about to take blame for bureaucratic delays and political buck-passing enforced by federal bureaucrats and cabinet ministers.

But it does seem that this very Canadian sequence of delays and top-down secrecy is part of a larger puzzle that flows from the Colvin allegations and that needs to be unraveled.