Afghani NDS made it impossible to monitor detainees

This article was last updated on April 16, 2022

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Cory Anderson, a diplomat with three years’ experience on the Afghan file, told a Commons committee today the May, 2007, revamp of Canada’s detainee transfer agreement with Afghanistan was instrumental in improving the ability to track and monitor detainees transferred by Canadian soldiers.

But he went on to criticize the military for repeatedly declining to use close connections to Afghanistan’s intelligence service to make it easier for diplomats to conduct inspections that ensure transferred prisoners aren’t tortured.

Mr. Anderson said the revamped May, 2007, agreement resulted in a two-tier system that left Foreign Affairs to fend for itself in monitoring.

“The Canadian Forces enjoy an intimate and comprehensive relationship with [Afghanistan’s] National Directorate of Security on a daily basis related to all aspects of military operations and intelligence gathering, but refuse to wade into the one facet of that relationship where adherence to our international obligations is most at risk.”

Mr. Anderson said it’s very hard to trust the National Directorate of Security (NDS), the Afghan intelligence agency to which Canadian soldiers transfer detainees. He said this is what helped stall efforts to fix the transfer agreement in 2007.

He said the Forces’ refusal to help with monitoring NDS detention of prisoners forces “civilian departments, namely [Foreign Affairs] to implement an extensive monitoring regime where the military’s only role is that of providing transportation to and from the facility, along with the general security that [this] entails.”

The diplomat decried “endemic and systemic duplicity within the NDS, especially at the provincial level, that exists to this day, and renders it virtually impossible to have an open and transparent relationship with their officials on the ground in Kandahar.”

Mr. Anderson said this places “the monumental task of monitoring within an inherently secretive institution such as the NDS on a handful of Canadian civilians” who are “viewed with suspicion and lacked the comprehensive relationship with NDS officials that transcends detainee management and oversight.”

Mr. Anderson said in the last three years the increasing seniority of Canadian officials posted to Afghanistan – and the larger number – has made monitoring easier but added that significant problems remain when it comes to monitoring detainees transferred the Afghan intelligence service.

“We have never fully nor adequately managed to address the inherent shortcomings of that institution as a viable partner working alongside our officials on a matter of this import.”

The diplomat said even before detainee monitoring was improved in 2007, the Forces refused to help. He criticized the fact former chief of the defence staff Rick Hillier signed and endorsed the original 2005 transfer agreement but “absolved” the Canadian Forces “of any direct responsibility for post-transfer follow-up or monitoring.

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