OTTAWA - Torture is just part of the grinding conditions faced daily in Afghanistan's "tribal culture," suggests Prime Minister Stephen Harper's Mideast adviser.
Wajid Khan says he doesn't support that kind of abuse, but life isn't easy in the impoverished country torn apart by almost 30 years of war. "Keep in mind it is Afghanistan we're talking about," he said Wednesday in a brief interview.
"Every day people that are living over there are living in substandard conditions."
The Conservative government is on the defensive amid reports that dozens of Afghan detainees handed over by Canadian troops were allegedly tortured by Afghan interrogators.
Khan says at least some of those prisoners might have been shot on the spot had they been detained by other parties instead of Canadian soldiers.
"They might have saved their lives, because had the other parties found them first, they would've probably shot them. These things happen in those tribal cultures.
"But I'm not supporting it. There should be no torture. It is not acceptable, and the government is doing as much as (it) can."
Defence Minister Gordon O'Connor is under increasing pressure to resign after misleading MPs about the government's ability to ensure detainees aren't abused in Afghan custody.
Published reports have chronicled disturbing allegations from Afghans who say they were whipped with electric cables and beaten by Afghan interrogators before being released.
Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day told an international counter-terrorism conference Tuesday that Canada is right to be concerned about human rights.
Still, he added, humane treatment of prisoners is "a radical thought for a lot of people in that part of the world.
"We're saying to them that these people we're bringing you to put in jail, yes, these people have no compunction about machine-gunning, mowing down little children. They have no compunction about decapitating or hanging elderly women. They have no compunction about the vicious forms of torture you can imagine on innocent people. Now we've captured them ... and we're asking you to treat them humanely."
Human rights advocates in Canada point out that Canadian troops could be accused of war crimes if the detainees they hand over to Afghan authorities are later tortured.
A published report Wednesday suggests that the federal government was well aware of such abuse. But it deliberately censored such warnings from Canadian diplomats in Kabul in documents released to the media.
