(The following article is from the October 1-15, 2007 issue of People's Voice, Canada's leading communist newspaper. Articles can be reprinted free if the source is credited. Subscription rates in Canada: $25/year, or $12 low income rate; for U.S. readers - $25 US per year; other overseas readers - $25 US or $35 CDN per year. Send to: People's Voice, c/o PV Business Manager, 133 Herkimer St. Unit 502, Hamilton, ON, L8P 2H3.)
People's Voice Commentary
The official arguments for Canada's mission in Afghanistan are phrased in glowing words about freedom, while headlines warn of "bloody chaos" when the mission ends. It all sounds so simple: our troops help Afghan girls go to school, but if we leave, darkness will descend and waves of terrorists will soon be slaughtering Canadians.
Even a minimal effort to understand the situation in Afghanistan brings to light a much more complex reality, one in which Canada's military creates new enemies every day while doing virtually nothing to improve the lives of the Afghan people. Grasping this truth, a majority of Canadians want our troops recalled home by the scheduled date of 2009 - or sooner.
To move public opinion on this issue, the big guns have been called in, from military generals to Don Cherry and other sports personalities who depict the war as a game, with the Canadian military on the side of the "good guys." Afghan President Hamid Karzai recently told journalists that "civil war" will break out if Canadian troops are withdrawn in 2009. Of course, Karzai has a personal stake in keeping NATO troops on hand, since the war is increasingly coming home to Kabul, where suicide bomb attacks are on the rise.
In service to the Bush Administration, PM Stephen Harper is desperate to maintain the mission. Trying to re-frame this debate during the Sept. 17 by-elections in Quebec, Harper jumped on the "veil voting" controversy, appealing to anti-immigrant sentiments. Sadly, the other parliamentary parties went along with this racist political game, allowing the Tories to avoid debating the war.
But despite these tactics, even pro-war observers say the mission is stalled. As Globe and Mail reporter Christie Blatchford wrote on Sept. 1, "Canadian soldiers here are trapped in a loop that has the fourth iteration of troops battling for the exactly the same ground their predecessors in southern Afghanistan fought to take."
Other reporters have pointed out that millions of aid dollars have disappeared while refugees are left to starve. The Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) spent $39 million last year in Kandahar district, where Canadian troops are stationed, and $100 million in all of Afghanistan. That's not much compared to Canada's $4 billion-plus military spending on the war, but it's not chicken feed. What are the results of this spending?
On Aug. 29, Norine MacDonald of the Senlis Council, an international think tank working in Afghanistan, said "We were not able to see any substantial impact of CIDA's work in Kandahar and, as a matter of fact, we saw many instances of the extreme suffering of the Afghan people."
Studying CIDA-funded projects, the Senlis Council found "an overcrowded and filthy hospital in Kandahar city that could provide few services to patients; refugee camps that had gone without food aid for 1 1/2 years; a construction project that employed child labour, and a displaced population struggling to survive."
The Senlis Council has been on the ground in Afghanistan for some time. In a 186-page report last winter, based on interviews with over 500 people in the south of the country, the Council found that coalition policies such as the bombing of villages, the poppy eradication program and the lack of school and hospital construction, are directly responsible for the rise of the Taliban insurgency.
For example, NATO carried out 2,000 bombing attacks in southern Afghanistan in 2006, killing an estimated 4,000 civilians. And while coalition forces bring their wounded soldiers to sophisticated army field hospitals, no medical care is given to wounded civilians, a violation of the Geneva Conventions on minimizing the suffering of war victims. Hospitals in the capitals of Kandahar and Helmand provinces remain "dilapidated, barren and filthy," and lack "basic war zone trauma treatment, medical diagnostic equipment, medicines, oxygen, and trained staff."
Many insurgents are recruited because of grinding poverty, or because of resentment bred by coalition actions. But instead of engaging in serious efforts to develop the economy and to build local infrastructure such as schools and hospitals, Canada is buying heavier tanks and other military hardware.
No wonder that Globe and Mail correspondent Doug Saunders reported last March 19 that "Afghan civilians are increasingly turning against Canadian troops and their country's government and toward support of the Taliban." Saunders was quoting from a massive survey of 17,000 Afghan men in the southeastern provinces, which found that 27 per cent now openly support the Taliban (probably understated because some respondents are wary of admitting support to a Westerner). When asked, "Are the international troops helping you personally," only 19 per cent answered yes, and 80 per cent said they worry about feeding their families.
This crisis has left two million Afghani refugees across the border in Pakistan, and another 900,000 in Iran (according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees), seeking shelter, safety and food. It's a humanitarian catastrophe ignored by the western mass media, which continues to focus almost exclusively on casualties inflicted on coalition forces.
One last trump card is played by the pro-war advocates: defending the equality of women. This "accomplishment," however, is highly over-stated.
Afghanistan's outspoken woman MP, Malalai Joya, faces constant death threats which make it impossible to live and work in her homeland. Her message to Americans during a recent speaking tour was that Afghanistan is still "chained in the fetters of the fundamentalist warlords." As Joya said, "The US government removed the ultra-reactionary and brutal regime of Taliban, but instead of relying on Afghan people, pushed us from the frying pan into the fire and selected its friends from among the most dirty and infamous criminals of the `Northern Alliance'..."
(Malalai Joya will speak to the October 27 anti-war rally organized by StopWar coalition in Vancouver.)
So what's the scorecard in this "game" of war? Thousands of Afghans, and hundreds of NATO troops (including 70 Canadians to date) have died. Aid projects are totally inadequate. Three million Afghans are refugees. One group of reactionary warlords has been replaced by "pro-Western" warlords. Gains for women's equality are minimal at best.
Yet Stephen Harpers's minority Conservative government refuses to yield to public opinion and set a date for the return of Canadian troops. A big turnout to anti-war rallies on October 27 across the country can send a strong message to Harper and all the parties in Parliament: get Canada out of this U.S.-made quagmire, the sooner the better!