German People Are Questioning Their Role in Afghanistan as Top General Resigns

I have been on the fence about Afghanistan for some time now, but the recent circus in Ottawa, has made me realize that if the military brass and our own government don't give a damn about our troops, then we should bring them home.

Trying to sweep this under the rug only puts our men and women in uniform at risk of retaliation. We have lost our moral authority and clearly this 'mission' wasn't a humanitarian one after all.

We are merely propping up a corrupt Karzai government and that is not a good enough reason for us to be there.

I just learned that the German people are also questioning their country's role and the top general in the video above, Wolfgang Schneiderhan, has just resigned after suppressing information about an air strike that killed 142 people, many civilians. It was in violation of NATO's rules of engagement.

I'm joining the voices calling for a full public inquiry on the allegations of torture, and the withdrawal of our troops from Afghanistan as soon as possible. Our government has abandoned them, concerned only with saving their own behinds. Someone has to speak up for our soldiers who were just doing their jobs, yet Harper would prefer they face criminal charges at the Hague.

German military chief quits over deadly Afghan strike

BERLIN — Germany's top general and a senior defence ministry official quit on Thursday over an air strike in Afghanistan in which NATO says as many as 142 people died.

The resignations, announced in parliament by Defence Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, followed press revelations that a military report about the September 4 strike was suppressed.

Germany, with around 4,300 troops, is the third-largest contributor of foreign troops in Afghanistan after the United States and Britain. The mission is opposed by a majority of voters in Germany, polls indicate.

Chief of staff General Wolfgang Schneiderhan "has released himself from his duties at his own request," zu Guttenberg said. "State secretary (Peter) Wichert is also taking responsibility."

Zu Guttenberg, who took over from Franz Josef Jung only last month, confirmed that the report into the strike had been withheld and that he had been informed about it for the first time on Wednesday. It was unclear whether Jung knew about it.

A German commander, Colonel Georg Klein, called in the NATO airstrike against two tanker trucks carrying fuel that had been seized by Taliban insurgents near Kunduz, fearing they could be used to attack troops.

The Bild newspaper cited a confidential army video and report that the paper said showed that Klein could not rule out the presence of civilians around the trucks when he ordered the strike.

If that is the case, NATO rules of engagement state that Klein should not have ordered the bombardment.

A NATO source said this month that two US F15 jets made two requests to make a "show of force", meaning to fly low over the area to scare people away, but that the German commander told them to drop their bombs.

The strike came shortly after the new commander of the 100,000-strong international force in Afghanistan, US General Stanley McChrystal, had issued a directive that civilian casualties had to be avoided.

Schneiderhan said on October 31, when a NATO report on the strike was published, that Klein had acted correctly.

"I have no reason to doubt that German soldiers acted in the correct military fashion, given their mandate from the United Nations and the difficult operational situation," the general had said.

The Bild report also added to pressure on the defence minister at the time, Jung, now labour minister, who said two days after the strike that according to his information "only Taliban terrorists" were killed.

According to the mass circulation daily, only hours after the strike, commanders in Afghanistan had informed military HQ in Potsdam, Germany that there were two dead teenagers in Kunduz hospital as well as six people injured "aged between 10 and 20."

A German military doctor also reported that there were two boys "aged around 14" with "open wounds" and "shrapnel injuries."

Commanders also reported that before the strike the Taliban had stormed a local mosque "and forced many villagers to help recover the fuel using tractors. Fourteen of them have since disappeared," Bild said.

Jung said Thursday he had based his knowledge on information passed on to him by the Kunduz police and army.

"The fact is that from the very beginning, I spoke with Colonel Klein as well as with ISAF Commander McChrystal and that from the very beginning, particularly on September 6, I said clearly that we could not rule out civilian casulaties," he told reporters.

He added that he would study the report and make a statement to parliament later in the day.

The opposition called for a full parliamentary enquiry and there were also calls for his resignation.

In talks scheduled before the resignations, NATO secretary general Anders Fogh Rasmussen was to meet Chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin on Thursday before a joint news conference.

