http://www.peak.sfu.ca/the-peak/2006-1/issue13/fe-afghan.html

The Peak

 

Afghanistan in context

 

Alex Hemingway

 

On December 22, 1979, Soviet forces began to enter Afghanistan. In the decade of war and occupation that followed, over 15,000 Soviet troops and one million mujahideen fighters and Afghan civilians would be killed. Yet, it was the Islamic fundamentalist mujahideen, heavily backed by the West, who would ultimately prevail. By 1992, three years after the final withdrawal of its Soviet backers, the government of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan fell.

 

An arduous civil war began, fought between rival warlords of the former mujahideen. The civil war was brutal and the warlords would become known for their rapes, purges, summary executions, and repression of women, among other crimes, condemned worldwide. By

1996, however, the tide had turned against the warlords as another fundamentalist group, the Taliban, began its rise to power, taking control of the national capital of Kabul.

 

The ruling warlords were so cruel and violent that most Afghans welcomed their defeat at the hands of the Taliban, who were credited with bringing some semblance of stability and security to Afghanistan, as well as improving the economy, which had been crippled by widespread payoffs demanded from businesses by the warlords.

 

While warlords continued to control many parts of the country, by

2001 most of Afghanistan was under Taliban rule. Yet, while the Taliban were swept into power amid widespread disgust with the vicious crimes of their predecessors, they too became known as repressive and brutal. In recent years, they became notorious in the West for their repression of women and authoritarian rule.

 

Afghanistan after 9/11

 

On September 11, 2001, 19 hijackers (15 Saudi Arabians, two Emirati, one Egyptian, and one Lebanese - no Afghans) carried out the infamous terrorist attacks in the United States that killed nearly 3,000 people.

 

Following the attacks, focus turned onto the alleged mastermind of the attacks, Osama bin Laden, who was based in Afghanistan. Amid calls for calm by victims' families and a mourning American public, government rumblings began about possible military attacks against Afghanistan. Aid agencies and the United Nations warned that the threat of bombing would put nearly 2.5 million Afghans at risk of starvation, but the U.S. contended that military force might be necessary to capture those behind the 9/11 attacks.

 

At the time, British Prime Minister Tony Blair asserted that "there is no alternative to a military attack unless the Taliban regime to what they have so far obviously failed to do and yield up bin Laden." However, though they were largely ignored in the West, the Taliban had stated explicitly through their information minister, Qudrutullah Jamal, that, "anyone who is responsible for this act, Osama or not, we will not side with him." Speaking of bin Laden, they agreed to "give him up," on the condition that they be shown evidence of his involvement. The White House rejected this proposal out of hand, promising there would be "no negotiations, no discussions" with the Taliban.

 

In fact, there had previously been negotiations, well before the September

11, 2001 attacks, with the Taliban having offered to extradite bin Laden to a neutral third country. In addition, following 9/11, as Britain's Telegraph reported on October 4, 2001, they offered to give up bin Laden to an international tribunal in Pakistan, even without being shown evidence.

 

Nonetheless, with the offers to turn over perpetrators quietly dismissed, on October 7, 2001, the American-led coalition began its assault on Afghanistan. The military forces of the U.S., Britain, Canada, and others coordinated with an Afghan group calling themselves the "Northern Alliance" to overthrow the Taliban.

 

Between 3,800 and 5,000 Afghan civilians would be killed by the initial bombing campaign, and 20-to-50,000 would eventually die as a result of the invasion. The country, particularly outside the capital of Kabul, would transform into the cauldron of violence and unrest it remains over four years later.

 

The Northern Alliance warlords and Afghanistan today

 

The U.S.-led coalition allied itself with the "Northern Alliance," and we might rightly wonder: who are they?

 

The answer to this question had been well known to the governments of the invading countries, but ordinary Afghans knew it even better. The "Northern Alliance" is comprised of none other than the murderous warlords who were finally thrown out of power a few short years before the 2001 invasion. With U.S. backing, they would come to play a disastrous role in shaping the course of events in post-war Afghanistan.

 

In December 2001, with the Taliban government defeated, an agreement was reached among Afghani exiles meeting in Bonn, Germany. Hamid Karzai, an Afghan returning from exile in the U.S., was installed to power and would soon be named interim president of Afghanistan.

