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Afghan Detainee Mega Thread

  • Thread starter Thread starter rceme_rat
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ERC, please explain what "staffed, too often, with lazy, second raters, there to fill a quota" means. What quota?

And what party was in power when this all started.? It is not stated in the article.
 
Rifleman62 said:
ERC, please explain what "staffed, too often, with lazy, second raters, there to fill a quota" means. What quota?

And what party was in power when this all started.? It is not stated in the article.


There were, I suspect, many quotas – none ever called by that name. We went from a highly merit based system (‘30s, ‘40s, ‘50s and ‘60s) that actively discriminated against almost anyone who did not fit O.D. Skelton’s ‘model’ – a young, robustly Christian/Protestant (preferably Orange Order Presbyterian)  man, a small town Ontarian, who had been to Oxford or Cambridge, to a system that aimed to be inclusibe and representative and which, of necessity, could not attract and retain elites. There were no women, until during the 2nd World War, very few Francophones, and, of course, no one who was not lily white. After 1967 Trudeau set out to change all that; he did. The quality of the staff work in DFAIT suffered; so did morale; other actions and attitudes made things worse – including Mulroney’s well document mistrust of the senior public service – which was somewhat understandable when you consider Pearson, Gordon, Sharp and Massé, all senior civil servants who became Liberal cabinet ministers.

The so called golden age of Canadian diplomacy occurred during the (mostly Liberal) King, St Laurent, Diefenbaker and Pearson eras. The demise began with Trudeau and has continued, unabated, in my view, ever since. There is no way to return to the system that, at least in part, made the golden age possible but I am not convinced that DFAIT cannot be reformed and made, again, worthy of its high calling.
 
E.R. Campbell:  The changes in DFAIT you point out are in fact prevalent throughout the Public Service as a whole, which has also declined accordingly in quality.  The exception is, natch, PCO where there is minimal movement towards any affirmative action and where positions are rarely posted widely for competition.  Those who are to rise fast and high are, er, selected and groomed.

Mark
Ottawa

(Ex-Ext Aff).
 
MarkOttawa said:
E.R. Campbell:  The changes in DFAIT you point out are in fact prevalent throughout the Public Service as a whole, which has also declined accordingly in quality.  The exception is, natch, PCO where there is minimal movement towards any affirmative action and where positions are rarely posted widely for competition.  Those who are to rise fast and high are, er, selected and groomed.

Mark
Ottawa

(Ex-Ext Aff).


Quite right; I have seen the effects in other government departments where the quality of work is markedly lower than, say, 30 years ago.

My impression is that Finance has also, along with PCO, been able to remain fairly selective - albeit not as much as in the past. The Bank of Canada looks like it is still a pretty exclusive shop.

I was lunching, a few weeks back, with a research scientist from a large government department: interesting, challenging, indeed important and fulfilling work but she's looking to move on because the leadership - middle management to as far up as she can see - is inept and technically ignorant. The people selected to manage do not know what the 'workers' (scientists) do and, therefore, are unable to lead anywhere except towards professional frustration.


Edit: typo
 
E.R. Campbell said:
I was lunching, a few Weeks back, with a research scientist from a large government department: interesting, challenging, indeed important and fulfilling work but she's looking to move on because the leadership - middle management to as far up as she can see - is inept and technically ignorant. The people selected to manage do not know what the 'workers' (scientists) do and, therefore, are unable to lead anywhere except towards professional frustration.

I have acquaintances who are or have worked at an Ontario Ministry and that is an exact description, comment for comment, of their situation. I don't know what that signifies but it is a sad state of affairs.
 
For another take on Colvin (first of two), here, produced under the Fair Dealing provisions (§29) of the Copyright Act, are some comments from writer/blogger Terry Glavin :

At last, a scandal.

The Canadian diplomat Richard Colvin has staked his entire reputation on the outcome of the hysterically-named "torturegate" spectacle unfolding in Ottawa, so he should be expected to fight fierce and shrewd. And fair play to him. In the story so far, a casual observer could be forgiven for thinking that the federal cabinet and the senior echelons of the Canadian Forces are riddled with war criminals, and that this Colvin guy is some kind of folk hero. He's winning.

The problem is that as the fight gets dirtier, and deeper into only-one-of-us-gets-outta-here-alive territory, it's becoming exceedingly difficult to discern what Colvin purports to reveal as fact from his characterizations and opinions of those purported facts. And it doesn't help that he tends to put spins on things in an increasingly too-transparent effort to make his own case appear more credible than it might otherwise be.