The Conservative Financial Plan Was to Have no Plan But Self Promotion

Looking at our enormous deficit and news that our debt has now reached half a trillion dollars, has me wondering where the money went. Few jobs have been created, and in fact the government can't even provide us with those figures.

They tell us that the stimulus plan is working but Canadians are still losing their jobs and bankruptcies are on the rise. It's looking more and more like the Canada Action Plan was nothing more than a publicity stunt.

Where is this going to end? Will our children and grandchildren have to pay for the mistakes of Jim Flaherty? It's certainly looking that way.

Tories blow billions with no plan
By JOHN MCCALLUM, GUEST COLUMNIST
November 27, 2009

During the last election campaign one year ago, the Harper Conservatives promised Canadians there would be no recession or deficit.

One year later, 1.6 million Canadians are out of work and our economy has shed half-a-million employee jobs. Personal bankruptcies have increased by 47% since last year.

With our first trade deficit in 30 years, our economic growth lags behind G7 peers like Japan, Germany and France who exited their recessions last spring. Canada lags behind even the U.S., whose downturn was supposed to be deeper and longer.

Conservative mismanagement took Canada into deficit before a dime of stimulus spending was spent. Recall that in 2006, the Liberals left office with a $13-billion surplus. It only took two budgets before Jim Flaherty had Canada back into the red.

By cutting revenues and increasing spending at an unsustainable pace, the Conservatives drove the nation's finances into structural deficit before the recession and the last election.

At the onset of the recession, Canada's Conservative government was last among the G7 countries to propose a stimulus plan, acting only after sparking a parliamentary crisis.

January's budget estimated a $34-billion deficit. By spring, it grew to $50 billion, before ballooning to a record $56 billion.

Canadians are asking what lasting benefit they're getting in return for this record deficit. The Conservatives had the opportunity of a generation to invest in Canada's future economic growth. What legacy has been left behind to bring back the jobs we've lost or create the jobs of tomorrow?

As it turns out, the Conservatives spent the cupboard bare while times were good, and didn't invest in the future when times were tough. Despite billions in deficit spending, they have no plan for a healthy, smart, clean and compassionate Canada of tomorrow.

Instead of investing in Canada's clean energy future, Conservatives wasted billions in public funds on advertising, signage and pork-barrel projects -- buying votes with government cheques signed by Conservative MPs.

Instead of rebuilding our manufacturing sector, the Harper government spent $3 billion annually on consultants for part-time contract work and public relations advice.

Instead of making Canada a leader in science, research and development, they cut scientific funding to our research granting councils, sparking an exodus of our brightest minds to other countries.

Never has so much been spent to achieve so little.

This government failed to make investments Canada needs to compete in the new economy.

Consider that for every dollar invested in clean jobs, the economy gets four times more return than for a dollar invested in traditional industries. Yet Canada is being out-paced 13-to-one by the United States when it comes to investments in renewable and environmental technologies.
The race is underway to compete in the new economy, but Stephen Harper has failed to even get us to the starting line.

Compare this with the Liberal track record. After erasing a $42-billion deficit, Canada thrived in an unprecedented period of economic growth. We kept Canada in surplus for a decade by growing revenues while lowering taxes, without borrowing from our children's futures to finance it.

Canadians deserve sound fiscal management and a clear plan for future growth in return for Canada's record deficit.

Instead, all we get is more Conservative financial fiction.

(McCallum is the Liberal finance critic and MP for Markham-Unionville)

Patriot Games and the Committee for an Independent Canada

A CULTURE OF DEFIANCE: History of the Reform-Conservative Party of Canada

Something strange, nameless, and profound moves in Canada today. It cannot be seen or labeled, but it can be heard and felt - a kind of whisper from
far away, a rustle as of wind in prairie poplars, a distant river's voice, or the shuffle of footsteps in a midnight street. It is less a sound than a sense
of motion.

