Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I'll endeavour to keep my comments brief, given the committee's extensive deliberations on this issue to date and to allow for sufficient time for questioning, as you just mentioned.
Members of the committee, my name is Cory Anderson and I am a DFAIT official who has been working on the issue of Canadian-transferred detainees since my arrival in Kandahar in October 2006 as a political adviser to Joint Task Force Afghanistan.
Over the past three years I have held various policy and management positions in Ottawa and in Kandahar. All are related to Canada's whole-of-government engagement in Afghanistan. I've recently completed an assignment as political director of the provincial reconstruction team in Kandahar City and served as a special adviser to the independent panel on Canada's future role in Afghanistan.
As of June 2009 I had spent 20 of the previous 36 months in Kandahar on assignment for the Government of Canada. I have visited the NDS facility and Sarposa prison on multiple occasions during that time.
I am proud to have served in Kandahar alongside the brave and professional men and women of the Canadian Forces, as well as numerous civilian officials. All of them put their lives on the line each and every day in the pursuit of the noble and just cause to bring peace, security, and stability to a land riddled with over 30 years of war and conflict.
Throughout my tenure, managing the difficult and often complicated issue of Canadian-transferred detainees in accordance with international humanitarian law and Canada's international obligations has been a pre-eminent area of concern. As you have already been made aware, beginning in 2007 and culminating with the supplemental arrangement in May of that year, a number of additional provisions were put in place that markedly improved our ability to track and monitor the welfare of Canadian-transferred detainees within the custody of the NDS and ministry of justice.
This was an important step forward, and not only for the well-being of those individuals in question. What distinguishes ISAF support for the current government from systemic abuse suffered under the Taliban and their adherents is not only the principles of rule of law, respect, and internationally recognized human rights, but just as significant is the notion that these values represent a progressive way forward from the fear and repression the overwhelming majority of the population has endured for more than a generation.
We cannot purport change on one hand and then knowingly turn a blind eye to abuse at the hands of Afghan officials on the other, because it undermines the very principles we have sent our men and women into harm's way to promote. It also erodes public confidence, further confusing and alienating a population that has been let down numerous times in the past. And it provides fodder for an insurgency well versed and experienced in the art of manipulation.
The supplemental arrangement and the detainee database established shortly thereafter were instrumental in improving our ability to track and monitor these individuals. Both had a tangible and immediate effect on the ground in Kandahar. David Mulroney, in particular, should be credited with providing the leadership necessary to implement these new provisions.
In my experience, the challenges we faced on the detainee file prior to the consummation of the supplemental arrangement were essentially a microcosm of two fundamental issues. The first is the endemic and systemic duplicity within the NDS, especially at the provincial level, which exists to this very day and renders it virtually impossible to have an open and transparent relationship with their officials on the ground in Kandahar on this issue. This was exacerbated by an initial transfer arrangement that was deficient, not only due to a lack of content, but also due to the fact that it was co-signed and endorsed by a Canadian general and the Afghan Minister of Defence, General Wardak. Both absolved their specific organizations of any direct responsibility for post-transfer follow-up or monitoring.
This means that prior to May 2007, this critical undertaking was left to the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission, a fledgling organization that was essentially shut out by the Afghan security apparatus and the ICRC within the context of their broader monitoring of Afghan detention facilities in general. They, of course, do not report to us.
The Afghan Ministry of Defence has no authority over the NDS, and unlike Dutch and British forces operating in RC south, Canadian Forces made it clear from the outset that their oversight and responsibility for Canadian-captured detainees ceased upon transfer or release.
From my perspective, the time it took to draft and consummate the supplemental arrangement was not due to an unwillingness to improve upon the original transfer arrangement--far from it. We recognized its shortcomings almost from the moment I arrived in Kandahar. Nor was it the result of extensive negotiations with the Afghan government. Rather, it was a consequence of the fierce debate raging in Ottawa between military and civilian officials related to the exact nature of Canada's monitoring regime, given the very real concerns we as Canadian officials had regarding the willingness and intent of the NDS to legitimately abide by the stipulations of any new arrangement. This debate could not have occurred if senior Canadian officials were not fully aware of the plausible risk of abuse faced by Canadian transferred detainees at the hands of the NDS.
Almost from the outset, the supplemental arrangement resulted in what is essentially a two-tiered system, one where the Canadian Forces enjoy an intimate and comprehensive relationship with the NDS on a daily basis related to all aspects of military operations and intelligence gathering, but refuse to wade into the one facet of that relationship where adherence to our international obligations is most at risk, forcing civilian departments, namely DFAIT, to implement an extensive monitoring regime where the military's only role is that of providing transportation to and from the facility, along with the general security that that entails, thus giving the monumental task of monitoring within an inherently secretive institution such as the NDS to a handful of Canadian civilians who are viewed with suspicion and lack the comprehensive relationship with NDS officials that transcends detainee management and oversight.
As the committee has already heard, the creation of the associate deputy minister position at DFAIT responsible for coordinating the Afghan effort, then later moved to PCO upon the establishment of that Afghanistan task force following the Manley panel recommendations, was essential to mitigating many of the previous disconnects that were most evident on the ground in Kandahar in 2006-07, where the Canadian Forces were, and remain, the overwhelming face of our Afghan mission and individuals like myself were too few and often crowded out by the immensity of the task at hand.
