A Valid Question......

...but war has changed since the days of Stalig 17, Hogan's Heros, etc.

Where's Red Cross in Afghanistan?

By PETER WORTHINGTON

It's an issue that won't go away, especially now that the opposition tastes blood.

Like a dog with a bone, Parliament and predictable types among the public agitate the question of prisoners captured by Canadian troops in Afghanistan being turned over to Afghan authorities who are accused of torturing them.

Canada's Military Police Complaints Commission also probes the question, which stem from a report by Richard Colvin who was a senior diplomat in Afghanistan and now works out of our embassy in Washington.

Rightly or wrongly, the government is reeling -- running for cover.

DISCREDIT

For starters, the charges date back to 2006 when Canadian troops were rounding up more suspect Taliban types than other NATO members. The government seeks to discredit Colvin's report that prisoners were abused by Afghans -- tough to do, since Colvin reeks with honesty, and we all know most Afghans are not gentle people.

That said, it's difficult seeing prisoners as a Canadian responsibility once we turn them over to the Afghan mercies. So long as our guys don't indulge in abusive treatment, we don't have much control over what Afghans do to each other -- and have been doing for eons.

Nor should we put ourselves in a position where we dictate cultural behaviour.

Former defence minister Gordon O'Connor, a retired brigadier-general, is on record saying the Red Cross' role is to check the welfare of prisoners. He has a point.

Colvin says the Red Cross had limited access to prisoners, and that when they tried to contact Canadians about abuses, the Canadians wouldn't talk to them. So nothing was done.

That has the flavour of a cop out, if you ask me.

While the Red Cross can be pretty political and selective at times, it also has enormous prestige and influence. During the Ethiopian famine of the 1980s, when Eritrea was fighting the Soviet-backed Ethiopian army for its independence, the Red Cross refused to report that Eritreans treated prisoners decently, because that would jeopardize their relationship with Ethiopia.

In the Angolan civil war, UNITA repeatedly complained Red Cross vehicles were transporting ammunition and arms for the Marxist MPLA forces.

In both these cases, the world wasn't interested and the Red Cross favoured one side over the other. As for Canadians refusing to hear Red Cross complaints about tortured Taliban prisoners, all the Red Cross had to do to focus attention on a critical situation was to convene a press conference and spell out Canadian stonewalling. An uproar would follow. But the Red Cross said nothing.

A role of the Red Cross in war is to be an independent witness of the treatment of prisoners. Difficulties merely underline its importance.

APPROPRIATE TREATMENT

Instead, the Canadian government reminded its army not to mistreat prisoners and told it to persuade the Afghans to show what we consider appropriate treatment towards those we capture who are trying to kill us.

I've said it before, and it's worth saying again: It's doubtful if most Canadians give much of a damn about what Afghans do to Taliban caught while trying to shoot or blow up our soldiers.

We don't want our soldiers committing atrocities, but we don't run Afghan prisons, or control what goes on there. This may collide with Richard Colvin's sensitivities, but that's Afghanistan and that's the way it is.