Afghanistan committee  Any time we moved anywhere in Kandahar City or Kandahar province, we needed a multiple-vehicle package with a security detail. You had to have patrol routes and pre-briefs. You had to alter the route by which you went because there was a constant awareness that you were a potential target for a suicide bombing.

Afghanistan committee  This is not a case that I know specifically.

Afghanistan committee  Yes, I read the article. I believe almost every witness who will appear before the committee has read these articles. Moreover I talked to the author of the articles at that time. Within 48 hours of these reports, I was in the basement of the NDS talking with detainees in order to ascertain what had happened.

Afghanistan committee  In the handover note that I received on my arrival in Kandahar in July 2006, there was no reference to the detainee issue whatsoever.

Afghanistan committee  There was a list of items on which I needed to follow up. There was one missing persons case, which had nothing to do with Canadian detention policy, but there was no reference whatsoever to detainees as an issue on which I should follow up during my tenure in Kandahar.

Afghanistan committee  Yes. I'm familiar with that document, with identifier Kabul-0160, I believe. That was in the context of an Afghan government decision on how it would manage its detainees—which ministry would take lead responsibility. I don't believe that's something I can address in public from that perspective, because it concerns their internal affairs.

Afghanistan committee  Yes, I saw this report. I also saw the reports for 2005 and 2004 which contained the same references. There was no significant change compared to what we knew about the situation in Afghanistan. Indeed, it was almost the same report as that of the preceding year and the year before.

Afghanistan committee  If I could, I'd like to start the response to that, simply because I have a little bit of the historical context.

Afghanistan committee  We had ICRC and—

Afghanistan committee  We were looking at the issue in 2005. Well, I'll start by giving you my personal assessment. There are only ever three options for dealing with detainees: you can take national responsibility for them, which includes not just detention, but prosecution and incarceration in the long term; you can find a third party to whom to transfer them; or you can transfer them to the host government.

Afghanistan committee  What is fair to say is that we were aware there was a risk of detainees being abused. In 2005 we weren't ignorant; we had the facts at our disposal. What we did in the 2005 arrangement was put in place measures to mitigate that risk.

Afghanistan committee  If we had set up a facility of some kind, it would have been a short-term and not a permanent fix, because at some point you leave, and at that point you have to hand over to the Afghan prison system. So that's—

Afghanistan committee  That's a fair question. I could equally have said it's impossible to eliminate the risk of torture in the Canadian context, because it is impossible.

Afghanistan committee  To be precise, the Afghan context differs from the Canadian, in that we're talking about a country that is 90% illiterate, with very low levels of development within the bureaucracy, a poor culture of records-keeping overall. These are challenges that we're working to help them overcome, but when you start from that sort of under-developed context with a history of three decades of warfare, you don't start out with a culture of human rights.

Afghanistan committee  It's certainly true that historically in Afghanistan there have been issues of torture and abuse. If you look at the Soviet period or even the republican period that preceded it or the monarchy that preceded that, you don't have a great track record in the country. What's important now is that with the assistance of countries like Canada and the capacity-building programs we're putting in place, that's changing.