Afghanistan Committee on March 21st, 2022

[Reid Sirrs, Former Ambassador of Canada to Afghanistan, Global Affairs Canada]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Chair, honourable members, and colleagues, on October 14, 2020, I was appointed as Canada's 11th ambassador to the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan. This was my second post in Kabul following my first tour in 2014.

During my time I represented the Government of Canada's interests in the country, focusing on bilateral relations, programming and human rights, official development and security assistance. The vast majority of this was managed through multilateral, non-governmental and civil society organizations with the support of my team at the embassy, colleagues in Ottawa, and at other missions in the region.

My team also supported me in working with the international community to monitor peace talks between the Taliban and the Islamic republic, which were taking place in Doha. As security conditions in the country deteriorated, our priorities expanded to include updating travel advisories and consular messages, exploring options to continue programming in an environment shared with or controlled by the Taliban, developing plans to maintain an embassy presence in Kabul after the withdrawal of NATO and for various evacuation scenarios.

Canada has a deep connection with Afghanistan and the Afghan people. Over the past 20 years, we have worked alongside the citizens of Afghanistan to achieve tangible results in democracy, human rights, education, health and press freedom, effectively changing the country from what it was in 2001. A generation of women and men have participated in democratic political processes. The rights of women and minorities have been promoted and advanced. A free and vibrant press has flourished, telling the stories of Afghans and holding the government to account. Literacy rates, especially for women and girls, have improved, and infant mortality rates have declined.

Our legacy includes a generation of Afghans who have seen and experienced a freer way of life with a government that takes responsibility for providing social services, an improved standard of living, and a country where women and girls are active in all aspects of society.

Providing a reasonable duty of care has been a constant challenge in Kabul. The threat of terrorist attacks and kidnapping, coupled with the widespread prevalence of COVID-19, the uncertainty of fragile peace talks and decreased staff levels at the embassy greatly impacted where and how we did our work. The complete collapse of the Afghan forces and the Taliban's rapid takeover of Afghanistan came as a surprise to everyone.

Up until a few days before the decision to temporarily suspend embassy operations, Canada and the international community were expecting difficult times in August and September, but not a complete takeover of the capital. In fact, we expected the Afghan military to defend the city until the onset of winter, allowing time for negotiations to continue.

With this in mind, we were considering options to maintain a skeletal presence throughout the fall so we could continue essential programming as well as support possible evacuation efforts. With the support of a special advisory team from the Canadian Armed Forces we were able to continually update our concepts of operation for maintaining a presence in the country to a temporary suspension of operations and implementation of a non-combatant evacuation operation. This team was also instrumental in securing space in the air bridge that became an essential bridge for getting so many people out of the capital.

On August 15, Kabul fell with next to no resistance to the Taliban, the president and his senior advisers fled the country, and the airport was overrun. Later that afternoon I left Afghanistan on a Canadian military flight with the remainder of my team and some Afghans, foreign diplomats and international contractors. A few days later, with the support of the Canadian Armed Forces, a special consular team was able to return to Kabul's airport to resume evacuation efforts.

Working under extremely harsh, very fluid and dangerous conditions, this civilian and military team helped Canada assist approximately 3,700 people to leave the country by the end of the month.

As we all have seen, this was only the beginning of a sustained effort that has become increasingly complicated in a country under Taliban control. While efforts continue to ensure safe passage for Canadians and Afghans, the growing humanitarian crisis and deteriorating human rights situation are deeply concerning.

Despite this unfortunate reality, Canada will continue its efforts to fight terrorism and to hold the Taliban to their international obligations.

Thank you for your attention.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sukh Dhaliwal]

We can go to the honourable members of Parliament, starting with Mr. Chong for six minutes.

Please go ahead.

[Michael Chong, Conservative, Wellington—Halton Hills, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Ambassador Sirrs, for appearing before us today and thank you for your service.

Congratulations on your new appointment to Argentina, and thank you for your service in Afghanistan.

You said something in your opening remarks that is somewhat surprising to me. You mentioned that the fall of Kabul on August 15 took you by surprise.

At what point did you realize that Kabul was going to fall? Was it the day or two before, or the day of? When did you realize that the Taliban weren't going to stay outside the capital, that they were going to come in and take it over?

[Reid Sirrs]

Mr. Chair, thank you very much.

I received information on August 12, which was the Thursday before, that led me to believe that the security of the embassy and all the people who worked within its compound was at risk of attack from the Taliban. As a result—

[Michael Chong, Conservative, Wellington—Halton Hills, ON]

Thank you for that. I appreciate that.

It seems to me that the intelligence and advice you got as ambassador wasn't as accurate as it should have been, because from afar, at the other end of the world here, it was clear to many of us in July that Kabul was going to fall. From just reading the standard suite of quotidian publications like The New York Times, it was pretty clear what was happening. Hence, statements and letters that were being written by the opposition urgently calling on the government to begin an immediate evacuation were issued several times in June and July of that year.

I just make that general point.

Is it safe to say that the real, urgent evacuation efforts began around or after August 12? When you look at the data, approximately 850 people were evacuated by Canada leading up to August 16, and then suddenly between August 15 and August 29, some 2,800 people were evacuated. Clearly, evacuation efforts significantly increased after the fall of Kabul on August 15.

Was that a result of the government being in caretaker mode, or was that a result of the fall of Kabul and the urgency that the fall of Kabul triggered amongst staff?

[Reid Sirrs]

When we made the decision to evacuate on August 12, as I said, that was based on information we got from other sources. We had actually started the process for SIMs beforehand. We were looking at removing those who were associated with the embassy as being immediately identified as vulnerable to attacks from the Taliban, so the process started. The paperwork started to get them prepared to evacuate out.