 

Following the Bonn Agreement, Northern Alliance warlords were given prominent positions in the interim government, including in key departments such as defence, industry, and agriculture.

 

The leading Afghani women's rights group, RAWA (Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan), which is virulently opposed to both the Northern Alliance and the Taliban, had expressed hope for reform under Karzai. However, they quickly became one of his administration's harshest critics, decrying its corruption and collusion with warlord extremists. While the interim government maintained relative stability in Kabul under the protection of multinational troops, the rest of the country fell squarely into the hands of the despised warlords.

 

To this day, the warlords wield prominent, even dominant influence in the U.S.-backed Karzai government. In fact, as Human Rights Watch observed, last December Karzai again directly appointed notorious human rights abusers to Afghanistan's upper parliamentary house, including former Defence Minister Mohammad Qasim Fahim. Furthermore, an astounding 60 per cent of the deputies currently sitting in the Lower House have been linked to human rights abuses. Sadly, this reflects the reality of the human rights situation in Afghanistan today. Approximately 600 children under the age of five die every day in Afghanistan, according to UNICEF, "mostly due to preventable illnesses." While women technically have more rights, they are unable to exercise them, due to lack of security. Afghans are regularly detained arbitrarily, tortured, and denied due process rights.

 

Infrastructure is in ruins and rebuilding efforts are made difficult by lack of funding and rampant corruption. Much of what is spent is wasted as contracts go to foreign firms whose bids are, in many cases, 10 times more expensive than their Afghan counterparts.

 

Organisations inside and outside of Afghanistan cite insecurity as the top human rights issue in the country.

 

Who is responsible for all this insecurity? The fact is, groups like RAWA, all the major human rights organisations, and even Hamid Karzai agree that the U.S.-backed warlords are a greater threat to security in Afghanistan than the Taliban.

 

U.S. operations in Afghanistan

 

Throughout its occupation of Afghanistan, under the auspices of Operation Enduring Freedom, in its quest to hunt out Taliban and Al Qaeda members, the U.S. has continued to collaborate closely with the Northern Alliance warlords.

 

Over the repeated objections of groups like the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission, RAWA, Human Rights Watch, and Amnesty International, the U.S.-led military forces have undermined the rule of law in Afghanistan by backing the criminal warlords, arbitrarily detaining and denying due process rights to Afghans, and using "excessive force . . . in residential areas." Amnesty condemns what it calls "grave human rights violations" by U.S. and coalition forces, including "killing of civilians and torture of prisoners."

 

This kind of conduct has "generated tremendous resentment against the international community" and "made a mockery of respect for justice," in the words of Human Rights Watch. Most critically, it is driving the crippling state of insecurity in Afghanistan.

 

Canada's role

 

In recent months, Canada has endorsed and contributed to this counterproductive, ostensibly "counterterrorist" role in Afghanistan by joining Operation Enduring Freedom. The Martin government made the plans to scale down our peacekeeping role in Kabul and join the U.S.- led combat operations. These plans came to a head in February under the new Harper government, when 2,200 Canadian troops began to arrive in Kandahar, ready to hunt out and "destroy" pockets of Taliban loyalists in the region.

 

The powers that be might realise that this type of mission is doing more harm than good, if only they bothered to listen to those they're supposedly trying to help. In fact, reality is not unknown to Canadian officials. In an astonishing display of self-contradiction, describing why Canada must be in Afghanistan for at least 20 years, Major General Andrew Leslie explained that "every time you kill an angry man overseas, you're creating 15 more who will come after you."

 

This is actually presented as a justification for the mission - an impressive feat of illogic! Yet, Canadians are told this is what we must do and that we must stop questioning our leaders, whose noble aims we cynical "anti-Americans" just cannot fully comprehend. While our troops are in danger, we should "roll up our sleeves" and prepare ourselves for the "inevitable" deaths we must endure on the march for freedom.

 

Short-term solutions

 

The Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission has developed extensive action plans and recommendations on transitional justice, women's rights, children's rights, human rights monitoring, and education. Supporting their work is a potential starting point for making a positive impact in Afghanistan.

 

Furthermore, as human rights groups have stressed, there is indeed a need for security in Afghanistan if the country is to be reconstructed. However, the kind of security assistance they've called for is peacekeeping, not "counterinsurgency" operations, which engender "tremendous resentment" and create scores of "angry young men."

