National Defence Committee on Feb. 5th, 2008

[BGen P. Atkinson]

This is absolutely Afghanistan. This is where Canada is working in Kandahar province, where our Joint Task Force Afghanistan operates.

[John Cannis, Liberal, Scarborough Centre, ON]

So this is really that area. That's what I want to pass on to my constituents.

[BGen P. Atkinson]

Absolutely.

[John Cannis, Liberal, Scarborough Centre, ON]

So I can tell my constituents Afghanistan has elevators, a telephone system, a banking system, an infrastructure. But this is just one area. Is that the message I can give them?

[BGen P. Atkinson]

In major urban centres there's electricity, elevators, functioning telephone systems, a nascent banking system.

[John Cannis, Liberal, Scarborough Centre, ON]

And President Karzai's assistant lives in one of those little huts.

[BGen P. Atkinson]

But there are also areas of Afghanistan that are very rural and very primitive. We have a mix of both.

[John Cannis, Liberal, Scarborough Centre, ON]

Okay, I've got the idea.

Sir, you talked about needing more Afghan national guardsmen. We all agree. How is that recruiting coming along? We were told in the past—and it keeps coming back—that we keep trying to recruit them, jeopardizing our people's lives. How is that recruiting coming along? How effective is it? We're hearing that they're being paid, say, $50 a month, and then the drug lords, the warlords, are recruiting them on the side and paying them two and three times as much. Are they being enticed? We've also heard rumours that by day they're doing this and by night they're doing that. How is that coming along, the recruiting aspect, and how are we recruiting them?

[BGen P. Atkinson]

The Afghanistan Compact set a goal of having a regular army of 70,000 soldiers. As I mentioned in my remarks today, they have recruited 41,500.

Not all those are fully trained. In the area we're working in we now have three kandaks, a service support unit, and a brigade headquarters working with us. They are moving along well. We would like to have more, but it takes time to train them. You give them basic training, but then you need to train them as combat teams, you need to give them experience, you need to have them working in joint operations with each other and with the international forces. It takes time to build that capability, but they are showing progress, and we are very happy with their progress to date. However, it's not there yet.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rick Casson]

Mr. Bachand.

[Claude Bachand, Bloc, Saint-Jean, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I'd like to go back to the detainee question. You read us a paper earlier, and I'd like to know whether that's the staff position or that of the civilian authorities to which you normally report. In other words, is that a position that the government told you to adopt or one that you adopted yourself and subsequently transmitted to the government?

[BGen P. Atkinson]

That position is a military position. Operational security is a military responsibility for the Chief of Defence Staff, for me as the director general of operations, and for our troops on the ground. Operational security is something I deal with every day. I have a responsibility, as I look at information that has been requested through the Access to Information Act, to make sure I safeguard information that could negatively affect our operations on the ground. The description I gave you of operational security is mine. To amplify, I quoted a little from the remarks the CDS gave to the press on Friday. I thought the analogy of a roadmap was a good descriptor of operational security. It is a purely military responsibility and one that we hold dear because it involves the lives of our soldiers.

[Claude Bachand, Bloc, Saint-Jean, QC]

If the civilian authorities, that is to say the government, told you to state specifically in future the number of persons you are detaining and the place where they are located, what would be the staff response?

[BGen P. Atkinson]

Mr. Bachand, you're asking me a political question.

We have the responsibility for the OPSEC and detainees. We're responsible for when we take them and for processing them in accordance with our SOPs, and the Department of Foreign Affairs, in accordance with our supplementary arrangement with the Afghan government, is responsible for the piece after that.

The question you're asking me is what the military's response would be, so it is a hypothetical question, and I think it is a question that is unfair for you to ask me.

[Claude Bachand, Bloc, Saint-Jean, QC]

Unfair for me to ask you?

Mr. Chairman, as members, I think we have a right to ask witnesses the questions we want to ask. Do you agree with what the general has just said, that I shouldn't ask these kinds of questions because they aren't appropriate?

[The Chair, Conservative, Rick Casson]

We can ask any question we wish, but I think the general is under some pretty...the word isn't “constraints”, but he's under some obligation to answer military questions here. It's a military briefing. I do agree with his response that it seemed to be a political question that would be best asked of his political masters. So I agree with his response.

[BGen P. Atkinson]

Mr. Bachand, the Prime Minister explained on Friday that the Chief of Staff, General Hillier, and the Canadian Armed Forces were responsible for operations concerning detainees. These matters are our responsibility.

[Claude Bachand, Bloc, Saint-Jean, QC]

Since they represent civilian authority and grant mandates, members are responsible for ensuring that a fair balance is struck. You have to agree that you only have to answer the kinds of questions we ask you. I can't answer them. You shouldn't pass judgments on the questions we ask, because they are important.

Do you agree with me on that?

[BGen P. Atkinson]

Sir, it's not my intent to judge your question. I said I cannot answer a political question. I can answer a question about our operations, about what we're doing and what we're responsible for. A question of a political nature is best posed to my minister, who is more than capable and willing to do that.

[Claude Bachand, Bloc, Saint-Jean, QC]

All right. Let's continue talking about inmates. Earlier you said you couldn't provide any details inmates. You read a prepared statement.

Do you think that, in disclosing this kind of information, Great Britain and Holland are endangering the security of their troops?

[BGen P. Atkinson]

The decisions made by other nations about their policies are theirs to make. The example I'd like to use...and Great Britain is a very good one, but so is the United States. They operate over a large area of Afghanistan. We operate in a specific area. In our specific area we have an interaction with the people, and obviously we have a strong interaction with the Taliban. As I indicated, in that area, if we were to divulge information it could give them advantage and it could affect our intelligence-gathering efforts.

So decisions made by other nations are theirs to make and not for me to speculate on. In our decision to protect our operational security and to protect our operations on the ground, we do not provide details on detainees.

[Claude Bachand, Bloc, Saint-Jean, QC]

Earlier you said that Canada had provided Afghan soldiers with 2,500 C7 rifles. Out of 41,000 Afghan soldiers, 2,500 are equipped with C7 rifles. Did I understand correctly?

[BGen P. Atkinson]

The 2,500 C7s we provided were to the soldiers, the kandaks, who are working with us inside Kandahar.

[Claude Bachand, Bloc, Saint-Jean, QC]

How many of them are working with you?

[BGen P. Atkinson]

We have three infantry kandaks. Their strength, when they're full up, is around 600 in each, so that would be about 1,800. There are soldiers who are going through the training cycle, because, as I said, I hope we will get a fourth kandak. The reason we did this--and we did it in our sector--was so that the soldiers we are working with, whom we are training, are able to use the same equipment and have the confidence to be able to take them on.

So it's focused in our area. The Afghans will complete the distribution of those weapons, but they were distributed to the trained soldiers who are in RC South, and specifically in Kandahar province.