The Board of Inquiry report (II)
By Aaron Wherry - Saturday, May 8, 2010 - 2 Comments
As Rear Admiral P.A. Maddison explained yesterday, there was apparently belief among Canadian Forces that violence was a “cultural norm” among Afghan authorities, but there was no “observation” or “expectation” that detainees were being abused.
Perhaps further to this point, Major General David Fraser testified last November at the Afghanistan committee that, while commander of Task Force Afghanistan in 2006, he received no report of abuse or torture. Speaking to the Board of Inquiry though, Major General Fraser (cited as Comd TFA) did, along with other sources, acknowledge some rather critical assessments of the Afghan National Security Forces. Those observations, found within Part III of the BOI report, are reprinted below. Continue…
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What they said (V)
By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, April 13, 2010 at 8:01 AM - 6 Comments
The issue of Governor Asadullah Khalid was raised three times during Afghanistan committee hearings last year. Specifically, the matter was pursued with Richard Colvin, Major-General David Fraser, the commander of Task Force Afghanistan for most of 2006, and ambassador David Mulroney, the former associate deputy minister for foreign affairs.
Herein, those exchanges.
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The Colvin encyclopedia
By Aaron Wherry - Sunday, December 6, 2009 at 1:31 PM - 25 Comments
A collection of documents, testimony and news reports related to Richard Colvin and Canada’s handling of Afghan detainees. The Colvin encyclopedia is updated as events warrant.
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Newsmakers '09: I'm sorry!
By macleans.ca - Thursday, December 3, 2009 at 5:14 PM - 3 Comments
The year in apologies, including Barack Obama, Serena Williams and Kanye West
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Kandahar: we didn't know what we were getting into
By John Geddes - Wednesday, November 25, 2009 at 4:16 PM - 15 Comments
Gen. Rick Hillier, the retired chief of defence staff, just moments ago reminded the House committee on Afghanistan about how Canadian troops in Kandahar, in the spring and summer of 2006, found themselves fighting pitched battles against hundreds of Taliban insurgents.It’s worth remembering how not long before those startlingly violent days, the Canadian officer dispatched to head operations in southern Afghanistan was anticipating nothing of the sort. (UPDATE: More background on the Kandahar surprise of ’06 here.)
Perhaps the fact that Canada’s military leaders didn’t really expect the all-out fighting Hillier just described partly explains why they didn’t properly plan for transferring to the Afghan authorities any prisoners taken during such intense combat operations.
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What happened to those 130?
By Aaron Wherry - Monday, November 23, 2009 at 11:50 AM - 0 Comments
The government has long maintained that to disclose the number of detainees transferred by Canadian Forces in Afghanistan would violate operational security, but a government source now tells the Globe that approximately 130 were transferred during the first 14 months of combat operations in Kandahar.
In June 2006, when news broke that Canadian soldiers had twice intervened to prevent the execution of prisoners, a spokesman for the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission told the Canadian Press that about 30 percent of prisoners handed over to Afghan authorities were abused. CP’s report of June 2, in its entirety, after the jump. Continue…
