War

Bring the troops home now!

Canada is undeniably part of an illegal occupation of Afghanistan, one that can only, on balance, be destructive to that nation and bring harm to Afghanis

By Michael Nenonen

A February 2006 Strategic Council poll found that 62% of Canadians opposed Canada’s involvement in Afghanistan. Since then, we’ve been clobbered with pro-occupation propaganda. Despite the hype, Canada’s involvement in Afghanistan isn’t ethically justified.

We attacked Afghanistan as part of the War on Terror, but the Taliban wasn’t a terrorist organization. As Eric Margolis indicates in his April 2 2006 column for the Toronto Sun, entitled “Don’t Expect to Change the Afghanis,” the Taliban movement was a response to the anarchy left in the wake of the war with the Soviets. That war killed over one million Afghanis, wounded more than four million, and created six million refugees. Once the Soviets withdrew in 1989, the United States, which had pumped billions of dollars into Mujahideen resistance, abandoned the nation to lawlessness and destitution. In the face of widespread and escalating carnage, a Pushtin village prayer leader named Mullah Omar armed a group of “talibs,”or religious students, and set them to work trying to re-establish order throughout the country. For all their religious fanaticism, the Taliban weren’t foreign occupiers interested only in exploiting the country; they were indigenous to Afghanistan and devoted to its reconstruction.

Margolis states that the United States was initially receptive to the Taliban’s takeover. In fact, Washington was giving millions of dollars in aid to the Taliban government until four months before the 2001 invasion. The aid was only terminated after the Taliban refused to give a US oil firm a lucrative deal to build a strategic pipeline. Of course, once the US had installed Hamid Karzai’s puppet government, the deal went ahead as planned.

There’s no evidence that the Taliban leadership knew anything about the 9-11 plot, or that they were conspiring with al-Qaeda. They even offered to turn prime suspect Osama Bin Laden over to an international tribunal on the condition that the Untied States present some evidence of his involvement in the attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Centre. The United States chose instead to invade Afghanistan in an operation known as Enduring Freedom. The invasion was undoubtedly aimed at furthering the United States’ geopolitical and economic influence in Central Asia. As Afghanistan didn’t pose a threat to any Western government, this was clearly an unprovoked war of aggression. Unlike its NATO counterpart called the International Security Assistance Force, Enduring Freedom’s never been explicitly sanctioned by the United Nations, and it may well be in violation of the UN Charter.

Our government is increasing our deployment in Afghanistan to over 2,200 troops this year. The vast majority of our forces are over there as part of Enduring Freedom. This means that most of our soldiers are in the country as invaders and occupiers, rather than as peacekeepers. It also means that Canada is implicated in whatever human rights abuses are committed by any military forces participating in Enduring Freedom, regardless of the nation those forces are from.

Thus, when hundreds of Taliban prisoners were suffocated or shot to death in metal truck containers while being taken by US and Northern Alliance soldiers to Sherbeghan prison, Canada shared a portion of the blame. Similarly, when Afghanis are rounded up and sent without trial to be tortured at Guantanamo Bay or the even more savage Bagram prison, Canada must be held partially accountable for their torment. Canada is also directly responsible for the innocent civilians killed by its forces in Afghanistan, such as Nasrat Ali, a taxi driver who was gunned down by Canadian forces while on his way home from a dinner with relatives. His son, Nisir Ahmed, was in the taxi at the time. According to Ahmed, the Canadian forces gave Nasrat Ali no warning before they opened fire, and then refused Ahmed’s request to take his father to the hospital.

The occupation’s apologists remind us that Karzai’s government has asked Canadian forces to stay in Afghanistan. They overlook the fact that the Karzai government was put in place by the United States; Karzai and his colleagues were all hand-picked by the US. The elections that rubber-stamped his regime were deeply flawed, and perhaps rigged. The US spent a great deal of money bribing warlords to support the government, and because of this alliance the country’s economy is once again dominated by the poppy harvest. Karzai knows that without foreign support his regime would quickly collapse, and so his first allegiance is not to the Afghani people, but rather to his American masters. The Karzai regime has all the legitimacy of a mafia operation. How, then, can this government’s endorsement help justify the occupation?

The apologists warn that the occupation must continue because the country would descend into violence if the occupiers left. Although it’s likely that chaos would follow the removal of occupation forces, the same is true in the aftermath of nearly any occupation. This argument implicitly justifies all occupations, regardless of their circumstances, and must therefore by rejected. I’m sure that violence would ensue if China withdrew from Tibet, but this doesn’t legitimize the Chinese occupation. We should also consider the chaos that the occupation is itself creating. Occupations breed resentment and resistance, and nowhere more so than in Afghanistan. Throughout their history, the Afghanis have driven out every army that’s tried to occupy their territory. Afghani insurgencies have been fortified by centuries of experience. The longer Canada stays in Afghanistan, the more brutal and widespread the resistance will become, and the more tempting a target Canada will be for terrorist attacks. Afghanistan may turn out to be Canada’s Viet Nam, or, more to the point, Canada’s Iraq.

Finally, the apologists argue that our forces are engaged in reconstruction work, and that this work must be allowed to continue. It’s certainly true that besides hunting down insurgents, our forces are building some schools and hospitals. Even so, the size and shape of Afghanistan’s health, education, and social services will be determined by organizations like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, institutions that have a notorious track record in Third World countries. Regardless of how many buildings Canadians erect, Afghanistan simply won’t be allowed to develop a public service infrastructure that serves the majority of the country’s people. Furthermore, under the occupation the reconstruction will primarily benefit foreign corporations, often at the expense of the Afghanis. For example, in the midst of a profound housing shortage, reconstruction funds are being used to build opulent hotels like the Serena in Kabul. While foreign investors may enjoy 5-star accommodations during their trips to the country, the people of Afghanistan will continue living in squalor.

If we truly want to help Afghanis rebuild their shattered society, we should withdraw our forces and start paying reparations for our crimes against their country. Canada’s participation in Enduring Freedom is a terrible mistake. Our troops should come home, and they should come home now.