Putting an end to torture

Canada and other countries that have joined the fight against Daesh in Iraq and Syria did not go to war simply to see one gang of brutal thugs replaced by another. Our goal cannot be just to bolster one side in an endless sectarian conflict.

Yet that is the disturbing prospect raised by the abuse, torture and outright murder carried out by special forces under the command of the Iraqi government and documented at length in the Star and ABC News.

The physical damage wrought on human bodies is bad enough — broken bones, crushed organs, even death. On moral grounds alone, these horrifying actions must be condemned.

But even aside from that, this kind of flagrant violation of the norms of war must be opposed on more pragmatic grounds as well. By turning the battle against Daesh (a.k.a. ISIS or ISIL) into a campaign of revenge against Sunni civilians, the Iraqi government forces are undermining the justification for the fight.

Just as seriously, they are making it even harder to imagine that the country’s religious factions can ever find a way to co-exist in peace. They are fuelling a tragic vision of war without end.

For Canada, which has been a member of the military coalition against Daesh since 2014, the revelations about systematic abuse carried out by our ostensible ally raises a host of troubling questions.

There is no evidence that Canadian forces had any knowledge of what Iraqi photojournalist Ali Arkady has documented in photographs and video. The abuse was carried out between October and December of last year by soldiers belonging to the Emergency Response Division (ERD), a special forces unit under the authority of Iraq’s Interior Ministry. And a spokesperson for the Canadian troops operating in Iraq told the Star that they have had no “direct interaction” with the ERD.

Nonetheless, Canada and other members of the anti-Daesh coalition are inevitably tainted by association when soldiers on “our side” of the conflict act in such an unjustifiable manner. It turns us, even unwittingly and unwillingly, into allies of torturers and murderers.

This is not what Canadians signed up for when the Harper government joined up for the fight against the brutes of Daesh, and the Trudeau government continued that commitment.

Canada, along with the United States and other coalition members, must push back strongly with the Iraqi government to bring its forces, including paramilitaries and special units fighting in collaboration with its regular soldiers, under control.

This will be difficult. Abuse by Iraqi forces fighting Daesh has been well documented since at least last year, when Amnesty International released a detailed report on the issue.

The report concluded that government troops had “compounded the suffering of civilians by committing war crimes and other serious human rights violations” in their successful battle to reclaim territory from Daesh. It found that Iraqi forces “routinely torture or otherwise ill-treat detainees with impunity.”

Iraq’s prime minister, Haider al-Abadi, even set up a committee last June to investigate crimes committed by his forces during the battle to retake the city of Fallujah from occupation by Daesh. But little came of that, and Amnesty reports that it just emboldened Iraqi militias to “continue acting above the law, without any fear of consequences.” In other words, it may have made the situation even worse.

Amnesty recommended at the time that the U.S., Canada and others should make their continued support for Iraqi authorities contingent on their stopping abuse, reining in the paramilitaries and preventing revenge attacks against Sunni civilians.

The incidents documented by Arkady make it even more urgent that Canada and its allies step up and do all they can to make sure such atrocities come to an end.

For Canada, revelations about systematic abuse carried out by our ostensible ally in Iraq raises a host of troubling questions