Something moves as it has never moved before in this land, moves dumbly in the deepest runnels of a collective mind, yet by sure direction toward
a known goal. Sometimes by thought, more often by intuition, the Canadian people are making the final discovery. They are discovering themselves. - Bruce Hutchinson

When Pierre Trudeau called an election in 1972, the country was undergoing a lot of changes. The Baby Boomers were growing up and the voting age had been reduced to 18.

Unemployment was at 6.2%, considered high for the time, and despite generous changes to Unemployment Insurance, the youth were worried.

Also worried were many Canadians seeing a growing American influence, not only in our popular culture, but in the very real U.S. takeover of our natural resources.

One of these was Liberal MP Eric Kierans, who had left Trudeau's' Cabinet in April of 1971, and was an outspoken critic of finance minister John Turner's 1972 budget, believing that the party was moving to the right and was blind "to the sale of Canadian resources to foreigners" (English 2009).

Kierans prefaced a book financed by the NDP called Louder Voices: Corporate Welfare Bums. The phrase "corporate welfare bums" was in response to those who felt that the increase in UI premiums was creating a sub-culture of "welfare bums".

The phrase caught on and NDP leader David Lewis thundered it from the podium, regaling against corporate privilege. And many former Trudeau supporters, joined Lewis, including high profile figures like Walter Gordon with the Toronto Star, Peter C. Newman, Claude Ryan, prominent Alberta Liberal, Jack McClelland and publisher Mel Hurtig.

This group created The Committee for an Independent Canada, and over 170,000 concerned Canadians would join their ranks. As a result Trudeau's Liberal Party was reduced to a minority, with Lewis's NDP holding the balance of power.

But CIC did not only help to influence the election, but they would also steer the Liberal Party to the left, and though Trudeau had at one time been opposed to the nationalization of industry, he allowed the creation of Petro-Canada. His government also began to take on a more nationalistic tone. (1)

The right was enraged, while corporate and business donations for the Liberals decreased substantially.

Harper's Bible Sees it Differently

Peter Brimelow's The Patriot Game lays the blame squarely on the shoulders of Pierre Trudeau, for the country's dramatic shift to the left, though he is not without disdain for the Committee for an Independent Canada.

A case can also be made for 1970. In that year, at a lunch "which is now mythologized in some branches of the movement as The Beginning," according to an account written by Christina McCall-Newman in 1972, three men decided to found a pressure group for their version of Canadian Nationalism: the Committee for an Independent Canada. They were Walter Gordon, the former leader of the Liberal Party's left wing, who as Finance Minister under Lester Pearson had introduced a controversial nationalist budget in 1965; Peter C. Newman, then Editor-in-Chief of the nationalist Toronto Star; and Abraham Rotstein, an academic economist from the University of Toronto. Their creation was something of a nine-day-wonder in the small world of the English-Canadian intelligentsia.

It attracted much joining, signing of petitions, attending of meetings and declarations of support. The Committee itself quickly became moribund, but it symbolized emotions that were coming to dominate Anglophone public debate, and it conveniently marks the moment when the Canadian Liberal elite finally acknowledged that it had reversed fronts and trained its guns on free market economics and on the U.S.A.

The weaknesses of Canadian Nationalism were already present at The Beginning. All three lunchers were Anglophones, all Torontonians, all prosperous members of the bourgeoisie. All, perhaps not coincidentally, represented professions that stood to benefit disproportionately from protectionism: Gordon as a scion of the preeminent Clarkson, Gordon and Company accounting firm, whose relationships with Canadian corporate clients were vulnerable to disruption from takeovers by U.S. firms equipped with their own auditors; Newman and Rotstein as examples of those "producers of Canadian culture" who, in the deadpan summary of a recent academic survey, "are more determined than consumers" to "keep Canadian cultural life Canadian." (2)

And this Canadian Nationalism was viewed as "anti-Americanism" in Alberta, where the U.S. oil industry prospered, and was added to the list of western grievances. This became even more profound when it became about "Toronto" and "elites" and "intervention".