 

What Afghanistan needs from the outside world is what Afghani and international rights groups have been calling for all along: an end to support for criminal warlords, an end to torture and other abuses, respect for basic due process rights and the rule of law, support for existing domestic peace initiatives, and the commitment of a sufficient, neutral international peacekeeping force. (Troops from countries that have invaded Afghanistan should be excluded, of course, and if there is any justice, costs would be covered by reparations from those governments.) Notice that most of these short- term solutions involve no active effort of helping, but simply require the U.S., Canada, and their allies to stop doing harm.

 

Their own society on their own terms

 

It's important to remember that Afghanistan's woes didn't appear out of thin air. Nor did they begin with the rise of the Taliban, nor even with the rise of the muhajideen warlords. Afghanistan has suffered a long history of foreign aggression and interference by Britain, the Soviet Union, and now the United States (with Canada's help) - aggression and interference that is undoubtedly more rooted in self-serving geopolitical manoeuvring than it is out of any concern whatsoever for the long-term well being of the Afghani people. Ultimately, what the people of Afghanistan "need" are things that every nation needs: self-determination and freedom from aggression - the mere chance to develop their own society on their own terms.

 

---

 

 

Toronto Sun July 2, 2006

 

No place for Canada

 

Foreign invaders will never control the fierce Pashtun tribesmen of Afghanistan

 

By Eric Margolis

 

The war in Afghanistan that was supposedly won has resumed -- with a vengeance. Fighting is reportedly intensifying and spreading across southern Afghanistan as resistance to foreign occupation grows.

 

In 2001, unable to withstand high-tech U.S. forces, the Taliban leader Mullah Omar ordered his men to disband and blend into the civilian population. At the time, this column warned war would resume in about four years, just as it did after the 1979 Soviet invasion.

 

Now, Taliban forces have taken the offensive against U.S. and NATO troops, often employing deadly new tactics like roadside and suicide bombs, learned from Iraq's resistance.

 

Significantly, the Taliban have been joined by many other political and tribal groups. Prominent among them: Hisbi Islami, led by former CIA protege Gulbadin Hekmatyar -- the most effective guerilla leader in the 1980s anti-Soviet jihad -- and renowned mujahadin leader, Jallaludin Haqqi.

 

Small numbers of foreign jihadis have also come to fight. Most important, growing numbers of "khels," or clans of the Pashtun (Pathan) tribe -- the world's largest tribal group, numbering 40 million -- have joined the resistance.

 

Pashtuns comprise half of Afghanistan's population of 30 million; 28 million more live across the border in Pakistan.

 

The U.S./NATO campaign is increasingly directed against warlike Pashtun tribes like the Afridi and Orokzai, and their civilians, rather than against so-called "Taliban terrorists."

 

Only fools pick fights with Pashtuns.

 

Until recently, millions of dollars in monthly cash bribes from the CIA to Afghan warlords kept key areas under the nominal authority of the U.S.-installed Hamid Karzai regime. But that authority barely extends beyond the capital, Kabul.

 

Bodyguards 24/7

 

Karzai's popularity among Afghans is best judged by the fact that he is surrounded 24/7 by 100-200 U.S. bodyguards kept just out of range of western TV cameras.

 

The Soviets built schools, clinics, and roads in Afghanistan, held "democratic" elections and branded the resistance "Islamic terrorists." The U.S./NATO occupation follows an identical pattern, complete with candy for kids, platitudes about women's rights and nation-building, and rigged elections.

 

But the westerners won't be any more successful in winning hearts and minds of Afghans than the Russians -- particularly once Washington begins to cut back on the mission.

 

The biggest difference between the Soviet and U.S. occupation is that since

1989, Afghanistan has become a total narco-state. Close to 80% of national income comes from export of opium and morphine/heroin. Washington's allies

(the Karzai regime and Afghan communists) are believed to be up to their turbans in the drug trade.

 

Sending troops to Afghanistan was marketed to Americans -- and Canadians -- as a crusade against terrorism, with nation-building as a sub-theme. Blaming "terrorists" for the current upsurge in fighting obscures the natural and inevitable growth of resistance to foreign occupation.

 

Unbelievable claims

 

Claims by Washington and its allies that political progress is being made in Afghanistan are unbelievable. Many Afghans working for the foreign occupation are secretly in touch with the resistance.

