The Truth About Afghanistan

And now, some Good News™ from Afghanistan, courtesy of Canada's Foreign Affairs Minister, Peter McKay.

McKay:

Because of the work of our Canadian Forces members, girls are now going to school in Afghanistan.

Fact: Taliban Use Beheadings and Beatings to Keep Afghanistan's Schools Closed

By the conservative estimate of the Afghan President Hamid Karzai, 100,000 students have been terrorised out of schools in the past year. The number is certainly far higher and many teachers have been murdered, some beheaded.

In the province of Zabul a teacher and female MP, Toor Peikai, said yesterday: "There are 47 schools in my province but only three are open." Only one teaches girls. It is 200 metres from a large US military base in the provincial capital.

Across the south, schools burn during the night. According to a bleak report released by Human Rights Watch today at least 200 have been destroyed in the past year and half. Their blackened shells, many of them new buildings constructed with foreign aid money, are visible from the ever more dangerous road south to Kandahar.

McKay:

Low-income farmers can get small loans to improve their crops. Families can get credit to open a small bakery, or a shoe repair shop, or a teahouse.

Fact: Poppy Cultivation is a major problem and Afghanistan accounts for 80-90% of Europe's opium traffic. How is NATO handing that situation?

"NATO-ISAF is not targeting farmers," he said. "We understand exactly that there must be other ways for them to make a living before we stop them -- if we ever got involved with it -- growing their poppy, because they have to feed their families in some way.

"We also know that, at the end of the day, narcotics has got to be eradicated from this country or there will never be the peace and stability in the long term," Richards added. "So [counternarcotics efforts are] there. But it is not our immediate agenda. And we have other things that we'd like to do to help people out of their predicament."
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Fact: Another major issue in Afghanistan is the use of child labour:

·Child labourers in Afghanistan work for 9-15 hours per day in an average basis, It means that these children start work in the early morning (6 am) and finish at 6-8 pm.

·43% child labourers are under the age of 12 and 35% are aged 12-15.

·Only 35% child labourers attend school, whose education quality has been evaluated as too poor.

·Out of the child labourers who attend school, the majority must work to make such an attendance.

·85% child labourers are boys, but this figure does not include the uncounted number of girls who work in the house.

·96% child labourers stated economic problems as their main reason to work. But some families believed that work is useful for children.

·13.4% child labourers are engaged in pedlary and 8% in street labour including beggary.

·12.4% child labourers are engaged in factories and workshops.

·During the study, 1,414 child carpet-weavers were interviewed. The child interviewees were even 6 years old and must have worked for 12 hours per day.

McKay:

Afghans in Kabul now enjoy opportunities unheard of under Taliban rule. Almost 5 million children are now in school, learning to read and write.

Fact: Via UNICEF:

Although the war in Afghanistan is over, the humanitarian crisis is not. Millions of Afghans, many of them children, are still living in temporary camps or remote areas inaccessible by relief agencies. Many of them are at risk of disease.

Note: I have no idea why UNICEF thinks the war is 'over'.

McKay:

Afghan women now make up more than one in four of the elected members of parliament. Women now have the right to borrow money, thanks to a Canadian-backed micro-credit program helping them to set up small businesses.

Fact: Afghan women still face serious human and civil rights concerns, including human trafficking and forced marriages. Not much has changed for women since the Taliban ran the country and the possible resurgence of the outdated 'Department for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice' poses a serious threat to women's rights once again.

During the election process in September 2005. armed anti-government insurgents killed officials who registered women to vote, and confiscated voting cards forcibly. Women in Afghanistan continue to face severe violence both within and outside the home.

McKay:

Wells are being dug and pipes installed to bring water to villages. Roads are being resurfaced so that farmers can get their vegetables to market.

Fact: An expose of disappearing US aid funds in Afghanistan published today by the San Francisco Chronicle reveals some very distrubing realities about where reconstruction money is actually going. The following is an excerpt. Be sure to read the rest of the article to appreciate why this glowing picture presented by our Foreign Minister is such a farce.

The criteria for selection of contractors have little or nothing to do with conditions in the recipient country, and they are not exactly what you would call transparent.

Take, for example, the case of the Kabul-Kandahar Highway, featured on the USAID Web site as a proud accomplishment. (In five years, it's the only accomplishment in highway building in Afghanistan -- which is one better than the U.S. record building power stations, water systems, sewer systems or dams.) The highway was also featured in the Kabul Weekly newspaper in March 2005 under the headline, "Millions Wasted on Second-Rate Roads."

Afghan journalist Mirwais Harooni reported that even though other international companies had been ready to rebuild the highway for $250,000 per kilometer, the Louis Berger Group got the job at $700,000 per kilometer -- of which there are 389. Why? The standard American answer is that Americans do better work. (Though not Berger, which at the time was already years behind on another $665 million contract to build schools.)

Berger subcontracted Turkish and Indian companies to build the narrow two-lane, shoulderless highway at a final cost of about $1 million per mile; and anyone who travels it can see that it is already falling apart. (Former Minister of Planning Ramazan Bashardost complained that when it came to building roads, the Taliban did a better job.)

Now, in a move certain to tank President Hamid Karzai's approval ratings and further endanger U.S. and NATO troops in the area, the United States has pressured his government to turn this "gift of the people of the United States" into a toll road and collect $20 a month from Afghan drivers. In this way, according to U.S. experts providing highly paid technical assistance, Afghanistan can collect $30 million annually from its impoverished citizens and thereby decrease the foreign aid "burden" on the United States.

Is it any wonder that foreign aid seems to ordinary Afghans to be something only foreigners enjoy?

And, here is Peter McKay's Rumsfeldian moment:

Unfortunately, these images are not the ones most often seen on television. I saw first-hand how our presence is Afghanistan is helping improve the daily lives of Afghan citizens.

Fact: Canadians are regularly shown the work of the Canadian troops on television news broadcasts and via interviews with military officials. Any regular television news viewer can attest to that yet, here is our Foreign Affairs minister actually blaming our media for not providing enough Good News™ - the very same tactic used by Rumsfeld practically every time he has a microphone in front of him.

More Canadians than ever now oppose the mission in Afghanistan. On Sunday, we lost 4 more soldiers and today another one was killed by US 'friendly fire'. The majority of Canadians support military interventions that focus on peacekeeping efforts and many were actually led to believe that our troops would be involved in that type of mission in Afghanistan.

Canada takes charge of Afghanistan peacekeeping

Updated Thu. Jul. 17 2003 11:52 PM ET

CTV.ca News Staff

Canada has taken command of the force of international peacekeepers in charge of maintaining security in Afghanistan's war-battered capital.

When the new Conservative government rushed MPs through a spring vote to 'extend the mission' without providing any details of the NATO mandate which had, indeed, changed from the traditional role of peacekeeping to that of a more aggressive military force Canadians were misinformed, misled and short-changed.

And now we have our Foreign Affairs minister lying to us again about the realities in Afghanistan. However, unlike the Americans who live under a political regime that is unlikely to affect change in Iraq any time soon, our Conservatives are in a minority government situation and if they continue down this track, they will not hold onto the fragile power they have right now for very long. Canadians will not be sold a bill of goods when it involves our soldiers perishing in a foreign country under a flawed mission while government officials try to paint a Rumsfeldian rosy picture and we, at least, have more power than our neighbours to the south to demand accountability and change with the realistic prospect of achieving both.

Further reading:
Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission
UNICEF - Afghanistan - Country in Crisis
Amnesty International - Afghanistan