07) LEAVING A MESS IN AFGHANISTAN

People's Voice Editorial

      For years, Canadians have been bombarded with propaganda about the humanitarian accomplishments of our military mission in Afghanistan. But somehow, we don't expect Christy Blatchford to join the troops for a follow-up report on the mess Canada leaves behind. That tougher job has been left to journalists who understand that their job is to report news, not to lick Stephen Harper's expensive footwear.

     As the New Year begins, we recall one genuine expose of the grim realities, as reported recently by the Toronto Star's Paul Watson. Writing from Baqi Tanah just across the Pakistan border, Watson reminds readers that Canada hoped to win the hearts and minds of local villagers by building a new school just two years ago. Village elder Haji Abdul Raziq named the school after himself and took credit for the project. Now the school is falling apart because Canada did not provide enough money for maintenance: "the concrete walls are cracked and crumbling around the flimsy wooden door frames... There isn't a stick of furniture in any of the classrooms, and a single, metal‑framed blackboard sits propped against the front wall, the rough concrete floor covered in a layer of dirt that blows in through cracked windows."

     As Watson writes, Afghanistan was Canada's largest recipient of development aid until Ottawa sharply cut back funding last year. Not only schools and clinics are affected. He points to the Dahla Dam and irrigation system, which still doesn't supply enough water to desert farms crucial to Kandahar's economy. These and other "signature projects" were built to score media points, not to provide long-term benefits to Afghanistan's impoverished rural areas.

     Over the past decade, taxpayers have wasted over $20 billion to wage war in Afghanistan, and nearly $2 billion on such "aid" scams. Shameful? That doesn't begin to describe the nauseating truth about Canada's murderous role in the Afghan debacle.

(The above article is from the January 1-31, 2013, issue of People's Voice, Canada's leading communist newspaper. Articles can be reprinted free if the source is credited. Subscription rates in Canada: $30/year, or $15 low income rate; for U.S. readers - $45 US per year; other overseas readers - $45 US or $50 CDN per year. Send to People's Voice, c/o PV Business Manager, 706 Clark Drive, Vancouver, BC, V5L 3J1.)