 

Of course. Afghans know one day the Americans, Canadians, and other foreigners will go home, just as did the Russians, British and Alexander's Greeks.

 

What Canada hopes to gain by waging a 19th-century style colonial campaign of "pacification" straight out of the pages of Rudyard Kipling, against wild Pashtun tribesmen in the mountains of the Hindu Kush, remains to be satisfactorily explained.

 

margolis@foreigncorrespondent.com

 

http://torontosun.canoe.ca/News/Columnists/Margolis_Eric/2006/07/01/1664133.html\

 

===================================

 

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=40&ItemID=9268

 

ZNet | Terror War

 

Detestable murderers and scumbags

 

Canada in Afghanistan

 

by Justin Podur and Sonali Kolhatkar;

Briarpatch; December 05, 2005

 

On July 11, 2005, WITH great nuance and tact, Canada's Chief of Defence Staff General Hillier described the forces arrayed against the NATO mission in Afghanistan: "These are detestable murderers and scumbags, I'll tell you that right up front. They detest our freedoms, they detest our society, they detest our liberties."

 

This was not Canadian officialdom's typical line on operations abroad. Canada's Haiti mission, for example, is framed in terms of "helping" Haitians with democracy. Although the Prime Minister's Special Advisor on Haiti, Denis Coderre, occasionally uses violent language about "terrorists"

(following the normal practice of presenting such labels without evidence) to describe Haiti's ousted Lavalas government, for the most part Canada's foreign policy is presented to the public as "peacekeeping," helping those "failed states" to build "capacity." Canadian military operations are likewise presented as somehow peaceable.

 

Hillier was explicitly trying to dispel this image, and not merely with the tactics of demonization ("detestable scumbags"), fear and racism ("they detest our freedoms"), and repetition ("they detest our liberties"). Hillier also wanted to dispel perceptions of the Canadian military as a peaceable, humanitarian force in world affairs: "We are the Canadian Forces, and our job is to be able to kill people."

 

Hillier continued the fear campaign: "Osama bin Laden, some time ago, indicated Canada was a target," he said on Canadian TV. "As a responsible citizen of the world, we have been involved in the campaign against terrorism, and, of course, we try to bring stability to places that are unstable and therefore have acted as hotbeds for supporting terrorism. All that, I think, does make us a target."

 

To use military language, Hillier created an "opening" that Major General Andrew Leslie exploited at a conference in August called "Handcuffs and Hand Grenades." "Afghanistan is a 20-year venture," he said, but "there are things worth fighting for. There are things worth dying for. There are things worth killing for." Explaining why Canada had to be in Afghanistan for 20 years, Leslie said it was because "every time you kill an angry young man overseas, you're creating 15 more who will come after you."

 

It doesn't take a military genius to recognize that Hillier and Leslie are making self-contradictory statements. If every time Canada kills someone overseas it's creating 15 "angry young men," does that make those 15 people "detestable scumbags?" If killing is so incredibly counterproductive, does it make sense to proudly announce that "our job is to be able to kill people?" And if every killing of these "detestable scumbags" creates 15 more enemies, should that really be considered a goal "worth killing for?"

 

Hillier and Leslie's comments can be understood as media operations intended to legitimize a more aggressive military role for Canada in the world. That their speeches sound like warmed-over propaganda scripts of American neoconservatives should not be surprising, since the US is the only possible contemporary model Canada could have for aggressive militarism. But the comments by the generals are more aggressive than Canada's official foreign policy doctrine. That doctrine was more systematically expounded by Canada's Foreign Minister Bill Graham in a speech in September on Canada's Afghan Mission.

 

In that speech, Graham described the ideology motivating Canada's more aggressive posture. The idea is that there are "failed states" from which danger "leaks out" into other areas. Afghanistan fits into this scheme as a country with an "unfortunate history of war and misrule. culminating in the rule of the Taliban and their support for al-Qaeda and their attack on New York."

 

While there may seem to be a large space between Graham's "helping" approach and Hillier/Leslie's "kill people" approach, Canada's real foreign policy path is actually rather narrow: it involves supporting and legitimizing US foreign policy, whether through "failed state" rhetoric, military support, or profitable arms manufacturing. Canada's Afghan mission fits the bill on all counts.

