An Afghan ghost of Abu Ghraib?

Rosie DiManno of the Toronto Star repeats her theory about the origins of the Afghan detainee mess:

Disdain for U.S. led to Afghan torture fiasco

Perhaps convenient amnesia has set in. But few of those clawing at their faces today in angst and shame over who-knew-what-when-generated hysteria with regard to mistreatment of Afghan detainees have paused to recall how this mess originated.

It's because Canada picked Afghans over Americans as front-line allies.

This was not done out of respect for Afghan sovereignty – their right to assume custody of prisoners captured on their own soil. Damn well known from the start was the lay of the land in a war-ravaged country and medieval society: jails of unimaginable wretchedness, guards desensitized to violence and cruelty who'd never heard of the Geneva Conventions and would double over in laughter if informed of its contents, no justice system to speak of, and the overwhelming power exerted by the feared National Directorate of Security whose torturer-in-chief, while denying any physical abuse of detainees, once told the Star that "interrogation is not negotiation, it's not chatting over coffee."

It was a disastrous decision and, despite probing repeatedly at it over several years, I've never been able to ascertain, indisputably, who was to blame as primary architect of the policy, nor why it was thus constructed...

The original agreement was crafted against the miserable backdrop of Abu Ghraib, a scandal of shocking proportions that had exploded in the U.S. media a year previous. Given the toxic view of American forces – no matter that the horrific mistreatment of Iraqi detainees was, at least in terms of supporting evidence, limited to specific rogue units in one notorious facility – it was clearly decided, by who knows whom, Canada could not put detainees in such soiled hands, despite the U.S. being this country's closest nation-friend.

Someone bought into the dubious premise that the entire American military was not to be trusted and that Afghan wardens, Afghan guards, Afghan officials, were preferable partners in the disposition of detainees, although the only remotely up-to-Western-par prison facility was at the American base in Bagram.

Canada did not have the resources to build its own detention facility in Kandahar. And, even if such a building could have been constructed, there was no way to staff it with our own rights-conscious people. If such a prison had ever been erected, it would still have been placed in Afghan hands for management because that has been, throughout, the Canadian/ISAF mantra – Afghan-led everything...

This is the one note that rings untrue in the whistle-blowing memos distributed by diplomat Richard Colvin — a contention that the insurgency would gain impetus because Afghans were outraged by the torture of the detainees. While it certainly has been used as a recruiting tool by the Taliban and Al Qaeda, few Afghans beyond the families of those incarcerated – often without legitimate cause, since so many were subsequently released – have much pity for Taliban rank-and-file. They are too busy simply trying to survive poverty and chronic violence.

So let's be clear: This isn't about Afghans, it's about us – what we deem the standards of conduct should be, even in a lawless, chaotic hellhole like Afghanistan.

Colvin has done nothing to deserve the character assassination unleashed last week by Prime Minister Stephen Harper's pitbulls. He appears to have tried to fulfill diplomatic responsibility with integrity. But he is colossally naive if truly believing the mission's merits were contaminated by the detainee sidebar...

Ms DiManno in February 2008:

Telling it like it is