Early Nationalist campaigns were to aim at reserving Canadian university appointments for Canadians and promoting Canadian periodicals through punitive taxation of their American competitors. Two were members of Canada's small Jewish minority, a group normally cautious about nationalism, and one was not even a Canadian by birth but a central European refugee, anomalies which, although not without parallel in other nationalist movements, may help account for the peculiar artificiality of this Canadian variation. They were also all good political progressives and, at least in the case of Gordon and Rotstein, conscious advocates of government intervention in the economy. (2)

Canada was moving toward a just society and the corporate sector saw this as injustice to the almighty dollar.

And like Ted Byfield, Brimelow also held contempt for Pierre Berton. Byfield, because he threatened religious fundamentalism, and Brimelow because he threatened Anglo-Saxon hegemony.

A significant description of the brave new Canada that Canadian Nationalists hope and claim to have discerned has been conveniently provided by Pierre Berton in his book Why We Act Like Canadians: A Personal Account of Our National Character. This deeply revealing essay on the Canadian national character and its fundamental differences from the American norm was one of the best-sellers of the 1982-83 season and has influenced several subsequent journalistic commentaries ... the inevitable landscape rhapsodies in Why We Act Like Canadians were quite bearable.

And yet Pierre Berton is still a household name, while most Canadians outside of the Reform/Conservative movement, have never heard of Peter Brimelow.

Sources:

1. Just Watch me: The Life of Pierre Elliot Trudeau, By John English, Alfred A. Knopf, 2009, ISBN: 978-0-676-97523-9, Pg. 130

2. The Patriot Game: National Dreams and Political Realities, By Peter Brimelow, Key Porter Books, 1986, ISBN: 1-55013-001-3, Pg. 131 -133

We Need to Open Our Eyes to Harper's Blindness on Torture of Afghan Detainees

Since it's become painfully clear that our government and our military brass care nothing for our soldiers or the Afghan people, only saving their own skins, it's time to rethink the "mission" and bring our troops home.

We no longer have moral authority in the region. This puts our men and women in uniform, in even more peril, as the people of Afghanistan no longer believe we are fighting for them. It's become obvious that the only winners are the warlords, the drug lords and the corporations cashing in on military contracts.

Stephen Harper has made it painfully clear who he supports, so it's up to us to show that we really do support our troops and want them brought safely home .... immediately.

Country known for its noble deeds now bears a stain on its reputation
By James Travers National Affairs Columnist
November 28, 2009

OTTAWA - It's been a long march into twilight. A country that gave the world Lester Pearson's peacekeeping and Brian Mulroney's stand against apartheid is now struggling with Stephen Harper's apparent blindness to compelling evidence of Afghanistan prisoner abuse.

For all its sound and fury, the counter-attack that politicians, bureaucrats and generals mounted this week was morally weak and legally flimsy. In struggling to sway public opinion, finely parsed denials skidded around the looming conclusion that Canada transferred prisoners into probable torture after being warned by the pre-eminent and most credible victims-of-violence organization, the International Committee of the Red Cross.

By June 2006, the federal government had a clear and urgent responsibility to halt the transfers. Instead, it waited until the following May, and after allegations made headlines, before signing a new pact with stronger safeguards.

Under international and Canadian law, that's not nearly good enough.

Accountability begins before detainees are transferred and continues after they are in Afghan control, a point the Red Cross testily made to diplomat Richard Colvin and he reported to then-foreign affairs minister Peter MacKay's office.

Errol Mendes, a University of Ottawa law professor and international criminal court expert, insists those responsibilities expose holes in explanations and testimony aired this week.

Political and military leaders along with mandarins don't require the hard evidence they claim was missing; they only need circumstantial evidence to be duty-bound to protect prisoners.

Afghanistan in 2006 was wallowing in that evidence. Apart from Colvin's serial memos, NATO allies and local as well as global rights groups were waving caution flags. Even though the Red Cross didn't apply the torture label – its mandate, understood by all governments, restricts such explosive language to reports filed to those directly involved in mistreatment – the danger was so obvious then that it changes the question Canadians need answered now. It's no longer just what the Prime Minister, ministers, generals and bureaucrats knew; it's why they took so long to act?

