Afghanistan Committee on March 31st, 2010

[BGen Denis William Thompson]

No problem. If you do not mind, I will switch to English.

[Francine Lalonde, Bloc, La Pointe-de-l'Île, QC]

Of course, that is why we have simultaneous interpretation. We have excellent, charming interpreters.

[BGen Denis William Thompson]

That is very kind. Thank you.

Again, there are really two conditions.

First, if there isn't sufficient evidence to link a guy to the insurgency, then there's no point hanging on to him. You have to remember that the conditions under which people are taken off the battlefield are not exactly black and white. It isn't like making an arrest here in Ottawa or something. In the hurly-burly of combat, when you pick somebody up, you may detain a guy because he has gunshot residue on his hands or something of that nature. Then, when he comes back to the transfer facility and he's interviewed by the military police, we determine whether or not there's any evidence that would link him to the insurgency. That's the crime, if you would. That's what we're trying to root out.

The NDS, based on that evidence, will prosecute him inside of the Afghan justice system. If he ends up being a long-term prisoner, he ends up, as was the case for many of our people, in Sarposa prison. I haven't spoken about that because that's a completely different project.

It's almost like you have the county jail--that being the NDS facility in Kandahar City--and then down the street you have the prison, which is where you go after you have been prosecuted if you're found guilty.

So that's number one. If there isn't enough evidence, there's no point in turning the guy over.

I can talk about these poor folks of limited mental capacity. These are people who get wired up by the Taliban--who aren't nice, I think we all appreciate that--with bombs. The Taliban will wire up a guy who happens to be not completely with it and then walk him toward you so that they can detonate him by remote control. When we happen to defuse the thing, we take the guy in as a detainee. We have no idea who he is until we get him back and question him.

We realized, in at least two of these cases, that these guys weren't entirely with it and that they needed to be turned back to their families.

Point number one, then, is that if there is no evidence to link to him to the insurgency, there is no point transferring him--or keeping him, for that matter.

The second element is that of course we wouldn't transfer people if we knowingly knew that there would be--

[Francine Lalonde, Bloc, La Pointe-de-l'Île, QC]

Excuse me.

You said you do not keep them. You release them?

[BGen Denis William Thompson]

Yes, absolutely.

Three-quarters of them are given their affairs, which are all catalogued to the Canadian standard. They are driven to the front gate and given taxi fare, more than enough taxi fare to get them back to where they go. Oftentimes--this means telling tales out of school--they hitchhike so that they can pocket the fare. That's not unusual, but that's fine; we're not making anybody rich by doing that.

[Francine Lalonde, Bloc, La Pointe-de-l'Île, QC]

In the second case, you believe he is linked to the insurgency. So he would be the equivalent of a prisoner of war in this phoney Afghan war. In that case, you transfer him?

[BGen Denis William Thompson]

Absolutely. There has to be a chance that the insurgent will be convicted in an Afghan court.

[Francine Lalonde, Bloc, La Pointe-de-l'Île, QC]

Do you follow him afterwards? You are not talking about following up, just categorizing, I would say.

[BGen Denis William Thompson]

Yes.

But now I'm talking about the whole-of-government team. It is Canada's responsibility to follow the prisoners through the Afghan system. I would assist, as much as possible, with my whole-of-government partners.

In the case of following the detainee, at least where we were in the south, that meant providing the transportation in this hostile environment to my colleagues from Foreign Affairs so that they could get to these places to visit them--including the Sarposa prison, by the way, which hasn't really been discussed. We facilitated the movement of correction services officers to the Sarposa prison, CIDA folks to rebuild the walls, and that kind of thing.

So while it wasn't people in uniform physically doing the suivi, it was members of this whole-of-government team.

[Francine Lalonde, Bloc, La Pointe-de-l'Île, QC]

If there were signs that a prisoner you had transferred was forced, through violence, to talk...

[BGen Denis William Thompson]

That's it: we would have cut the transfer and we would have pulled them back.

[Francine Lalonde, Bloc, La Pointe-de-l'Île, QC]

Would you have known?

Would you have known it?

[BGen Denis William Thompson]

We'd have been informed by these government officials, yes.

Can I tell you with 100% certitude that I had 100% knowledge of everything that was going on in that prison? You need only look up the date--13 June 2008--and you know darn well that I didn't know what was going on inside Sarposa prison, because it exploded and we lost 900 prisoners. And remember, only a third of those were insurgents; 600 of them were just common criminals.

It's impossible to know everything everywhere in a war. There's just too much friction. But we do the best we can with the resources we're given. Frankly, my whole-of-government partners did the best they could with the resources they had at their disposal.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you very much, General Thompson.

We'll now come back to the government side. Mr. Hawn.

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you for being here again, General Thompson.

General Thompson, you talk a lot about the whole-of-government approach, which obviously is the approach. How would you describe the relationship within that, and not just within our whole-of-government approach but with outside agencies such as the International Committee of the Red Cross? I know you can't get too specific with them.

[BGen Denis William Thompson]

Again, I restrict my comments to the time I was in command.

I went out of my way to cultivate a positive environment, and so did Elissa Golberg. We created an integrated headquarters and an integrated team. I can't speak for what went on prior to me or what came after. I can tell you that although it wasn't always sweetness and light, there were certainly lots of heated discussions about the way things could go. We always arrived at a compromise that worked for both of us, so I think the relationship wasn't just cordial, it was warm.

With other outside agencies, without telling tales out of school here, just as I had a weekly provincial security meeting with the governor and all the relevant Afghan security actors, at the regional level I would meet with my general, General de Kruif, the Dutch commander. Elissa would be there because we were a team. On several occasions the United Nations representative would be there and the guy who ran the office of the International Committee of the Red Cross. I knew who he was and I had an open-door policy to him. That's all I can say, because they need to protect their neutrality.

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

I understand.

Can you say whether at any time the International Committee of the Red Cross expressed any concerns to you?

[BGen Denis William Thompson]

I can't, no. I can't share that with you, and that's because of the relationship with that organization.

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

No. I understand.

Would you say the enhanced arrangement works?

[BGen Denis William Thompson]

I believe it does. Can it be fixed or ameliorated? Everything can be. Anybody who thinks they have the perfect document is in the wrong business.

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

If something goes wrong under that arrangement, it's one of two things: either the arrangement is flawed or the people are flawed in some way. If somebody in the NDS broke down, didn't perform to the standard we expected them to perform to, what would we do about that?

[BGen Denis William Thompson]

We would inform the commander. I would tell my counterpart if that were the case, but if it was to do with his detainee facility--the prison belongs to a different service--then he would be told by the representative of Canada in Kandahar at that weekly security provincial meeting, if it needed to be said, that General Karimi had better look into this because it's a bit of a mess. But that didn't happen.

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

Not while you were there, but we talked about the halting in October-November of the previous year. Obviously, in the extreme case you would halt transfers, as was done.

[BGen Denis William Thompson]

Right. Not only did they halt transfers, but as I understand it they provided them with training. I think Cory Anderson referred to that. To use that great government buzzword, they did some capacity building to make sure they understood what their responsibilities were as people running what amounts to a county jail.

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

So we had a good arrangement. We had a problem with some of the people. We stopped. We helped the people get better.