Afghanistan Committee on April 21st, 2010

[Bob Dechert, Conservative, Mississauga—Erindale, ON]

Okay.

Do I have any more time, Mr. Chair?

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

No, you basically have 10 seconds left. We'll go to Mr. Wilfert.

[Bryon Wilfert, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Gentlemen, it's nice to see you, particularly the two of you I saw in Afghanistan, and Ambassador Hoffmann as well, obviously.

Following up on Mr. Dosanjh's comments regarding the test, if I understood you correctly, you acknowledged a high likelihood of torture. So how do we meet this test if you only have the NDS investigating itself? In other words, the torturer is investigating the torture.

[Arif Lalani]

Let me start. I did not acknowledge a high incidence. What I said is, certainly there is a risk, which is why we all had agreements and which is frankly why the ICRC is on the ground and has the mandate it does and does the work it does. This is why, in the arrangement that has been signed, specifically and explicitly in the arrangement we talk about allegations and investigations.

To my mind, I think the key here is a combination of things. One is monitoring. The monitoring, I think, needs to be frequent. It needs to be standard. It needs to have people who have the right training. If you do that, then we believe--and as I think people who have testified before me, people who worked in the embassy, have said--that allows you confidence that you can transfer.

I think for me that's what the standard is. I think we were able to do that.

[Bryon Wilfert, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

Mr. Hoffmann?

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Go ahead, Mr. Hoffmann.

[His Excellency Ron Hoffmann]

Mr. Wilfert, perhaps I could expand on the issue of the investigations. When we had an incident, even if it was not an obviously compelling one.... We had one, but there were others, and we took them all seriously. When we initiated action on that, we did not only go the NDS and say “please investigate yourself”. We went to the president's office via the national security adviser. We went to the minister or the deputy minister for foreign affairs responsible for the bilateral relationship and international human rights obligations. We went to the attorney general's office. We went to the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission. We went to the ICRC.

In the cases where transfers were halted until we were satisfied, we did not only take our guidance from the NDS; we ensured that we consulted widely and factored in all views, including the views of those who were frequent critics of the NDS, before we felt we were on solid enough ground and satisfied and meeting obligations before we did so.

[Bryon Wilfert, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

Through you, Mr. Chairman, to Ambassador Hoffmann, there were reports that Canada, the British, and the Dutch all were part of an agreement or a promise, in fact, to build a separate prison that we could oversee. So obviously there was concern about the transfer of detainees. We were talking, and according to the head of the NDS, Mr. Saleh, he indicated that in fact there was an agreement to build a prison, signed in Kabul by officials from all three countries. It would be without risk of abuse, torture, and ill treatment, and we would be able to monitor. Can you elaborate on that? Because there seems to be some conflict as to whether that ever happened.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you, Mr. Wilfert.

Mr. Hoffmann.

[His Excellency Ron Hoffmann]

Mr. Wilfert, there is indeed some confusion around this issue, and it's an issue that I know well. As part of Canada's commitment to help build capacity...and that meant many things. It meant infrastructure. It meant training. It meant equipment. It meant basic humanitarian supplies to improve the lives of prisoners in very rudimentary circumstances.

One of the realities of the Afghan prison system was one of insufficient capacity. The NDS facilities, in Kabul in particular, were overcrowded. The NDS and other institutions of government came to the international community and sought resources and help to build more capacity. The British led on an initiative, principally with the Americans, to build capacity--not to run the prison, not to oversee the prison, but just to build capacity.

Canada was approached because we were one of the key countries, and one of the top five on most matters, as Mr. Lalani indicated, and we were asked to contribute. We had agreed in principle to provide equipment-- kitchen equipment, etc. This was a long process. Some things simply don't move very quickly in Afghanistan, as much as we'd like them to. There was the question of an exchange of letters--

[Bryon Wilfert, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

This is the letter of February 12, 2009.

[His Excellency Ron Hoffmann]

Yes. This was the letter from February 11 or February 12 of 2009, and I'll say very clearly here that it reflected a misstep in the embassy. That letter had no status. I was in Islamabad at the time, and we had an employee who signed the letter prematurely.