As in his account of a March, 2007 inter-agency meeting he attended in Ottawa, in which he offered to the "12 to 15 officials" around the table his opinion of the Afghan intelligence service, the NDS, thus: "The NDS tortures people, that's what they do, and if we don't want our detainees tortured, we shouldn't give them to the NDS." Colvin then claims: "The response from the Canadian Expeditionary Force Command (CEFCOM) note-taker was to stop writing and put down her pen."

I take it that we are invited to infer from this that some stenographer had been intimidated into taking pains to ensure that no trace of such revelations ended up in the official record. But it seems to me just as likely that Colvin's persistently-uttered, strongly-held and widely-emailed opinions about the general wrongness of federal detainee-transfer policy were immaterial and irrelevant to the meeting's proceedings, and were maybe getting just the tiniest bit tiresome, besides.

But there is something that screams off the pages of his latest testimony, and it cannot be left to stand unexamined. Colvin quite clearly insinuates that his one-time boss, Arif Lalani, Canada's former ambassador to Afghanistan, is both a coward and a liar.

As in: "For example, Ambassador Lalani instructed that we not report that the security situation was deteriorating. This followed an embassy report to Ottawa in which we noted that the Afghan Minister of Defence judged security to be getting worse - a view shared by our allies, and corroborated by violence trends and other metrics. Nevertheless, Mr. Mulroney sent instructions via Ambassador Lalani that we should either not mention the security situation at all, or to assert that it was getting better. The ambassador accordingly sent a report in which he said security was improving."

This goes far beyond the substance of Colvin's complaints so far, which have been more or less along the lines of 'Everyone ignores me' or 'No one takes me seriously' or "No one listens to my advice.'

I'm finding myself increasingly on the side of the NDP's Paul Dewar, in this respect: Instead of trolling through allegations and spin-meistering and recriminations and grievances about who might have been less than assiduous about which complaints about what alleged incidents based upon which dubious or reliable evidence regarding things that may or may not have happened three years ago, maybe there should be a federal inquiry after all, but it should take a much closer look at what the hell is really going on, right now.
 
The second of two parts from Terry Glavin:

A closer look at Richard Colvin's claims about the lies of his lying bosses and their lies

As I noted here [see part one], Richard Colvin has quite clearly insinuated that his one-time boss, Arif Lalani, Canada's former ambassador to Afghanistan, is both a coward and a liar. Turns out there is rather more going on here (or less, if you like) than that, and I suspect it betrays a lot about this preposterous affair that will, sadly, take a lot of the fun out of it too.

In his most recent instalment , Colvin claimed that Lalani had been instructed by Ottawa to withhold information, "however accurate, that conflicted with the government's public messaging," and consequently Lalani reversed the intent of an embassy report in order to give its opposite meaning: the report initially referred to a deteriorating security situation in Afghanistan, but Lalani changed the report to read that "security was improving."

Colvin cites this alleged incident to refute Ottawa's claim that it "encouraged accurate, rigorous, fact-based reporting" from Kabul and wasn't interested in "opinion" or "non-fact based information." This is "not correct," Colvin states, and then he goes on to reiterate the claim that the security situation in Afghanistan was actually getting worse, which was what the Afghan Minister of Defence thought, and which was also "a view shared by our allies, and corroborated by violence trends and other metrics." Colvin adds that in September, 2007, a Canadian embassy staffer was "severely rebuked" in writing for merely stating what Colvin presents as the overwhelming, evidence-based consensus that things were getting worse, not better.

It looks terrible, doesn't it?

A closer look shows that in fact, the state of the security situation in Afghanistan at the time was rather less a matter of fact and very much a matter of contested opinion - and Colvin's account, which we might now pause to describe as his own "public messaging," however accurate, relies almost wholly on opinion even now, and seems to play rather loosely with the facts besides.

In February, 2007, a memorandum from the British Defence Ministry reckoned that the security situation across Afghanistan was actually "broadly stable," though "fragile" in places . "Insurgent groups are able to launch small scale local attacks, particularly in the South and East, but at present they do not pose a strategic threat to the long term stability of Afghanistan."

In August, a United Nations security assessment noted that while most analysts assessed security to be deteriorating in Afghanistan through the first eight months of that year, "the nature of the incidents has, however, changed." The UN report cites a noticeable shift from "large-scale armed clashes in the field" to "asymmetric or terror-style" attacks. "The former do still take place and as air support is often used, casualty figures are still high. On average however these clashes are fewer and smaller than in 2006. Possible reasons include the high numbers of Taliban fighters killed during summer 2007 including many mid-level and senior commanders. Another reason must be the realization that these types of attacks are futile against a modern conventionally equipped military force supported by a wide range of air assets. The Afghan National Army (ANA) has also been improving throughout 2007."

