What are we doing in Afghanistan?

If you've had the chance to listen to various Conservatives on the floor on Monday speaking to their government's motion to extend the mission until 2011, you would assume that Canada wields a tremendous amount of power over the future of that country and that, as the Veterans Affair minister, Greg Thompson, stated (vilely) that those who oppose the extension are friends of the Taliban and enemies of our Canadian troops. Yes, he even repeated the smear (in the guise of hearing it from soldiers who live in his riding) that the NDP leader, Jack Layton, has been nicknamed "Taliban Jack". Speaking not long after that, Peter MacKay backed up Thompson's insults, feigning outrage to the point where he almost needed a fainting couch and a cold compress for his forehead. MacKay continued to hurl his insults at Alexa McDonough as she had the floor to the extent that she had to ask the chair to call for order.

This, from a government that vowed to restore dignity to the house.

But that's not my main point.

Last week, the British government admitted its part in torture flights at the behest of the US government. Today, a former member of the SAS revealed that:

Hundreds of Iraqis and Afghans captured by British and American special forces were rendered to prisons where they faced torture...
[...]
Ben Griffin said individuals detained by SAS troops in a joint UK-US special forces taskforce had ended up in interrogation centres in Iraq, including the notorious Abu Ghraib prison, and in Afghanistan, as well as Guantánamo Bay.

As we know, the US SecDef Robert Gates has been on a tour to guilt EU countries into sending more combat troops to Afghanistan. His repeated insults haven't worked. Nor should they.

The Bush administration and the Pentagon have undermined the Afghanistan mission for years by not providing enough troops, through the use of useless contractors like DynCorp who failed to train Afghanistan's police, by its unbalanced focus on military rather than reconstruction spending and by continuing to fund Musharraf to the tune of $10 billion while he has done nothing to stop the flow of fighters from Waziristan - not to mention the horrendous human rights abuses it continues to foist on the Afghan people, as noted above. Our Veterans Affairs minister stated very clearly on the floor today that Canada "will continue to support Pakistan" unconditionally despite concerns about its massive failures. And, as this government's record shows, it prefers to cover up allegations of torture and corruption rather than dealing with it head on.

So, as much as some Canadians might want to think that our troops can actually make a difference in Afghanistan, the larger picture shows that we are being hoodwinked, indeed sabotaged, every step of the way by the US government which only recently has taken a renewed interest in this forgotten war by resorting to the tactics it knows best: bullying and intimidation. Sound familiar?

The Conservatives, however, will have none of that talk. They prefer to push the idea that we are there in a peacekeeping role; that we have to stay there or else the scary terrorists will attack us here even though the longer we're there the more we place our country at risk. They proclaim from their moral pulpit that we owe it to the Afghan people to stay there until they are safe (which, apparently, will automagically happen in 2011 according to their motion). They certainly refuse to talk about their military spending increases because that's supposed to be seen as being patriotic. They rehash numbers about how things are going in Afghanistan that are the same ones they've been using since they first came into power. They believe that only foreign intervention can save the Afghan people while they spend massive amounts of money on military hardware. How insulting. They insist that Canada is such a great country that it can make all the difference there. What they fail to explain is how that's possible when our allies are detaining, torturing and killing innocent people.

That's the question that needs to be asked in all of this. The rest is just moot, empty rhetoric.

Related:

Since the Conservatives like to talk about how far Afghan women have supposedly come, I thought I'd provide this link to The Plight of the Afghan Woman for a realistic look at what they still face despite the fact that foreign forces have been in Afghanistan to "help" them for more than 6 years now.
 

Death Penalty Sentence Reprieve for Afghan Student

The Independent reports:

In a dramatic volte-face, the Afghan Senate has withdrawn its confirmation of a death sentence on Sayed Pervez Kambaksh, the student convicted of blasphemy for downloading a report on women's rights from the internet.

The move follows widespread international protests and appeals to the President, Hamid Karzai, after the case was highlighted by The Independent and more than 38,000 readers signed our petition to secure justice for Mr Kambaksh. In Britain, the Foreign Secretary David Miliband, the Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg and the shadow Foreign Secretary, William Hague, backed the campaign, and there have been demonstrations in the Afghan capital, Kabul.

But the fight isn't over:

Mr Kambaksh can now petition the court of appeal against both his conviction and sentence, and, afterwards, the supreme court. If he fails there, he can appeal directly to Mr Karzai – who has been inundated with emails about the case – for a pardon. Mr Kambaksh's brother, Sayed Yaqub Ibrahimi, welcomed the new position adopted by the Senate. He added, however, that he might have difficulties finding lawyers to present the case at the appeal court after warnings from fundamentalist groups against people "allying themselves with the apostate". He said the only realistic chance of his brother being freed might be the personal intervention of Mr Karzai.

