Canada Stops Prisoner Transfers ... Sort of

Over the last several months, there has been quite a bit of concern expressed over the treatment of prisoners captured by Canadian soldiers after they hand them over to the Afghanistan government.

As recently as this fall, the government was claiming that there was "no credible evidence" to support those claims. (What constitutes "credible" in circumstances such as what we find in Afghanistan is a good question in itself)

However, it seems that after the reports about an inmate being tortured, the transfers of detainees stopped.

Of course, the Harper Cons also want to make it clear that this is only temporary:

"Canada will resume transferring detainees when it believes it can do so in accordance with its international legal obligations," it read.

Wait a second here. Let's be honest with ourselves - if we are handing over prisoners and we believe that there is a probability that they will be tortured, then we are no better than the torturers themselves. Plausibly deniable is not acceptable here.

Granted, the other side of the prisoners issue then becomes what to do with people captured in battlefield situations. If Canada starts setting up prison camps of some sort, we become the de facto jailers ourselves, and that is potentially even more dangerous because then the "alien occupiers" become the jailers - a perception that would further make our troops the focus of violence.

If Canada is going to wind up being "complicit" in handing over prisoners to a regime that is going to mistreat them, then we will wear the price of doing so. This is one of many ethical and moral dilemmas that surround our involvement in Afghanistan. (Clearly the popular "Taliban bad, Karzai good" line in media is deeply flawed)

If it sounds like I am holding up an almost "unreasonable", or even impossible, standard here, it is to underscore the deficiencies in the Manley Whitewash document released earlier this week. Afghanistan is not a simple situation, and we do ourselves no favours to ignore the moral and ethical considerations of being active participants in what could arguably be seen as a civil war. I, for one, am less than thrilled with the prospect of having Canada's name associated with propping up a government that does engage in torture in its prisons, or for that matter, with Canada's role as part of what is arguably an army of occupation.