Most comments about Afghanistan made by Peter McKay, Canada’s foreign minister, his critics on the opposition benches, and media commentators reporting on both, get the recent history of that country all wrong. As compelling as their humanitarian story is, and as convenient as it is to continue justifying Canada’s Liberal-initiated and Conservative-sustained offensive military deployment there, its inaccuracies ensure nothing good will come of our involvement.

The wrong story about Afghanistan begins with false accusations of Afghan government involvement in the events of 9/11 levelled by the untrustworthy neo-con cabal ensconced in the White House following George W Bush’s inauguration in January 2001. In fact, there has never been any evidence of substantial cooperation by the Afghan government with al Qaeda soldiers in camps located within Afghan borders. The truth is, until it was overthrown, the annual budget of the Afghan government, overseeing a population of up to 20 million people spread over a landmass roughly the size of Texas, was less than the budget for the City of Vancouver. Outside of Kabul, Kandahar, and other larger cities, there wasn’t any government in any significant sense of the word . Large portions of the border as we see it drawn in atlases are a convenience of the publishers and don’t exist in reality. The notion that the existence of terrorist camps within those borders can suggest the government of Afghanistan was complicit in crimes alleged to have been perpetrated by those terrorists, makes little sense when viewed against this reality. Insofar as al Qaeda was based in Afghanistan, it was surely operating autonomously from the central government, insofar as there was one.

They didn’t do nothing wrong

The wrong story builds on this ludicrous notion by asserting that the government of Afghanistan blocked US attempts to apprehend al Qaeda soldiers following 9/11. In fact, the government of Afghanistan made a very widely reported offer to try to arrest individuals named by the US and to hand them over to a third party for a criminal trial. This offer was rejected out-of-hand by American officials on the grounds that the offer could not be trusted—because the government of Afghanistan was said to be complicit in crimes said to be committed by al Qaeda! The tautology was lost on all media reporting on the event.

Canadian officials and media commentators today repeat over and over again that the world community of nations affirmed the righteousness of the US bombing and invasion of Afghanistan through the auspices of a United Nations resolution. In fact, as the US readied its assault on Afghanistan, most of the world recoiled in horror, as did most Canadians. Only after the US bombed the country, invaded it, and installed an unpopular occupation regime in Kabul, did the United Nations consider the question of the legality of the American assault.

When the Americans began speaking of expanding the war immediately to Iraq, then Iran and North Korea, followed by a list containing no fewer than 77 other nations around the world, debates at the UN about how to respond took on a frantic tone, for unlike in Europe in 1938, there was no bigger outside power to appeal to with global war in the offing. War on Iraq was appearing as a fait accompli because there was, and still is, no combination of military powers strong enough to seriously confront the belligerent in Washington. Meanwhile in Afghanistan, conditions under the ill-planned American occupation were worsening, and aid agencies expected a flood of millions of refugees and massive starvation (as the Red Cross warned). This was the actual historical backdrop against which the United Nations considered taking over management of the rapidly collapsing situation in Afghanistan from the dangerously negligent Americans. Canada responded by choosing to deploy soldiers to Afghanistan partly to help that country more quickly rid itself of the dangerous and destructive American occupation. These were the conditions surrounding the UN resolution regarding Afghanistan.

Given the choice . . .

There are those who suggest the Americans purposefully mis-managed Afghanistan and deliberately invited a humanitarian catastrophe precisely in order to force allies to take over the occupation of the country to help free up American soldiers for the planned attack on Iraq. There is little doubt among Canadians that Chretien offered to send troops to Afghanistan in order to avoid being asked by the Americans to contribute troops to the Iraq misadventure, judged by our military analysts to be the far more dangerous and misguided deployment of the two, if we were forced to choose one.

Our leading political and media figures ignore all this real history and instead repeat the fabrication that Western military deployments to Afghanistan were prompted in part by the Afghan government’s failure to respect women’s rights, including failing to provide elementary school education to girls. This excuse was first offered up by First Lady Laura Bush, a laughable notion so quickly dismissed, the White House immediately abandoned it. Yet, it has come up again a few years later in Canadian debate about our deployment to Afghanistan, this time seriously.

Our political and media personalities repeat as though it were truth that the Taliban regime was destroying Afghanistan, pumping opium out to the hapless Western world, threatening neighbours with war, and was murdering and torturing its citizens with glee. The facts are that highway banditry, the biggest problem to the transportation-dependent economy in Afghanistan, had finally, under the Taliban, been largely halted. The opium industry had in fact been completely eradicated in the nine-tenths of the country the Taliban controlled (leaving opium grown only in that area of Afghanistan controlled by the Northern Alliance—the men who the Americans were to put in charge of the country later that year).

Neighbours Iran and Pakistan were thankful for the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, for it was the first time in decades they didn’t live with the risk of war and refugees overflowing into their own countries. The Taliban had settled down and chilled out a country that no one had been able to settle down before. And the Taliban, also perhaps for the first time in the country’s history, presented to Afghanis a government that could not be corrupted and did not engage in wanton murder and torture, mostly because the Taliban, backwards and repressive though they were, were also genuinely pious and ruled as though God were watching.

Taliban were and are popular

Finally, our political and media commentators perpetuate the lie that Afghans welcomed their liberation from the Taliban at the hands of Western powers like Canada, and that once our forces “mop up” the remaining resisters, all will be well there. In fact, among the 60% or so Pashtun majority throughout Afghanistan who are found outside of Kabul and the north of the country, the Taliban was, and remains, by all credible accounts, the government of choice. Little of the repressions our leaders frown on, like requirements for women to wear full burkas and for men to let their beards grow, were unwelcome by most Afghans, always a very conservative and morally oriented people. The ability of the Taliban to continue resisting foreign occupation for almost six years now indicates that they must be recruiting new soldiers, supplies, and moral support from among the families whom they ably represent in most of the country.

So far, Canadian troops, their political masters, and the media who report on them, have been stymied in their aims and in their rosy predictions for the country. That is because they have proceeded thus far on a severely incorrect understanding of Afghanistan. Once Canadian political leaders and Canadian media commentators begin to proceed from a more accurate account of the country and Canada’s involvement in it, our aims there—presumably being to bring peace and progress to the Afghan people—can be more effectively met.