Make of this what you will, but it would seem rather less than accurate and fact-based to report simply that the security situation in Afghanistan was deteriorating. A proper assessment would avail itself of some elaboration, and nuance, and perhaps the resort to some French words to get the point across, even. Which is what I thought diplomats were for.

What Colvin has also strangely expunged from his own account is the fact that the debate about whether the security situation in Afghanistan was improving or not was a rousing and highly amusing political "controversy" that was playing out in the pages of Canada's newspapers at the time. This has also been oddly forgotten by those very same newspapers, which are at the moment making such a great lark out of it all (don't reporters even check their article morgues anymore?)

Colvin's boss, Foreign Affairs Minister Maxime Bernier, was in Afghanistan around the time of the alleged rumpus to which Colvin alludes, publicly insisting that security was getting better, not worse . This was laying it on a bit thick, given the nuances and all, but Bernier was making some political hay of it. Which is what I thought politicians were for.

That's the most necessary context you'll need to have at hand in order to make sense of what's really going on here. Sadly, because it conflicts with Colvin's recent "public messaging," it tends to drain some of the high drama out of the whole story. Then, as now, Colvin wanted his opinion to stand unchallenged, and unedited, even if it stood in direct contradiction to his boss's opinion and made his boss look like a piker, besides. Which is not what I thought diplomats were for.

And at the end of the day, just whose opinion proved the soundest? Not that it matters to political affairs in Ottawa, but who was right, and who was wrong?

Around this time last year, I'd been in Kabul for a only couple of days when a huge headline in the UK Telegraph proclaimed: 'Kabul Now More Dangerous Than Baghdad At It Worst.' As I made my rounds of the city in the following weeks and found the place filled with some of the friendliest and most hospitable and welcoming people I've ever met in my life, I now and then amused myself by wondering just how lovely a place Baghdad must have been all this time.

Even now, the business about "violence trends and other metrics" in Afghanistan isn't something to which le mot juste readily presents itself. Still, it would be hardly a stretch to say something like: "The security situation in Afghanistan has deteriorated badly since 2007."

But these things are complicated.

If you ask Mohammad Halim Fidai, governor of the central Afghan province of Wardak, he will tell you that the security situation has vastly improved, and it's improving all the time, and the reason you don't know that is because of the newspapers you read .

"I think the question should be why the security situation is improving," he said. "Security is improving day by day, not deteriorating. Unfortunately due to the disinformation by the international media and also lack of capacity and resources of the Afghan government to provide information to the public, it has created an image of that security is deteriorating in the country."

Maybe yes. Maybe no. It's hard to say. Je m'excuse. But what should be completely clear by now to anyone who has been following any of this is that something rather more important is at stake than the reputations of certain diplomats or former foreign ministers. Behind all the "torturegate" histrionics is the fight for the way ordinary Canadians view our "combat role" in Afghanistan, which began in earnest with the history-changing, Canadian-led Operation Medusa, down in Kandahar, in 2006:

If Kandahar fell, and it was reasonably close run last year, it did not matter how well the Dutch did in Uruzgan or how well the British did in Helmand. Their two provinces would also, as night followed day, have failed because we would have lost the consent of the Pashtun people because of the totemic importance of Kandahar.

That praise comes from a 2007 report of a British parliamentary committee on defence, not a Canadian parliamentary committee . Kandahar did not fall, because Canadians held it. The report goes on: "Since the defeat of the Taliban by ISAF Forces in Operation Medusa, concern has grown that the Taliban insurgents might adopt more 'asymmetric' tactics against ISAF including increasing their use of suicide bombers and improvised explosive devices (IEDs). According to Anthony Cordesman, Chairman of the US-based Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), there has been an increase in suicide attacks from 18 in 2005 to 116 in 2006 and an increase in attacks from IEDs from 530 to 1,297 in 2006. The devastating impact of such attacks was demonstrated over the weekend of 16 / 17 June 2007, when a suicide bomber exploded a device in the North Afghan city of Mazar-e-Sharif, and the following day, a similar exploding device killed 35 people in Kabul. . ."

That's the complexity involved. Win on the battlefield, and the next thing you know, suicide bombers are detonating themselves in the streets of Kabul. But if you lose on the battlefield, you lose all of Kandahar, and Uruzgan, and Helmand, and the patience of the fierce Pashtun people, too. Lose all that, and Afghanistan would be gone, and you'd have to ask yourself what would happen next in Mazar-e-Sharif, and Kabul, and in Pakistan, the Maghreb, the Levant, the Horn of Africa. . .

