Seven Oaks Magazine.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper recently displayed a conciliatory spirit regarding the February 22, 2009 end date for the Canadian mission in Afghanistan. At a House of Commons news conference on June 22, Harper stated that a parliamentary consensus would be required if the mission is to be extended past 2009. His remarks were interpreted as conceding to the reality of growing opposition among Canadians, especially in Quebec.

Yet by taking Harper’s mollifying remarks at face value, the print and electronic media ignored the context: Harper’s comment came one day after NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer indicated that he would ask Canada to extend the mission past 2009. (1) Just after his visit to Crawford, Texas, Scheffer came to Canada to ask that all NATO partners remain in Afghanistan long after February, 2009. (2) It is likely that Harper’s June 23 remarks were merely intended to forestall a predictably acrimonious debate.

The NATO Secretary-General also repeated the familiar line that Taliban terrorists are trying to hold back “progress.” We are supposed to believe that under no circumstances would the insurgents wish to see a road or a hospital built. The reality is that the aim of the Taliban is to expel the American occupiers and NATO forces that support the US-led “Operation Enduring Freedom.” In this, they have been joined by growing numbers of Afghan nationalists who do not share the fundamentalist ideology of the Taliban but do share their strategic goals.

The NATO Secretary-General spoke of a “two-track approach,” which amounts to US search-and-destroy missions alongside NATO’s more restrained efforts: a dubious “security today, aid tomorrow” formula. What we are not supposed to notice, however, is that the NATO presence enables Washington to multilateralize its foreign policy objectives. Post-Rumsfeld, the Bush administration now wishes to enlist rather than deride the aid of “old Europe.” Now US casualties will be minimized because Canada and NATO will supplement US bombs with our boots on the ground. Helping the US prop up the unpopular regime of Hamid Karzai, Ottawa petulantly asks NATO partners to share more of the burden (“do more heavy lifting”) while not acknowledging to Canadians that many NATO allies disagree with the policy. Instead of simply pulling out, such NATO partners as Italy, Germany, and France offered limited assistance largely for PR purposes, with the “caveat” that troop deployments will be restricted to the relatively safe areas of northern Afghanistan. Yet this half-hearted presence enables our politicians to repeat ad nauseam that we are part of a multilateral force under NATO, and not simply following George W. Bush. Most Quebecers are ahead in recognizing this line to be false, since all foreign troops are under the overarching operation called “Enduring Freedom.” If Hamid Karzai was not Bush’s man in Kabul, he would not be in power. In a recent poll, 62% of Quebecers expressed the belief that we are in Afghanistan “to please the Bush administration, not to defend democracy.” (3)

It is a simple matter for officials from the US-NATO coalition to demonize our enemies while ignoring the crimes committed by our current allies, the Northern Alliance. In 2001, the US responded to the defiance of the Taliban by taking sides with their equally unsavory enemies in a country that endured a devastating civil war (1992- 1996). How did this help Afghans? Most Afghans want the unindicted war criminals and warlords in Hamid Karzai’s cabinet to be brought to justice, not supported by the West.

When Scheffer exaggerated our aid efforts, CBC radio’s Carol Off surprised him by accurately citing the outrageous ten to one ratio of military spending to aid. He could only respond with a lame concession that “Well, military operations are expensive as you know....” Ms. Off had clearly recalled the most recent report by the non-profit Senlis Council (May 29), which criticized Western occupying forces and the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) for their limited aid to starving Afghans. (4) By indicting the Harper government for its misplaced priorities, Senlis caused the Canadian military and CIDA to bristle, but they could not refute the fact that the ratio of military aid to humanitarian assistance is indeed 10 -1.

After the latest Senlis report, the fatuous claim that terrorists are trying to hold back “progress” is unsustainable. Canada’s total aid development package amounts to only 6 million dollars. Most of this reconstruction is in the capital, Kabul, where the “important” Afghans reside: our collaborators, those who hope to oversee pipeline production schemes. One such route is dubbed the “new Silk Road,” and stretches from Uzbekistan to Pakistan, via Kabul.

Scheffer also complained on CBC radio (June 21) about the misplaced media focus on the recent “dramatic deaths of three Canadian soldiers” (5) instead of focusing on the reconstruction and development work. In this he echoed Gen. Pervez Musharraf, who told Canadians in 2006 to “grow up” and accept military casualties in wartime. Canada is indeed getting its hands dirty, allied with such “democrats” as Gen. Musharraf and “President-select” Hamid Karzai.

Recently, half of Afghans surveyed by Senlis predicted that NATO will lose this counterinsurgency war. Currently, US-NATO forces have pre-empted the Taliban’s spring offensive, yet the result has been an increase in violence on both sides. Within the past few weeks in Afghanistan, hundreds of civilians have been killed, mostly by US airstrikes. (Scheffer falsely claimed that most civilians had been killed by the Taliban.)

A US intelligence report on Afghanistan was released early this year. It shows a dramatic rise in suicide bombings, roadside bombing attacks, and direct attacks with small arms; in some cases, attacks tripled in frequency. For example, direct attacks (1500 in total by late 2005) have tripled to more than 4500 attacks in the past two years. It appears obvious that NATO is not winning the hearts and minds of Afghans, as has been claimed.

Behind the rhetoric, both Canada and our NATO allies support the geopolitical strategy of Bush-Cheney to stabilize projected pipeline routes by propping up an unpopular regime in Kabul. Karzai’s praetorian guard must be entirely composed of foreign troops: he will not allow any Afghans near him. If Bush-Cheney want Karzai in Kabul, the insurgents now represent the Afghan majority by wanting him out. Not surprisingly, the insurgents have misgivings about seeing their country turned into a site for oil and gas trans-shipment.

Everyone acknowledges that “Operation Enduring Freedom” is not a peacekeeping, but a war-fighting mission. Clearly, since the beginning of the US-led operation, Afghans have endured enough of what we call “freedom.” In a brutal counterinsurgency war, the advantage is always on the side of the guerrillas. If helping Afghans is the goal, our troops should be present as part of a peacekeeping force that does not take sides between warring factions. Genuine humanitarian aid workers — not soldiers posing as aid workers in Provincial Reconstruction Teams — would then be able to do their work. Meanwhile, we could support our troops by having a national celebration — after bringing them home from a misguided mission.

In addition to his academic writing, Richard Alan Leach has written for a variety of progressive publications, including Briarpatch and analyses for globalresearch.ca.He has also written numerous magazine and newspaper articles and book reviews.