The Independent will keep its petition going in the meantime. Canadians should contact the department of foreign affairs to put pressure on Bernier to keep an eye on this case. (Yes, I know he's practically useless and won't even stand up for the rights of Canadians held in other countries who are facing the death penalty, but he is the minister.) Bother Steve while you're at it too.

Update:

NDP presses for stronger stand by Ottawa on Afghan death sentence

OTTAWA - NDP Leader Jack Layton wants Parliament to take a stand in support of an Afghan journalist sentenced to death for allegedly insulting Islam.

In an interview Sunday, Layton complained the Conservative government has been largely silent on the case of Sayad Parwez Kambaksh, convicted by a court in northern Afghanistan two weeks ago.

"We have every right as a country to speak out on this issue," said the NDP chief.

How's that war against drugs working out?

Well, let's see:

VIENNA — Afghanistan produced dramatically more opium in 2006, increasing its yield by nearly 50 per cent from a year earlier and pushing global opium production to a record high, a UN report said Tuesday.
[...]
Afghanistan's opium production increased from about 4,500 tonnes in 2005 to 6,700 tonnes in 2006, according to the 2007 World Drug Report released by the Vienna-based UN Office on Drugs and Crime. Opium is the main ingredient for heroin.

In 2006, Afghanistan accounted for 92 per cent of global illicit opium production, up from 70 per cent in 2000 and 52 per cent a decade earlier. The higher yields in Afghanistan brought global opium production to a record high of nearly 7,300 tonnes last year, a 43 per cent increase over 2005.

The area under opium poppy cultivation in the country has also expanded, from nearly 257,000 acres in 2005 to more than 407,000 acres in 2006 — an increase of about 59 per cent.

“This is the largest area under opium poppy cultivation ever recorded in Afghanistan,” the report said, noting that two-thirds of cultivation was concentrated in the country's south.
[...]
UNODC Executive Director Antonio Maria Costa warned that Afghanistan's insurgency-plagued Helmand province was becoming the world's biggest drug supplier, with opium cultivation there larger than in the rest of the country put together.

Oh and despite the best efforts of that Alaskan "Bong Hits 4 Jesus" teenager, whom the US Supremes decided on Monday should have his first amendment rights curtailed, apparently cannabis use has reportedly declined in America. Obviously, his nefarious plot to "promote illegal drug use" has failed miserably.

And remember, pay no attention to the drug lords behind the curtain. It's students with banners who are the real threat.

Related: A new US Government Accountability Office report "slams the federal government for failing to coordinate the work of U.S. law enforcement agencies overseas to fight terrorism." What caught my eye was this part:

As a result of these weaknesses, LEAs [law enforcement agencies], a key element of national power, are not being fully used abroad to protect U.S. citizens and interest from future terrorist attacks," the GAO concluded.

For national security reasons, the GAO did not name the four countries its investigators visited, describing them only as having "key roles in combating terrorism."

In all four there was more U.S. funding devoted to fighting drugs than to fighting terrorism, the report said

In one country, described as an "extremely high terrorist threat to American interests globally," the State Department provided six times more funding to stop illicit drugs and crime than it did for anti-terrorism assistance, the report said.

In another country, an embassy official said most training and assistance funding from the U.S. was dedicated to counter-narcotics efforts "even though drugs were no longer a strategic concern in that country."

So, I guess that begs the next question: How's that war against terrorism working out?
 

Blast in Afghanistan; Cheney Unhurt

Via the IHT:

KABUL, Afghanistan: An explosion outside the main U.S. military base in Afghanistan killed at least two people and wounded 12 on Tuesday during a visit by U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney, though the vice president was apparently not in danger, officials said.

The blast happened near the first security gate outside the base at Bagram, killing two people and wounding 12, said Kabir Ahmad, the district chief of the Bagram region.

Maj. William Mitchell said it did not appear the explosion was intended as a threat to the vice president, who was "safely inside the base" during the blast.
[...]
Cheney, who spent the night at Bagram, ate breakfast with U.S. soldiers Tuesday morning, Mitchell said. He was expected to later meet with President Hamid Karzai after their meeting was scrapped on Monday because of bad weather that prevented him traveling to Kabul.

Makes you wonder, with all of the corruption in the Afghanistan government, if someone leaked Cheney's presence at the base (which is huge, btw) to whoever set off the blast.

Update: Apparently, the IHT has decided to update the article I linked to above with new information:

BAGRAM, Afghanistan: An explosion outside the main U.S. military base in Afghanistan killed 19 people and wounded 11 on Tuesday during a visit by U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney, though the vice president was apparently not in danger, U.S. and Afghan officials said.

The blast happened near the first security gate outside the base at Bagram, killing 19 people, said Khoja Mohammad Qasim Sayedi, chief of the province's public health department. Gov. Abdul Jabar Taqwa said "18 to 20 dead bodies" lay on the ground after the blast.