But that letter never had effect. It did not override the detainee transfer arrangements of May 2007. Some of the content of the letter was never effectuated. All aspects of our detainee management process, including unfettered access on an un-notified basis, continued throughout that period--

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you.

[Bryon Wilfert, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

And it was acknowledged by the NDS head, I assume--

[His Excellency Ron Hoffmann]

Absolutely.

[Bryon Wilfert, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

--that there was a misstep.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you, Mr. Wilfert.

We'll now move to Mr. Hawn, and then to Mr. Dewar.

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Through you to Mr. Hoffmann, or to anyone, given what was just said and given that we're there at the invitation of the Afghan government to develop, among other things, Afghan capacity among our objectives, within the context of our obligations, our international obligations and so on, was there any real alternative with respect to detainees to having a transfer arrangement that we monitored as robustly as possible? Was there any other realistic alternative?

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Mr. Hoffmann.

[His Excellency Ron Hoffmann]

We had to remind ourselves every day in Afghanistan that we were in a different sovereign country, and as much as we'd have liked to try to solve our problems ourselves in any sector, we had to recognize of course that what we were doing had to reflect the sovereign needs and sensitivities of the country we were in.

In the case of detainee transfers, there was really only one organization that the Afghans asked us to transfer to; this was the organization that had their governmental responsibility for accepting these detainees detained under those circumstances.

With respect to capacity building, Mr. Hawn, because I think this is I think how you started the question, Canada did capacity building in part to support our international obligations, but we did much more than that. We did capacity building well beyond our international requirements. It was not a minimalist approach.

We did national training of managers in security institutions, whether that was the police, NDS, or military, but including NDS on management training, on human rights training, from institutions that were well beyond Kabul and Kandahar. Some of the infrastructure and equipment that we supplied were well beyond what we thought was the strict legal obligation. It was part of our commitment to build the Afghan state to be stronger and more independent.

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

Mr. Lalani, I guess everybody who has signed the human rights agreements and so on is expected to abide by the same standards. That's a given. But is one of the difficulties that we seem to be having with all of this in Canada--the broad “we”--perhaps a lack of perspective or a lack of context? Are we applying the Canadian context to Afghanistan, where, even though they are bound by the same standards, the performance to those standards comes from a different context than we're used to here in Canada?

[Arif Lalani]

One, I think everyone struggles with the issue. Two, I go back to the fact that we have international organizations on the ground that look at this issue of detainee monitoring. They do it, obviously, because that's the best way to deal with this: to monitor and have evidence, and then improve, because the bottom line, as I think Ron Hoffmann and others have pointed out, is that we need to build the capacity of the Afghans for them to be able to fulfill their obligations. I think we are able to do that.

There seems to be a sense that simply because somebody might report something it is evidence. I think, given the importance of the issue and the importance of people attached to it, decisions need to be taken on something more than that. That's why the monitoring regime is so important.

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

Thank you.

I'll share whatever time I have left with Mr. Dechert.

[Bob Dechert, Conservative, Mississauga—Erindale, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

I'd like to ask Mr. Lalani and Mr. Hoffmann about visits of elected officials from Canada during your respective terms in Afghanistan. Without going into the details of the discussions, can you tell us if in your view the elected officials you met with were aware of the situation in Afghanistan with respect to detainees? If so, did they share your concerns?

[His Excellency Ron Hoffmann]

I'll start, since I spent probably the longest period of time, and much of our time overlapped. I don't believe in my two years that there was a senior visit from the Government of Canada--or, frankly, from Parliament and many other Canadians--where we didn't review the full nature of our engagement.

One of the pillars of our engagement, of course, was this issue and our conduct on this issue. The matter of detainees was discussed with the embassy, with our visitors, and it was discussed with the Afghan government in its meetings. While I don't remember all of the meetings because there were so many, or all the visits, it was pretty well a constant feature of our dialogue and engagement with the senior levels of the Afghan government and ourselves.