 

Canada in Afghanistan

 

IN 2002, CANADA sent 800 soldiers to Kandahar to join operations with the United States. In April of that year, Canada took its worst casualties in the mission when four Canadians were killed by bombs from a US F-16.

 

According to Graham, Canada then "spearheaded the effort to have NATO take over the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Kabul" from the United Nations. Today ISAF has 8,000 troops from 35 countries, with Canada contributing some 2,600 troops. In August 2005, Canada sent another 250 troops to Kandahar, along with officials from the Canadian International Development Agency, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, and Foreign Affairs. In February 2006, Canada will be adding a headquarters in Kandahar, with 350 troops commanding the international force and an addition 1,000 troops as a one-year task force.

 

Given that Canada has roughly the same population as Afghanistan and very limited military resources, the Afghanistan deployment is a major foreign policy effort.

 

NATO's Real Mission

 

ISAF WAS TAKEN OVER by NATO in August 2003, in its first ever mission outside the Euro-Atlantic region. ISAF was initially established by the United Nations to ostensibly provide security in Afghanistan after the fall of the Taliban, but its greatest failure was that it was restricted to the capital, Kabul, because of strong pressure from the US. In rural provinces, which comprise the majority of Afghanistan, peacekeeping troops could have made a huge difference in bringing order. Instead, these areas are overrun by US backed militias, warlords, local commanders, and US troops engaged in their "hunt" for Al Qaeda and Taliban. US troops collaborate directly with local authoritarian warlords, rewarding them with weapons and aid in exchange for "intelligence" on Al Qaeda and Taliban.

 

As a result, since the fall of the Taliban, the country has become a progressively more dangerous place. This year, more US soldiers were killed in Afghanistan than in any previous year, and warlords are more entrenched than ever. Meanwhile, according to United Nations Drug Control Program

(UNDCP) estimates, the amount of land dedicated to opium poppy cultivation has risen to up to eight and a half times the amount for 2001. If ISAF's real goal was peacekeeping, US actions have directly hindered that goal. But perhaps "peacekeeping" was never the mission of ISAF.

 

When asked by one of this article's co-authors, Sonali Kolhatkar, what ISAF does on an on-going basis, NATO/ISAF spokesperson Major Karen Tissot Van Patot (a Canadian), stationed in Kabul, said that ISAF's goal is to "provide a secure and stable environment." When pressed for details, she explained that in Kabul, where ISAF's headquarters is located, ISAF and the Afghan central government work closely: "We work together. we provide whatever they need. Whatever they ask for.. We're here at the behest of the government to provide them with assistance."

 

Given that Hamid Karzai, the head of the new Afghan government, was propelled into power by the US, and remains protected by US forces, it's fair to conclude that NATO is in Afghanistan at the behest of the US government. This includes strategically providing the Karzai government with security for the US-designed nation-wide presidential and parliamentary elections which attracted international media attention.

 

The real goal is not peacekeeping, but rather the illusion of peacekeeping so as to make the installation of a US-friendly regime palatable to Afghanis. ISAF's intense propaganda efforts attest to this. Kabul city sports huge billboards advertising ISAF's contributions to the Afghan people. ISAF also runs radio and TV stations in the local languages to highlight the benevolence of the foreign troops. At the heart of NATO's job as ISAF is an effort to "win the hearts and minds" of the Afghan people. This benefits all Western forces present, including the US.

 

NATO's main propaganda effort is in the form of Provincial Reconstruction Teams, which are groups of soldiers engaged in a strange mix of providing security, carrying out small reconstruction and humanitarian projects, and eliciting intelligence information. US troops pioneered the use of Provincial Reconstruction Teams, and NATO forces are following suit. In response to years of calls from aid agencies, human rights groups, and even the Karzai government, ISAF began expanding its mandate outside Kabul. But instead of real peacekeeping - disarmament, protecting civilians from armed groups, etc. - the expansion was done through the use of Provincial Reconstruction Teams. Today, ISAF has ten such teams in various Afghan provinces.