Canadians won on the battlefield. Afghanistan is still a sovereign republic. Things are looking up. So sorry.

Je m'excuse.

My take on this is that this has degenerated into a whole lot of "he said/they said."  Who is telling the truth?  I don't know, but as Mr. Glavin has posted there may be more to Mr. Colvin's postings then we think. And as E.R. C. mentioned earlier people/organizations do have an agenda. The G & M to sell papers and make money. Then there is the Opposition, who's main goal is to embarrass the Tories. Unfortunately, most people have forgotten that we are in the middle of a war and this posturing does have consequences over in Afghanistan.

Well, 'nuff said for now. Its Friday night and there's beer in the fridge calling my name. Ciao!
 
Unfortunately the Soldiers themselves are now being dragged into this cluster foxtrot.  *Sigh*:
Canada's troops being investigated for Afghan abuse - CBC
http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2009/12/18/troops-afghan-investigation018.html

Quote: "The documents reveal that in 2008, military police launched six separate investigations into allegations of abuse involving Canadian troops.

"The military police determined that the allegations were unfounded in five of the six cases, and the remaining investigation is ongoing," said Major Paule Poulin, a spokesperson for the Canadian Forces Provost Marshall."

 
Baden  Guy said:
I have acquaintances who are or have worked at an Ontario Ministry and that is an exact description, comment for comment, of their situation. I don't know what that signifies but it is a sad state of affairs.

I think this is common in civil services across the country, or even across the western world.
 
greentoblue said:
Unfortunately the Soldiers themselves are now being dragged into this cluster foxtrot.  *Sigh*:
Canada's troops being investigated for Afghan abuse - CBC
http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2009/12/18/troops-afghan-investigation018.html

Quote: "The documents reveal that in 2008, military police launched six separate investigations into allegations of abuse involving Canadian troops.

"The military police determined that the allegations were unfounded in five of the six cases, and the remaining investigation is ongoing," said Major Paule Poulin, a spokesperson for the Canadian Forces Provost Marshall."


I worked in Corrections for almost 10 years. Every year we had several staff investigated because an inmate whined that he was abused etc.
I would imagine the Taliban are well informed about detainee abuse and how to complain about it.
 
greentoblue said:
Unfortunately the Soldiers themselves are now being dragged into this cluster foxtrot.  *Sigh*:

Not unfortunate at all, just proves to the naysyaers whom is on the side of common decency..............

20+ years in Corrections, many use of forces, and more than happy to be investigated so that my actions can speak for themselves.
 
We'll have to disagree.  First off, I see this whole episode as a politically motivated attempt to discredit and hound the government with the military as "collateral damage".  Second, the fact that five of six investigations proved that the allegations had no merit will mean nothing to the political parties, the broader public and the enemy (can we even say enemy anymore?).  The politicans and their self-styled allies will use these revelations as further ammunition to demand a public inquiry; the same cast of characters will use it to bemoan the contrast between our so-called "peacekeeping tradition" to our warfighting one now; and the enemy will quickly add it to their arsenal of Info Ops propaganda.  In short, this is a distraction that is taking away our focus from operations.  My  :2c:
 
greentoblue said:
We'll have to disagree.  First off, I see this whole episode as a politically motivated attempt to discredit and hound the government with the military as "collateral damage".  Second, the fact that five of six investigations proved that the allegations had no merit will mean nothing to the political parties, the broader public and the enemy (can we even say enemy anymore?).  The politicans and their self-styled allies will use these revelations as further ammunition to demand a public inquiry; the same cast of characters will use it to bemoan the contrast between our so-called "peacekeeping tradition" to our warfighting one now; and the enemy will quickly add it to their arsenal of Info Ops propaganda.  In short, this is a distraction that is taking away our focus from operations.  My  :2c:


You are correct that:

1. Part of this is "a politically motivated attempt to discredit and hound the government with the military as "collateral damage";"

2. "The fact that five of six investigations proved that the allegations had no merit will mean nothing to the political parties, the broader public and the enemy;" and

3.  "The politicans and their self-styled allies will use these revelations as further ammunition to demand a public inquiry; the same cast of characters will use it to bemoan the contrast between our so-called "peacekeeping tradition" to our warfighting one now; and the enemy will quickly add it to their arsenal of Info Ops propaganda."

