The Canadian military is being criticized by a UN investigator for a lack of accountability for civilian deaths in Afghanistan, where more than 200 civilians have been killed by international military forces this year, a recent report suggests.

The United Nation’s special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, Philip Alston, told CBC News that senior Canadian officers, among those from other NATO countries operating in Afghanistan, have refused to provide him with information about civilian casualties when asked.
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The CBC’s Brian Stewart reported Thursday that the raids, dubbed “hunt and kill” operations by American soldiers, are conducted by Canadian JTF-2 commandoes, as well as British and American soldiers. The raids are so secret that some Afghans believe the attacks are really execution missions, Stewart said.

“To the extent that those sort of raids go on fairly systematically, they set up a situation in which people are likely to be shot to death,” Alston said.
Lack of accountability
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“First of all, there are international law obligations to accountability and transparency. Second, we’re pushing the Afghans very much to be accountable on these things. And thirdly, what I said before is we have a self-interest in a sense, as far as the West is concerned, in making sure that we hold ourselves to much higher standards,” he said.

"As they say in the British Army, you don't need the brains of an archbishop to work out what the generals' words mean. The only logical interpretation would seem to be that the Canadian Joint Task Force is carrying out a campaign of targeted killings in Afghanistan, assassinating Taliban officers in their homes or elsewhere.

If this is the case, it is a policy which has gone unnoticed by the media. Yet such methods are legally and ethically controversial, and their effectiveness is unproven."

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Originally posted by redflag:

This has been on the radar for a few weeks now.

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Originally posted by contrarianna:

Thanks, I missed that, I guess the Amnesty International report will be the next (brief) occurrence of the story in the Canadian press.

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The sad thing is that this has likely been going on since the opening shots were fired in Afghanistan. But as is the case with all bureaucratic organizations, it takes a bit of time for the investigations to catch up with the allegations.

In any event, I'm not going to go to the bank that this issue will ever make it's way into mainstream Canadian consciousness. It should, but the fact that it wasn't a big explosion when it first came out just makes me think that we were never supposed to know about this in the first place and that it's likely going to be swept under the rug.

[ 29 June 2008: Message edited by: redflag ]