The Last Exile

There is something ubiquitous about national security now that the Conservatives are running the show. In fact, national security now seems to be have been expanded to include anything which might show the Conservative government in a bad light rather than a threat to the security to the citizens of Canada. Toronto Star

OTTAWA–A former governor of Kandahar who is accused of personally torturing Afghans might have been removed from office as far back as 2006 if Canadian officials hadn’t defended him, according to diplomatic memos that have never been made public by the Canadian government.

The revelation about Asadullah Khalid, who stayed on as governor two years after concerns about his reputation were raised, opens up another embarrassing avenue of inquiry over Afghan prisoner abuse.

The new allegation is contained in a two-year-old report by Richard Colvin, the whistleblower foreign service officer. Colvin’s disgust that Canada would support a “known human-rights abuser” was palpable and formed the most incendiary paragraphs of the report. References to Khalid were entirely blacked out in the version of the report publicly released to the Military Police Complaints Commission.

But an uncensored version of the end-of-mission report was shown for the first time to The Canadian Press on a confidential basis. “As far as I know, Canada has never suggested to (President Hamid) Karzai that Asadullah be replaced,” says the memo, dated Oct. 24, 2007. “In the one meeting where the subject was discussed, in July 2006, it was the president who raised the issue; Canada defended the governor, thereby ensuring his continued tenure.” The uncensored report sheds further light on Colvin’s testimony last month before a special House of Commons committee, where he stated the governor was considered a “bad actor” on human rights.

So many of my ‘Torie’ compatriots have taken to parroting the line Afghanistan is a tough neighbourhood and we should all just buck up and shut up but what they appear to forget – is the peril and cost of letting evil triumph while good men do nothing.

The warnings about Khalid – whose brazen decision to display the battered dead body of a revered Taliban leader to local Afghan media, before refusing to return it for a proper burial, triggered a massive bombing campaign in Kandahar city in the spring of 2007 – were heard loud and clear in Ottawa.

The implications of the spring bombing campaign in the spring of 2007 triggered by Khalid’s barbarity should all make us pause given that Canadian soldiers were operating in and around Kandahar in the spring of 2007. In the un-redacted memos; there is no safe place for the Torie government to hide.

Concerns were serious enough to be raised at the highest levels of the federal government, foreign affairs and defence sources said. A meeting was called in December 2006 in Ottawa to discuss the matter. Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s national security adviser, Margaret Bloodworth, attended the session, sources have said. “There was no policy for dealing with something like this, something sensitive,” one source said. “Nobody quite knew what to do.”

Yet throughout 2007 the warnings kept getting louder. A foreign affairs source said a memo sent by Colvin in the winter of 2007 was searing in its criticism and indicated the governor was corrupt, dangerous, self-serving and deeply unpopular with Afghans. One Afghan government official apparently pleaded with Canadian diplomats and police officers for Khalid’s removal during a meeting in February 2007, said the source, who has seen a document outlining the meeting. The official made a direct request to Canada to intervene with the president, the source said. Two months later, a prisoner handed over to Afghan authorities by Canadian Forces alleged Khalid had personally tortured him in a facility next to his palace, according to a memo from Colvin’s colleague, Gavin Buchan, on April 25.

Never have I lived through a Canadian government so unready and unable to meet the challenges of governing.