detainees Afghanistan Canadian Forces

As we observed the other day, Canada's political opposition seems obsessively and counter-productively focused on the treatment of detainees captured by Canadian Forces on the battlefield and handed over to Afghan authorities - years ago, of course.

More commentary from analysts and Afghans confirms that while Canadians can't seem to stop talking about it, Afghans themselves have more important things to deal with, such as whether they will be abandoned and left to fight a civil war if international support is withdrawn after 2011. This excellent report by Adrian MacNair explains:

It turns out that Afghans themselves also don't seem to be particularly interested. Najia Haneefi, a founder of the Afghan Women Political Participation Committee in Kabul, who now lives in Ottawa, said that the obsession with the issue in some quarters of Ottawa and the Canadian media is misplaced. She told me she wishes that Canadians would instead pay more attention to the threat of a sellout of human rights by Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who is pursuing negotiations with senior Taliban leaders.

Zaman Sultani is the Kabul representative for the Canada-Afghanistan Solidarity Committee. He said that the people he has talked to have not brought up the detainee issue.

"I am not sure if people would care much, because they are still suffering from insecurity, road-side bombs, and suicide attacks from the Taliban," he writes via email from Kabul...

Surveys conducted in the past year by the BBC, Red Cross and the Asia Foundation consistently revealed that at least 70% of Afghans thought their country was heading in the right direction and would improve in 2010. Afghans owe that optimism almost entirely to the continued presence of international forces.