 

The aid provided by Provincial Reconstruction Teams is minuscule compared to the nation's needs, and far more expensive than that provided by aid agencies. Ultimately, the main goal of Provincial Reconstruction Teams is to impress upon the Afghans that Western forces are there to help them through delivery of food, construction of schools, wells, etc. Meanwhile, the Provincial Reconstruction Teams have angered many aid agencies who bitterly complain that mixing military and humanitarian projects jeopardizes aid workers, and holds the receiving population hostage to military demands. InterAction, a coalition of 159 organizations including Doctors Without Borders, CARE, and Oxfam America "does not believe the military members of the Provincial Reconstruction Teams should be engaged in humanitarian and reconstruction activities."

 

Ultimately, NATO (and Canadian) forces serve US interests in Afghanistan. NATO has had to re-invent itself to suit US needs, and create a role for itself in a post-Cold War world. In October 2001, NATO Secretary General Lord Robertson declared his hope that NATO would be part of whatever response the US decided upon after 9-11: "We stand together. Europe and North America are one single security space.the events of September 11 have not invalidated NATO's pre-September agenda. If anything, they have reinforced the logic of that agenda.if the US Congress asks the Europeans "what have you done for me lately?" - we should be ready to give a decent answer.

 

Afghanistan Today

 

IF THE UNITED States justifies its international aggression in terms of its own national interests and security (as Hillier and Leslie were trying to do for Canada), Canada's politicians prefer to suggest that the real beneficiaries of our military maneuvers are in the countries targeted for intervention. Bill Graham expressed it this way: "When I hear voices who call for the withdrawal of our troops, who suggest that we are engaged there in a war against Islam, as a recent visiting British politician suggested, I say: Let them talk to the Afghans, Afghans who are Muslims themselves, Afghans who want us there to help them transform their country and allow them to live decent lives; to allow them to conduct fair and democratic elections free from fear and intimidation."

 

'Let them talk to the Afghans', indeed. Doing so might yield different prescriptions than Graham's, however.

 

In 2004, the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC), a government-funded agency, conducted a nationwide survey of the Afghan people. Their results were published in a report entitled "A Call for Justice," which showed that a majority of Afghans consider themselves victims of war, whether at the hands of the Mujahadeen, the Taliban, and/or the Soviet Union, and want an end to war, and justice for war crimes. Western governments like Canada could provide constructive help to the Afghan people to bring war criminals and their benefactors to justice. The trouble is that the main benefactors are the US and its allies, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, who provided weapons, training, and funding for the war criminals.

 

Another strong desire among Afghans is nation-wide disarmament. In 2004, Human Rights Research and Advocacy Consortium (HRRAC), a coalition of humanitarian organizations, published a report based on another survey called "Take the Guns Away." When asked what was the most important thing to do to improve security in Afghanistan, 65 percent of Afghans surveyed said disarmament. This number was much higher - 87 percent - in the province of Mazar-e-Sharif where US-backed warlords often clashed. Western nations could fully fund disarmament projects in Afghanistan. Instead, highly selective and politicized disarmament has taken place, leaving intact most of the privately-run warlord militias. Full disarmament would run counter to the US practice of condoning arms proliferation at best, and at worst, actually engaging in arms proliferation.

 

The most frequently mentioned human rights desired by respondents of the HRRAC survey included "ethnic, religious and gender equality; political rights such as the right to participate in free and fair elections; and the right to education." Even though the Bush administration often cites that millions of Afghan girls are now attending school, there are very few schools in rural areas, and those that are in operation have curriculums limited to Islamic studies, reminiscent of Taliban-era education for boys. RAWA, the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan, has been fighting for women's rights for decades. Their schools, which teach a balanced curriculum based on gender, ethnic and religious tolerance, and women's rights, are facing closure due to lack of funds. Western nations could greatly benefit Afghanistan by fully funding schools designed and led by Afghan women. To date, only a small fraction of aid to Afghanistan goes toward education.

 

Much is made of women's rights after the fall of the Taliban. It is indeed true that some women, particularly in Kabul, enjoy greater freedom to appear in public, dress the way they want, and have the right to housing, jobs, education, and healthcare. However, for millions of Afghan women outside Kabul this means very little. A woman in a rural province had no education, healthcare, or employment before the Taliban came to power. She then had those things legally denied to her by the Taliban. After the fall of the Taliban, she still has no education, healthcare, or employment, even though she has legal rights. For all practical purposes, her life is no different compared to before or during the Taliban. Western nations could truly support Afghan women's rights by moving beyond token, high-profile projects, and instead funding easily accessible education, healthcare and jobs for all women in Afghanistan. These projects should be designed and run by Afghan women, who best understand what they need.