As a result, people were starting to move out in early August, and then it continued, as you know, through the rest of the month.

[Michael Chong, Conservative, Wellington—Halton Hills, ON]

When did the planning begin? Did it begin in July, or well before that?

[The Chair, Liberal, Sukh Dhaliwal]

Ambassador Sirrs.

[Reid Sirrs]

Planning in terms of the SIMs policy itself actually went back into March, where we were working with IRCC to come up with a plan for how to introduce a new public policy for special immigration.

[Michael Chong, Conservative, Wellington—Halton Hills, ON]

Did the government ask for advice on evacuating Afghans with enduring ties to Canada, or was this planning that was done at the behest, organically, of Global Affairs? Was this triggered by a request for advice from the government or direction from the cabinet?

[The Chair, Liberal, Sukh Dhaliwal]

Ambassador Sirrs, please go ahead.

[Reid Sirrs]

Thank you.

Essentially, when we started, we raised the flag back in the fall. Actually, the flag was first raised on the assumption that we were facing a big climate crisis. Drought was becoming quite profound, so we started pushing forward in regard to how to start dealing with the massive onslaught of people who would likely show up at the borders because they don't have food or water.

That evolved as we saw the deterioration in the talks. That devolved or evolved into a discussion on how this was going to be more profound, where we actually do start to worry that the outcome is not going to be positive or in favour of the republic continuing, so we'd better start looking at coming up with measures to get people out.

[Michael Chong, Conservative, Wellington—Halton Hills, ON]

I have last general question.

To the period ending August 5, 2021, NATO allies, including Canada, evacuated over 70,000 people from Hamid Karzai International Airport. The U.K. alone evacuated over 11,000 people. We evacuated some 3,700 people, disproportionately less than NATO partners and allies. The U.K. is roughly double our size. They evacuated almost four times or three and a half times what we evacuated. The U.S. is 10 times our size, and they certainly evacuated a lot of people in the weeks and months leading to the end of August.

Why was our response slower than that of our NATO allies and partners?

[The Chair, Liberal, Sukh Dhaliwal]

The time is up, sir.

Mr. Sirrs, please go ahead, very briefly.

[Reid Sirrs]

Thank you.

It's a complicated situation, because we were actually dealing with a lot of countries all trying to get out at once. The U.S. had a lot more people on the ground, and I'm not sure if the numbers that are quoted actually include a lot of their own people who are already part of the U.S. stream and not a part of an immigration stream.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sukh Dhaliwal]

Thank you, Honourable Member Chong.

Now we'll go to the parliamentary secretary, Madam Damoff, for six minutes.

Please go ahead.

[Pam Damoff, Liberal, Oakville North—Burlington, ON]

Thank you so much, Chair.

Thank you to all our witnesses for being here.

Ambassador Sirrs, I have a few questions for you.

First, just to comment on what you were saying at the end there, you mentioned that the U.S. still had a large footprint on the ground, whereas Canada had left about 10 years prior to that.

We've heard a lot during our committee hearings about the challenges of getting Afghan citizens out of Afghanistan now. You're in a unique position, in that you can tell us a bit about the difficulties in getting out people who had supported Canada and getting the documents they needed from the Afghan government to emigrate and leave prior to the fall, and also whether the Afghan government was putting up any barriers to its own citizens in terms of leaving the country to come to Canada.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sukh Dhaliwal]

Go ahead, Mr. Sirrs.

[Reid Sirrs]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

On the documents required to leave, the SIMs process was quite straightforward in terms of documentation. We realized early in the game that we needed to come up with a mechanism. It was actually IRCC that came up with a mechanism called the “single journey travel document”. That was something that allowed people to get out of the country relatively quickly without a whole lot of core documentation—like a passport. We had people with children that had been born two weeks before, and they obviously didn't have a national identity card or a passport.

The issue we found in processing people at the airport very early in the game was that the Afghan government started barring people who did not have passports or their Afghan tazkiras—national identity cards—on the planes. In fact, we had one flight that actually was forced to off-load about 70 passengers, I think, because there was one person on the plane who did not have a passport in their hand.

When I made interventions with their Office of the National Security Advisor, as well as their Ministry of Foreign Affairs, I asked for special exemptions and waivers. We were given one for one flight and were told that after that, “never again”. I discussed the issue with my colleagues at other embassies—the British embassy and the American embassy—and with the Dutch and the Danes, for example, and they all had the same problem. They were having difficulty getting people out because they could not get people the documentation to get on the flights to leave the country.

In the end, it came down to a question of a decision at the senior policy level. The president of the country did not want Afghans leaving because he felt that there would be a brain drain, and we retorted that we needed to have part of the brain come with us so that they could come back and build the country later on.

[Pam Damoff, Liberal, Oakville North—Burlington, ON]

Thank you.

When we were there and we had a footprint on the ground and then left, do you know why we didn't do the planning to bring some of these people to Canada? The previous government brought some. There is no doubt that there were some interpreters who came here, but is there a reason that you are aware of for why we didn't just bring those people to Canada at the time? Ten years have passed from when we were there until now.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sukh Dhaliwal]

Thank you.

Ambassador Sirrs, please go ahead.

[Reid Sirrs]

Thank you.

Mr. Chair, back in 2013, there was actually another special immigration program for former interpreters with the military.

[Alexis Brunelle-Duceppe, Bloc, Lac-Saint-Jean, QC]

A point of order, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sukh Dhaliwal]

Ambassador Sirrs, hold on for a second, please.

We'll suspend for a few minutes.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

We are resuming the Special Committee on Afghanistan.

Ms. Damoff, you have the floor.