Solving that mystery is one persuasive argument for an independent inquiry. Another is the Conservative contention that fully disclosing relevant information would jeopardize national security.

Often the last refuge of those tossing restlessly at night, the secrecy obstacle now threatening the public right to know is best removed by appointing a judge to privately review classified documents during an otherwise open process. Justice Dennis O'Connor considered far more sensitive intelligence in probing the treatment of Maher Arar and still was able to reach conclusions while guarding national interest and informant safety.

It's important to explore the reasons for federal delay. By doing too little when so much was known, the government gambled too much. It added risk of reprisals and legal liability to the mortal hazards facing soldiers. By failing to uphold the law, it made nonsense of the mission purpose of exporting core Canadian values. Finally, it stained the reputation of a country that, along with pioneering peacekeeping and opposing South Africa's racism, took leading roles in banning land mines and entrenching the responsibility to protect the world's most vulnerable people.

If the prisoner problem is structural, it demands repair. If it's political, voters need to know the truth before casting another ballot.

If We Don't do the Right Thing We Will Not be Forgiven by History

The story of our role in Afghanistan has taken on a new meaning, as we listened to military brass and government officials try to deny what they know is going on in that country.

What are we fighting for? If we can't do better than this than I think it's time we pulled out and will start pushing for that objective. That is my Afghan mission.

Our soldiers deserve better and the people of Afghanistan deserve better. As former Afghan member of Parliament and human rights activist Malalai Joya stated, we will not be forgiven by history, and this is how we risk being defined; as war criminals.

So, what kind of people are we?
By Thomas Walkom National Affairs Columnist
Toronto Star
November 28, 2009

The Afghan prisoner scandal is not just about politics. It is not just about the infuriating tendency of Canadian governments – and particularly Prime Minister Stephen Harper's government – to withhold politically harmful information. Nor it is just about the blatant misuse of national security laws to protect federal bureaucrats and their political masters from embarrassment.

The Afghan prisoner scandal encompasses all of these. But at bottom it is about who Canadians are. Are we the kind of people who don't care when people are tortured? Or are we the kind of people who do?

If we don't care about torture, then we should have no trouble agreeing with the Conservative government and its bureaucratic establishment. Their approach toward the parliamentary committee looking into this matter follows three somewhat contradictory lines.

First, they say that the government acted when it saw evidence that prisoners who had been captured by Canadian soldiers were being tortured in Afghan prisons.

Second, they say there was no evidence of anyone being tortured in Afghan prisons.

Third, they suggest that anyone detained by Canadian troops is almost certainly a Taliban killer who doesn't deserve the benefit of the doubt. (Call this the scumbag argument.)

All government and military witnesses called to rebut the testimony of foreign service officer Richard Colvin, the diplomat who said his warnings of torture back in 2006 and 2007 were systematically ignored by Ottawa, have used one or more of these three lines of defence.

On Thursday, David Mulroney – at the time the senior civil servant in charge of the Afghan file – used the first two arguments (there was no evidence but we acted anyway).

On Wednesday, former chief of defence staff Rick Hillier emphasized the scumbag argument.

"We detained, under violent actions, people trying to kill our sons and daughters," he told the Commons special committee.

Added into the mix is a concerted and calculated attack by government figures on the credibility of whistleblower Colvin, now a senior Canadian intelligence official at Canada's embassy in Washington – an attack that implies he is a dupe, a naïf or worse.

At the committee, Hillier described as "ludicrous" Colvin's statement that all prisoners handed over to the Afghans by Canadian forces were likely to be tortured. "I have no idea what is motivating him (Colvin)," Conservative Senator Pam Wallin said this week on CBC Radio.

Defence Minister Peter MacKay makes the bizarre argument that unless Colvin had personally witnessed torture his claims should be discounted, dismissing the diplomat's concerns as "nothing short of hearsay, second- or third-hand information, or that which came directly from the Taliban."