 

The largest segment of Afghanistan's economy is based on the drug trade, revived by US-backed warlords and regional commanders. Instead of criminalizing poor farmers for growing poppies, Western nations could help Afghans reduce their dependency on a drug economy by providing full compensation to farmers who have gone into debt to grow and harvest opium. Additionally, farmers could be assisted with alternative and sustainable farming that would benefit their families and their country.

 

The problem, of course, is that focusing on constructive projects such as those mentioned above would benefit only the Afghans, and not US, Canadian, or NATO interests. They would strengthen the people of Afghanistan and enrich their democratic development, while weakening the power of US and Afghan warlords.

 

Why is Canada involved?

 

CANADA'S NEW FOREIGN policy doctrine of "responsibility to protect" the people of "failed states" misplaces the emphasis. The doctrine suggests that the reasons for Canada's intervention are to be found in the countries in which we intervene: Afghanistan suffered from "misrule," Haiti is a "failed state." The true reasons for Canada's interventions, rather, is to be found in the relationship between Canada and the United States.

 

During the US invasion and occupation of Vietnam, Canadian corporations profited by supplying the American military, and Canadian diplomats ran interference for the US in the "International Control Commission," a "neutral" body that was supposed to monitor the conflict between the US and the Vietnamese. Then, as now, Canada's image as more multilateral, less militaristic and imperialistic, was a useful counterpoint to the aggressive posture of the US. Canada could use its good reputation to play the "good cop" to the US "bad cop," thus providing tactical support in accomplishing US foreign policy goals.

 

The same relationship holds today. Canada presents itself as a friend to those countries it is intervening in, with a "3-D approach" (defence, diplomacy, and development assistance) as an option over the more unilateral and aggressive approach of the US. If, as a consequence, Canadian corporations like Bell win a one billion dollar contract with the US military to supply helicopters, or CAE wins a $20 million contract to supply combat simulation technology, perhaps that is just another "dimension" to be added to the 3-D approach.

 

Because the real reasons for intervention are not genuine help and solidarity, Canada's deployment in Afghanistan has little relationship to what the people of that country actually need. Instead, under the guise of helping Afghanistan, Canada is actually providing a kind face to US contravention of the laws of war. In spite of mountains of evidence exposing US torture and murder of detainees in Iraq and Afghanistan (never mind Canada's own experience with its troops torturing a youth to death in Somalia in the 1990s), Canadian troops are capturing people and handing them over to the US in Afghanistan. The US, the "detainee authority" in Afghanistan, defines people it captures as "unlawful combatants" and denies them Geneva Convention protections. If pronouncements by Rumsfeld or Bush about "hating our freedom" found their Canadian echo in Hillier and Leslie, US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales's comment about the Geneva Conventions being "quaint" found its Canadian echo in Brigadier General Mike Ward, who in September 2005 talked to the Canadian Press about how Canadian forces have killed and captured Afghanis in coordination with the US. On the US record of torture of detainees and the use of the "unlawful combatant" label to justify contravening the Geneva Conventions, Ward said, "It's the fact of the treatment that we specifically get into detail about, not whether in fact their status is identified as 'prisoner of war' or 'unlawful combatant.'"

 

Where the US military leads in the "war on terror," Canada follows. The Canadian engagement in Afghanistan enables Canada to be a useful tool of American imperialism, a junior member of the "winning team." The price of accommodation with empire is high for all involved. Those whose sovereignty is violated get the worst of it, facing hunger, disease, bombs, torture, and death. But for the accomplices, there is a steady diet of fear and racism, as well as the erosion of democracy, ethics, and even basic logic. That Canada is experiencing such erosion is evidenced by Major General Leslie being able to hold up a claim that killing young men overseas is worth dying for.

 

Sonali Kolhatkar is the co-Director of the Afghan Women's Mission and the host/producer of Uprising, which airs Monday-Friday on KPFK, Pacifica radio in Los Angeles. She visited Afghanistan in February 2005, and has co-authored a book about US policy in Afghanistan due out in Spring 2006.

 

Justin Podur is a writer and editor at ZNet. He has reported from Haiti, Venezuela, Colombia, Israel/Palestine, and other countries, and is based in Toronto.

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