But

It is a lamentable fact that a very few soldiers will break the rules and some detainees (and others) will be abused. When it is reported/suspected we must all hope that the chain of command will investigate and will release findings - good and bad - so that everyone can be assured that 99.9% of Canadians soldiers are doing the right things and doing things right (that's from a leadership vs management description by Warren Bennis) and the 0.01% who screw up are punished.

I think Bruce Monkhouse has the right take: he welcomes a review of his actions because he is  certain he stayed in bounds.

Yes, some people will exploit our good work and ignore our good intentions. No we should not stop doing the good work for the right reasons.
 
According to this just out today (PDF attached if link doesn't work), 12 probes of allegations of detainee mistreatment have been carried out between 2006 and now.  ALL allegations of mistreatment have been unfounded (with one probe still in progress on other issues).

Possible headline:  CF FINDS NO PROOF OF DETAINEE MISTREATMENT IN INCIDENT PROBES

And when will we see that headline?  Riiiiiiight...
 
...and pleasantly surprised to be wrong on this one....

"Detainee abuse claims unfounded: military police" (CBC.ca)
All allegations of mistreatment of Afghan prisoners by Canadian troops investigated so far have been unfounded, the Canadian Forces Military Police said Monday night.

In a release, the military police said troops "acted appropriately when interacting with the detainees." ....
 
Want to bet that the head of The Canadian Forces National Investigation Service (CFNIS) will be called before the Committee to explain themselves.
 
Stephen Harper defends Canadian Forces ...


Torture Issue Afghan Problem, Not Canadian: PM

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/torture-issue-afghan-problem-not-canadian-pm/article1409630/

(Reproduced in accordance with the Fair Dealing provision of the Copyright Act.)
Campbell Clark
Globe & Mail:  December 22, 2009
(BBM)

Allegations of detainee torture are about a problem in Afghanistan that is beyond Ottawa's control, Prime Minister Stephen Harper says. Mr. Harper and his cabinet have been taking a beating since a diplomat told a Parliamentary committee that the government ignored warnings that detainees captured by Canadian soldiers were likely tortured after they were handed over to local forces, but Mr. Harper insisted it's an issue for the Afghans to settle.

“The allegations are not being made – I hope – against Canadian soldiers,”
Mr. Harper said in a year-end interview with the French-language television network TVA. “… Our diplomats reformed the transfer system. We are speaking here of a problem among Afghans. It's not a problem between Canadians and Afghans. We're speaking of problems between the government of Afghanistan and the situation in Afghanistan. We are trying to do what's possible to improve that situation, but it's not in our control.”

Richard Colvin told the Special Committee on the Canadian Mission in Afghanistan last month that the government ignored his repeated warnings in 2006 and 2007. Since then, the government has insisted there was no proof of torture, and moved in May, 2007, to ensure that Canadian officials could monitor detainees in Afghan jails. But opposition politicians have called for a public inquiry into whether the government turned a blind eye to potential torture, insisting that under international law, Canada cannot transfer prisoners who might be tortured.

“Mr. Harper is flat wrong,” Liberal MP Bob Rae said, adding that the Geneva Conventions set out a greater legal responsibility for forces handing over detainees. “Canada cannot transfer prisoners if we think there's a prospect of their being tortured. Period.” Canada moved troops into the Kandahar province in southern Afghanistan in late 2005, and the government has taken the position that Taliban insurgents don't technically qualify for the protections of the Geneva Conventions, but Canadian soldiers and officials will treat them as though they did.

In the TVA interview, taped on Monday and released yesterday, Mr. Harper called changes in an agreement with Afghanistan's government in 2007 to allow monitoring of detainees a great success. “The system works very well,” he said. “It's not perfect. There are problems from time to time.”

On Tuesday, opposition politicians continued to press the issue, holding informal hearings of the committee because a Tory boycott meant an official meeting could not be held. But it appears the Conservatives sent a young staffer to record the proceedings, one who left hurriedly after stand-in Liberal chair Bryon Wilfert commented on the “long arm of the PMO.” One informal witness, Amnesty International lawyer Paul Champ, insisted that the revamped 2007 agreement on transferring detainees has not worked. “We do not believe the problem was fixed,” he said. “The risk of torture remains.”

The Canadian Forces have stopped transfers three times this year because of concerns about torture allegations, and Canadian officials have heard graphic accounts of torture, accompanied by corroborating physical marks, since they began monitoring detainees in 2007, he noted.
 
Post at The Torch:

"Torture in Afghanistan: The Liberals knew" redux
http://toyoufromfailinghands.blogspot.com/2009/12/torture-in-afghanistan-liberals-knew.html

Mark
Ottawa
 
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