In fact, what Colvin said – that in 2006 and 2007 torture was "standard operating procedure" in Afghan prisons – is far from ludicrous. Human Rights Watch came to a similar conclusion in its 2004 report. So did the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission (which the Conservative government relied upon briefly to monitor the prison situation) in 2009.

Indeed, in countries like Syria, Egypt or Afghanistan, those arrested on security charges are usually tortured immediately, under the theory that this is the most efficient way to elicit information. That's what a 2006 judicial inquiry found happened to Canadian Maher Arar when he was jailed in Syria.

Yet though neither MacKay nor any other independent Canadian witness was present when Arar was beaten with electrical cables, the Harper government thought his story credible enough to award him $10.5 million in compensation.

In a country that didn't care about torture, none of this would matter. Nor would the inconsistencies in the government line. (Hillier, for instance, slammed Colvin for relying on second-hand evidence, yet cited "a comment I heard from somebody in the International Committee of the Red Cross or read somewhere saying that there's no problem whatsoever with respect to detainees" to contradict him.)

A country that didn't mind if people were tortured in its name would yawn and go back to business as usual. But a country that did view torture as a crime and abomination would not accept government stonewalling.

Such a country would insist that the memos on detainee ill-treatment that Colvin said he sent senior government officials be publicly and fully released.

And if these memos backed up his claims, then the voters of a country that refused to countenance torture would want those responsible to pay a political price.

It will be intriguing to find out which kind of country Canada chooses to be.

Michael Ignatieff Announces Thinkers Conference

Everyone is suggesting that the only way to deal with thugs aka: the Harper government; is to start fighting dirty, and I agree to a certain extent. However, we have to be careful not to allow ourselves to stoop to their level.

Neo-conservative principles promote the concept that you play to your base, so they are sure to get out and vote; but muddy the waters, so that your opposition's support stays home.

That's why comments made by Gerald Keddy recently will not even raise an eyebrow in conservative circles, because it's how they think.

We need to bring intelligence back to government, which means getting the neanderthals out.

The big think
by Aaron Wherry
November 24, 2009

An open letter, received just now, from Michael Ignatieff.

I am pleased to announce today that the Liberal Party of Canada will host a special conference in Montreal, March 26 to 28, 2010, “Canada at 150: Rising to the Challenge”.

Canada at 150: Rising to the Challenge

The three-day conference, in the tradition of the 1960 Kingston Conference and the 1991 Aylmer Conference, will invite progressive thinkers and activists from a broad swath of Canadian society to discuss the fundamental challenges facing Canada in a new era of uncertainty and global economic upheaval. The conference will be a key step in the development of the Liberal Party’s platform for the next general election.

In just a few short years, we’ll be celebrating our country’s 150th anniversary. But the fundamental question is what kind of country will we be – and can we be? How can we ensure that – in a rapidly changing global economy – we have the industries and jobs we need? How can we ensure that social safety net that Canadians need and want is strong and secure? How can we narrow the growing gap between the wealthiest few and all the rest of us? What kind of careers, what kind of lives can our kids expect?

In short, not just what kind of Canada do we want in 2017, but what do we need to do today and tomorrow to get there?

The Harper government, with its resolute and cynical focus on short-term politics, has shown it doesn’t have a horizon further than tonight’s newscast. And Canadian families are suffering because of it. They’re worried about their jobs, about their retirements, about a future for their kids and care for their aging parents.

If we Liberals want to earn the support and trust of all those millions of Canadians who want an alternative to the Harper Conservatives, we need to address those concerns. We need to do it in a spirit of openness to the best ideas and brightest minds not just in Canada, but around the world. And not just from Big “L” Liberals, but from progressive thinkers and experts who don’t belong – or want to belong – to any political party. That’s what the Montreal Conference is all about.

The Road to Montreal

From now through to the end of March, we’ll be very busy preparing for the Conference – by reaching out to Canadians.

Early in the new year, a Conference website will invite Canadians to participate by giving us their own thoughts and ideas. I’ll be hitting the road in January, crossing the country in a series of town hall sessions to hear first hand from Canadians.

