Taliban soldiers stand guard as inmates (background) imprisoned for drug use wait to be released from Kandahar's Sarpoza prison on Sept. 22, 2022.JAVED TANVEER/AFP/Getty Images
Once the pride of Canada’s Afghanistan mission, Kandahar’s Sarpoza prison has a long history of good intentions followed by bad outcomes, the most recent resulting in its deterioration into a crumbling, squalid facility that exposes prisoners to dangerous health risks.
The reconstruction of the prison, used to hold Taliban insurgents until the collapse of the Afghan government last August, was seen as a model example of Canadian efforts to revamp law enforcement in the war-torn country. Canada’s mission in Afghanistan ran from 2001 to 2014.
After reports that suspected militants captured by Canadian troops were being tortured by Afghans in the prison between 2006 and 2008, Canada’s Provincial Reconstruction Team mission in Kandahar stepped in to manage the prison and upgrade the facility. Dozens of Correctional Services Canada staff provided training and oversight.
Ottawa invested $5-million in improving the notorious prison’s security and management after Taliban insurgents orchestrated an attack that led to the escape of 1,200 prisoners in June, 2008. New septic systems and solar-powered lighting were also installed to improve inmates’ living conditions.
Today, raw sewage runs into the drinking water, plaguing prisoners with diarrhea and vomiting, one of the prison’s doctors, Gulam Sawak, told The Globe and Mail.
Infestations of fleas, parasitic mites and mosquitoes are causing an epidemic of skin diseases, he added. “Prisoners also have AIDS, syphilis, hepatitis B, hepatitis C, scabies, tuberculosis and mental-health conditions that we are unable to treat.”
Currently, the Taliban use Sarpoza mostly to house Afghans arrested in their crackdown against opium farmers, as well as drug addicts like Fahima – a 30-year-old mother who has been locked up with her five children, all under the age of 10.
Arrested because she bought opium to feed her addiction, Fahima appeared frail as she spoke to The Globe and Mail about her family’s life there.
“I am afraid for my children in this place,” she said via WhatsApp.
Fahima suffered withdrawal symptoms when she arrived in May, 2022, according to Dr. Sawak. He says the prison’s hospital is not equipped to treat Fahima and the many addicts like her who are imprisoned.
Prison director Movlavi Hussaini told The Globe that he does not have enough electricity, sanitation, staff and medicine. “Every day, I have meetings to try and get medicines and supplies for the hospital,” he said. But he always comes up short of what he needs to protect prisoners’ health.
Canadian armed forces repaired and fortified Sarpoza after two separate insurgent attacks in 2011 that killed dozens of prison guards and set free almost 2,000 prisoners. Ottawa turned over the operation of Sarpoza to American forces after ending its combat mission in Afghanistan in 2011 and focusing on training Afghan security forces in Kabul until 2014.
“The Canadians were a great support,” said Tooryalai Wesa, the governor of Kandahar Province from 2008 to 2014. “It is a pity they didn’t stay longer.”
Afghan-Canadian Tooryalai Wesa, 58, adjusts his ceremonial turban as he is sworn in as the governor of Afghanistan's Kandahar Province on Dec. 20, 2008, at a ceremony in Kandahar City.Steven Rennie/The Canadian Press
A former official of Sarpoza prison, who had been trained by Canadians, said that Canada’s work at the penitentiary was highly valued, and blamed U.S. and Afghan leaders for its decline.
He said Canada had trained many people and helped the local government to stand on its feet. The Globe is not identifying the official’s name because they fear persecution for speaking to media.
By 2018, the former official said, there was widespread corruption at Sarpoza. Half of the prison’s funding was being siphoned away and the facility was crammed with 3,400 prisoners, although it had been built for just 1,900.
Then, after the Afghan government’s collapse in August, 2021, the Taliban attacked the prison. Thirty-five police officers guarding the facility were killed and more than 1,000 prisoners were set free.
Many Canadians risked their lives to secure and upgrade the prison, said Ben Rowswell, who was the top official at Canada’s Provincial Reconstruction Team for Kandahar from 2008 to 2010. Its state today is “so sad to hear.”
Sarpoza prison had been one of best functioning parts of the Canadian mission in Kandahar, he said.
Prisoners look out from their cells in the maximum security wing at Sarposa prison in 2010. Canada helped to fund and oversee renovations at the prison.Bill Graveland/The Canadian Press
Military analysts say the prison’s decline offers lessons for Canada as to where it should focus its investments to help rebuild Ukraine.
But there’s little agreement about the best approach for Canadian military investments going forward.
Christian Leuprecht, a professor at Canada’s Royal Military College in Kingston, said Sarpoza prison “is an important laboratory for us to ask ourselves some hard questions” about the types of investments that Canada should make into helping rebuild Ukraine.
“Canadians have completely unrealistic expectations,” Dr. Leuprecht said. “We didn’t go to Afghanistan to build better prisons.”
He said the experience suggests that Canada should consider international missions that are limited in scope and more closely align with the country’s security interest, rather than “utopian pipe dreams” that we can create “flourishing, 21st-century democracies” around the world.
But others say that support for prisons is part of state institution building and is necessary to establish lasting peace after war. When wars end or fail, state legitimacy depends on well-run services such as policing, Mr. Rowswell said.
Canada’s training of Ukrainian security forces has already helped enable some of the Ukrainian army’s successes, said retired major-general Denis Thompson, who was the NATO military commander in Kandahar in 2008 and 2009.
Operation Unifier was launched in 2015 after Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea a year earlier and ran until mid-February, shortly before Moscow launched a full-scale invasion. The Canadian operation trained 30,000 junior leaders who then helped lead Ukraine’s unexpected achievements in the war on the ground.
“They changed the military culture from one that is top-down driven, like the Russians, to one that is anchored in initiative,” he said.
Mr. Thompson said that Canada faced a more difficult cultural-change challenge in Kandahar than it does in Ukraine.
“We’ve learned those lessons,” he said, “that we’ve got to get to the institutional leadership.”
Former Conservative cabinet minister Stockwell Day, who visited Sarpoza twice while he was minister of public safety from 2006 to 2008, agrees that Canadian security training has a much higher likelihood of success in Ukraine.
“In Afghanistan, they were fierce fighters,” he said. But training “was starting much further down the track than in Ukraine.”
Even before NATO’s defeat in Afghanistan in 2021, Sarpoza was falling apart. And for Fahima and her children, the suffering is endless.
“Life is hard in this prison,” Fahima said.
“I hope you can help.”