Canada Afghanistan role 2011

Finally, someone had the guts to point out what so many ordinary Canadians, politicians, analysts, soldiers, Afghan-Canadians and Afghan citizens already understand about the "Afghan detainees" issue. In the latest issue of the Metropolitain:

 What the Liberals and NDP fail to appreciate as they attack the Conservatives over the Afghan detainee issue is that at a visceral level Canadians just don’t care about Afghan detainees because they’re the enemy. There, I said it.

  It would be different if Canadians were torturing Afghan detainees. Recall the national shame when photos of Somalian Shidane Arone came out in 1993. Bad things happen in war, but Chrétien survived that issue and Harper will survive this one.

  It’s alleged that there’s a possibility that detainees are being “mistreated” at the hands of our Afghan allies; you know, the people we’re over there to protect. If our Afghan allies were torturing detainees that again would be different, but what’s alleged is mere “mistreatment” based solely on the testimony of the detainees themselves. Big difference.

  Of course Conservatives don’t dare point this out because they’ll seem callous. So they’re forced to pretend to share, at least somewhat, in the Liberals’ and NDP’s concerns for human rights until this blows over. And yes, it will blow over because the enemy in this case avows to subjugate, enslave and kill those who are, allegedly, now mistreating them. Think about that for a second.

  It must be difficult to feign sustained indignation when an Afghan tribesman gives a fat lip to a terrorist who just last week was threatening to kill him and his entire family, but so far everyone in Ottawa and the national media is managing just fine.

  Now here’s the deeper issue: combatants who face our soldiers in a war zone have only two choices: fight and die, or surrender and be treated well. No exceptions. The former isn’t considered “polite talk” in Ottawa; our soldiers have been assigned many peacekeeping missions over the years but Canadians know soldiers are trained to kill the enemy before the enemy kills them, and that our boys and girls in uniform have always been, and will always be, soldiers.

  The enemy in Afghanistan intends to kill as many of our soldiers as they can. As such, they are human targets for our soldiers until such time as they become detainees. They’re not a building or a munitions dump; they’re human beings who must be killed. There, I said it again.

  There’s a willful ignorance of the realities of war in Ottawa which has, so far at least, allowed the Opposition to pretend Conservatives condone the mistreatment of prisoners of war. If this was true then surely the same would have been true when the Liberals were in charge. It’s the same Allied soldiers on the ground, right? But much more to the point, who really cares? Haven’t these people heard of priorities?

  If the Opposition doesn’t stop with the false indignation over fat lips being inflicted on Afghan detainees by Afghans, they will pay a heavy price. Canadians don’t want their government to waste time ensuring that the same rights we enjoy are afforded to the enemy when the lives of our own soldiers and 28 million innocent Afghanis are at stake.

 

The priorities moving past 2011 for Canada ought to include building up Afghanistan's civil society, investing in education and upgrading the country's shockingly low literacy rate, and training Afghan security forces to protect gains, CASC's Vision document states (Look for it on our website shortly!). Olivia Ward writes a summary of CASC's findings in the Toronto Star:

Canada should not be shy about using its influence to pressure the Afghan government toward democracy, according to Terry Glavin, lead author of the report, being released Tuesday in Ottawa.

"What people told us was not to be (afraid) of treading on Afghan sovereignty," Glavin said. "We must tell the president that rule of law is important."...

"When we debate the army leaving Afghanistan, we forget that the root cause of the conflict is lack of development, aid and education," said Banerjee, who led the CIDA mission in Kabul 2003 to 2006.

"In the (UN) human development index, Afghanistan is going down. But security and development go together, which is why Afghans feel so helpless."

After 2011, he said, Canada should loosen its ties with Kandahar, where the troops are based.

MacKenzie said resettling development away from turbulent southern Afghanistan would be possible but moving Canadian Forces would be difficult and costly.

After 2011, he said, Canada should focus on training, mentoring Afghan troops and maintaining reconstruction teams.