The very first Canadians I’ll be meeting with in the new year are young Canadians – in high schools, community colleges and universities across Canada. After all, the world of 2017 will be their world. Their futures, their hopes and dreams are at the core of what we’ll be focusing on in Montreal and beyond.

I’m asking Liberal MPs, Senators, candidates and riding presidents to also hold round tables and town halls in their communities. In fact, the very first round table – on trade – will be hosted by my colleague Scott Brison, on Parliament Hill on December 7th.

An important step on the road to Montreal will be a special meeting of the National Caucus on January 19 and 20 in Ottawa. Together, we’ll preview some of the big issues to be discussed in Montreal. It will be an important opportunity for our Caucus to help frame the discussion that will take place in Montreal.

Throughout the coming weeks, we’ll be announcing details about the Conference, its agenda and its guests.

Hope vs. Fear

It’s no big secret that I’m someone who gets very excited about ideas. Not for their own sake. But for their ability to change our world and – most important of all – to improve people’s lives in a tangible, concrete way.

Canadians are yearning for an alternative that understands the transformational power of new ideas and innovative thinking. And they want to look to the future with hope and confidence rather than fear and anxiety.

The Montreal Conference will be a very important step along that road.

Sincerely,
Michael Ignatieff

Former Afghan MP Malalai Joya Supports Colvin's Story

Human Rights activist and former Afghan member of parliament, Malalai Joya, has confirmed Richard Colvin's story that Afghan detainees are indeed routinely tortured.

In the above video she speaks of the corrupt Karzai government and how the warlords and drug lords under his command are making the situation in the country worse than it was under the Taliban.

We forget that the people of Afghanistan are eager to see how we are going to handle these allegations brought forth by the diplomat. Watching our government in action, we have lost our moral authority and only give oxygen to the people we are fighting against, by losing the respect of the people we are fighting for.

Colvin's testimony true: former Afghan MP
November 26, 2009
CBC News

Former Afghan MP Malalai Joya told reporters in Ottawa on Thursday that Richard Colvin's testimony about the torture of Afghan detainees is accurate. (Rodrigo Abd/Associated Press)

Canadian diplomat Richard Colvin's claim that detainees transferred by Canadians to Afghan prisons were likely tortured is true and an "open secret" in her country, a former Afghan MP said in Ottawa on Thursday.

Colvin, who was posted in Afghanistan from 2006 to 2007, gave explosive testimony last week before a Commons' committee, alleging that all prisoners handed over by Canadian soldiers to Afghan authorities were likely subsequently abused and that government officials were well aware of the problem.

He also said many who had been arrested were innocent people.

Malalai Joya, a human rights activist who was suspended from the Afghan parliament in 2007 for openly criticizing officials, told reporters on Thursday that Colvin is correct in his assessment.

"What he has been saying is what I've heard from my people," she said.

Many of the victims are women and children detainees who have been raped, she said. "It's not new for our people."

Canada's former chief of defence staff, Rick Hillier, slammed Colvin's testimony on Wednesday, calling it "ludicrous."

"We detained, under violent actions, people trying to kill our sons and daughters, who had in some cases done that, been successful at it, and were continuing to do it," Hillier said.

Hillier said they may have detained the occasional farmer, but that they were "almost inevitably immediately let go."

Defence Minister Peter MacKay also questioned the credibility of the allegations earlier this week. Hillier and Conservative officials denied Colvin's assertion that he reported prisoner abuses as early as 2006.

Joya said diplomats are often in denial after issues of abuse or corruption are brought to light.

"He exposed," she said of Colvin. "And I hope [more is exposed]."

Joya, who has been touring Canada to speak about Afghanistan and to promote her book, A Woman Among Warlords, said the international military occupation in her country has made conditions worse.

She said her people are "squashed" by forces that include tribal warlords, Taliban insurgents, foreign military and a Karzai government she compared with a "mafia" organization.

"Democracy will never come by war … we need an invasion of schools, economy, hospitals, and streets. We need these kind of helping hands."

Joya also offered condolences to the parents of Canadian soldiers killed while serving in Afghanistan.