Hillier et al on 'The Job'
by C. L. Cook
You may have heard United States of America president Barack Obama declare his determination to command his military stay on in Afghanistan to "finish the job." Part of that determination is widely rumoured to be an increase of between 35 and 40 thousand American soldiers devoted to that broken country.

 

 

Today, the president announced he would reveal his Afghanistan plans in a national media address scheduled for this coming Tuesday, December 1st. What that speech will certainly not contain is a definition of either what "the job" entails, or the wages it exacts from the people at the working end of American might.

In Canada, "The Job" is called "The Mission," a sobriquet for the awful Afghanistan quagmire also used by NATO allies Britain and Australia, and sometimes used too by American propagandists for its continuation.

 

Michel Gauthier, the now retired general in charge of the overseas deployment of Canadian Forces (CF) to Afghanistan and elsewhere during the period Afghani detainees were routinely turned over by them to be tortured by Afghanistan's police and army, qualified the official descriptor, telling the Special Committee on the Canadian Mission in Afghanistan investigating those charges, (made by a Canadian official stationed there at the time) as a "complex" mission. Two of Gauthier's CF general officer colleagues, Canada's former number one military man, the past chief of defence, General Rick Hillier (ret'd), and Major-General David Fraser appeared alongside him today to field questions about their service and to explain what they knew of claims of torture and when they knew it.

Whether "complex" or not, what Canada's military brass, and America's political elite, is not willing to do is explain in simple language why, after eight years of military occupation and a counter insurgency war,  Afghanistan is no closer to the peaceful and prosperous democracy so long promised. Nor will they, the generals, presidents, prime ministers and their agents, those individuals ultimately responsible for the random deaths of Afghanis killed by drones and jets dropping bombs and missiles on their towns and villages, own up to their legal responsibility for the welfare of those Afghanis taken prisoner.

The three generals today appeared to be enjoying their time before the Special Committee, often joking with their inquisitors with an air of bonhommie that lacked only winks and nudges. They as one complained of the complexities of 'The Mission,' and the great difficulties endured by the "sons and daughters of the nation" over there. They to a man extolled the courage, professionalism, and restraint shown by the soldiery when dealing with those captured, who only moments before were firing on them, or setting off explosions that had, in some cases, killed their comrades. And, they all denied, denied, denied any specific knowledge of torture practiced on the captives they turned over to Afghani authorities.

Rick Hillier, the former media face of the transformation of Canada's military from blue helmeted "peacekeepers" familiar for many years patrolling demilitarized zones separating enemies in Cyprus, Bosnia, and other places where old prejudices made peace without help impossible, to American-styled warfighters, employing the same so-called "rules of engagement" seen in places like Iraq, and Occupied Palestine.

 

The duties of Canadian soldiers under this new understanding of what Barack Obama might call their job description is something rarely mentioned in polite circles, but entails two basic elements: first; patrol in hopes of drawing the enemy into the open; and second, conduct raids of homes, taking prisoners for interrogation. Pretty simple; where it gets complex is in deciding who will do the dirty work of extracting information from those suspected.

When asked by Special Committee member, NDP MP Paul Dewar if he was aware of Red Cross, Amnesty International, and the Dutch military's reports of torture in Afghanistan's prisons, Hillier disingenuously reframed the question, asking "was he aware of "sky is falling" reports of abuse of prisoners?" answering his rhetoric, "Yes."

 

Yes, he was aware of reports of the torture and abuse of prisoners Canadian soldiers turned over to Afghani officials, and yet did nothing to stop that practice. Likewise his fellow generals were aware, yet denied responsibility for their failures to uphold the Geneva Conventions on prisoners of war treatment.

The statements of the generals decried the testimony of the man at the centre of the controversy, the former political director of the provincial reconstruction team in Kandahar City, Richard Colvin. Colvin told the Special Committee he had filed more than a dozen reports, reports he says he sent to all the pertinent military and civilian department heads responsible.

 

His reports and e-mails to the generals and their bosses in Ottawa remain secreted by the government under the ostensible threat their publication poses to "national security." So, though the Special Committee was not permitted to view any documents on this case, the generals, who have seen them, alluded to them as holding nothing of special interest, saying they contradicted the testimony of Richard Colvin, the man who generated them and testified to the Military Police Complaints Commission earlier in the month, and to the Special Committee itself earlier this week about his concerns and why he authoring them.

Tomorrow, one of the men Colvin sent those reports to, former deputy minister for Afghanistan, David Mulroney (no relation to former prime minister Brian Mulroney) will try to insert himself into the Special Committee docket. He's doing this it seems to beat the parliament's call for the release of Colvin's e-mails and the other documents the government insists it will not release to any but its allies in what increasingly appears to be a hijacking of the process and whitewash of the facts.