The Dominion - afghanistan

Canada, Afghanistan, and Wikileaks

Tim McSorley — Wed, 29 Sep 2010 10:27:33 +0000

Afghanistan's Troubled Election

Ariel Nasr — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 20:37:27 +0000

The Afghan Election Complaints Commission (ECC), with Canadian UN appointee Grant Kippen at it's helm, has published the first results of it's investigation into fraud in the presidential election, held on August 20th. On Thursday the commission announced it would throw out the ballots from 83 Afghan polling stations, where there is definite evidence of fraud. 51 of the problem stations were in Kandahar, 27 in Ghazni, and five in Paktika, according to ECC press releases. Of the 2300 complaints the ECC has received, the largest group concern irregularities at the polls, including ballot box stuffing. Other common complaints include allegations of intimidation, and lack of access to the polls, particularly for women. The ECC investigation is ongoing and could result in a fresh election.

Currently, as vote tallying continues, the three front runners in the presidential election are the incumbent Hamed Karzai with 54.1%, Dr. Abdullah Abdullah with 28 %, and Ramazan Bashardost with 9.2 %. 91.6% of polling stations have been tallied, so the counting is almost done, but further investigations into fraud could change things significantly. According to electoral law, if Karzai doesn't receive at least 50% of the valid votes, there will have to be a run-off election this fall. If enough ballots are invalidated as a result of the ECC investigation, Karzai could lose his current winning position, and fall below the necessary 50%.

Butcher and Bolt

dawn — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 05:45:30 +0000

Why "special forces" fail in Afghanistan, from Churchill to Obama

VANCOUVER—With the ongoing enlargement of US forces in Afghanistan—expected to include a 29 per cent increase in special forces—observers reasonably expect a corresponding rise in violence in that country. But if history is any guide, the augmented firepower may also bring more of a particular brand of counterinsurgency.

As early as 2007, reports emerged of a vicious special forces attack on civilians in Helmand province. Villagers from Toube, in a remote area near the Pakistan border, claimed that foreign special forces along with Afghan soldiers entered the village in a helicopter late at night and proceeded to enter homes and kill civilians on the spot.

Locals interviewed by Afghan journalists "spoke consistently of soldiers breaking down doors, shooting children and cutting throats," and claimed as many as 18 civilians were killed. The accusations were ignored by the international press.

In Winston Churchill's day, such tactics were known as "butcher and bolt" operations and involved indiscriminate attacks on Pashtun villages, leaving crops and homes burned. Circa 1897, the young Churchill's unit, stationed on the edge of British India, were practitioners of the art. Later in his career, Churchill would recommend their use, by name, against the coastal towns of occupied Europe.

But savagery against the Afghan enemy was a feature of British policy from day one, going back to the First Anglo-Afghan War, whose failures would be repeated twice more at 40-year intervals.

The First Anglo-Afghan War ended in 1842 with a storm of English revenge for an infamous incident where the British garrison forces at Kabul were massacred as they retreated. The "Army of Retribution," led by General Nott, was duly dispatched from British India for the purpose of "re-establishing our reputation," in the words of the Governor General. With their reputation at stake the British forces set to work, and several months of savagery reached its climax in an attack on a village north of Kabul where British-led forces killed every adult male and raped and killed many women.

The Second Anglo-Afghan War saw General Roberts' still-remembered "reign of terror" in Kabul. In 1880, as the war was winding down, Pashtun forces met the British in Helmand in the Battle of Maiwand, wiping them out. The retreating Brits then occupied the city of Kandahar, ousting its 8000 civilian inhabitants while they prepared retribution.

Despite history's lessons, and in the face of Afghan opposition, US president Barack Obama is going to ramp up the war. "Most of the Afghans interviewed," writes veteran correspondent Pamela Constable, "said they would prefer a negotiated settlement with the insurgents to an intensified military campaign."

Skeptical responses to the surge don't end with its civilian recipients. Even some American officers and military theorists who championed the surge doctrine's use in Iraq are "divided" over its applicability in Afghanistan, according to counterinsurgency specialist Andrew Exum.

Neither is it the case that troop surges have not yet been tried in the current conflict. The results have been consistent—namely, an increase in insurgent violence commensurate with the build-up of foreign troops in the country. Civilian casualties have inevitably followed the surge in violence, hence the opposition of the Afghan population to another troop surge. There is little reason to expect a different result this time around.

This apparent disconnect between tactics and expected results has spread, along with the war, into Pakistan. A recent New York Times report cites "CIA veterans" in Pakistan who warn that Predator strikes "won't undermine, and may promote, the psychology of anti-American militancy" which is already on the rise.

While civilian casualties are widely considered the most important determinant of success for the counterinsurgency effort, there too the US-led war machine is out of touch. While we are regretful when we kill civilians, goes the Pentagon line, we must remember that we do so by accident. The Taliban, on the other hand, do so on purpose, revealing the depths of evil in which they lurk.

Yet Pashtun civilians see it decidedly differently. In their view, violence against civilians is mainly the fault of the US/NATO occupation. As a correspondent with substantial recent experience in the country explains, "[I]t does not matter if the victim was killed by the Taliban, US forces or Nato soldiers. Relatives of the dead now usually blame the government and the occupation for their loss."

Nor does the highest law of the land support the Pentagon stance. International law makes no distinction between deliberate attacks on civilians, which western military leaders often accuse the Taliban of committing, and indiscriminate attacks. "From the standpoint of the law of international armed conflict," notes a leading legal scholar, "there is no genuine difference between a premeditated attack against civilians (or civilian objects) and a reckless disregard of the principle of distinction; they are equally forbidden."

None of this vital context gets coverage or commentary in the mass media, which prefers stories about helpful occupation soldiers whose victory is imminent. Amnesty International's recent assessment of the war in Afghanistan might therefore shock any North American news editor: "Violations of international humanitarian and human rights law were committed with impunity by all parties, including Afghan and international security forces and insurgent groups. All sides carried out indiscriminate attacks, which included aerial bombardments" by NATO and US-led forces.

In spite of impending violence and disaster, the Obama administration and its international partners will persevere in bringing more misery to a terrorized land. As the staid publication The Economist predicted last year: "If America fails in Afghanistan, as it might, it will be remembered there for killing children."

Dave Markland lives in Vancouver where he organizes with StopWar.ca and edits a blog at stopwarblog.blogspot.com.

Helmand Afghanistan Sand

Helmand Afghanistan Mountains

The ongoing outsourcing in Afghanistan

Amy Miller — Fri, 29 May 2009 13:54:23 +0000

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The ongoing outsourcing in Afghanistan

Canada’s Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT) in Kandahar, Afghanistan will not be put in harms way, despite the oft-repeated political promise that all of Canada’s ground troops will be withdrawn by 2011. The responsibility of the security of these specialists-contractors themselves- will instead be provided by private companies, who will need to go through a selection process, according to Canada’s Ambassador to Afghanistan Ron Hoffmann who spoke to journalists via video-conference, earlier this week.

This is not the first time that the Canadian government has decided to hire private security companies in Afghanistan. The British based firm, Saladin Security , has been protecting the Canadian Embassy in Kabul for many years, while many Afghan contractors including warlords, have been hired to protects convoys of Canadian personnel or provide a "security cordon" for high risk situations, such as roadside bombs going off.

Obama's Afghan plan

Van Ferrier — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 00:30:06 +0000

Roy Gutman, Foreign Editor of McClatchy Newspapers says Obama's announcement last week of his strategy in Afghanistan is unprecedented and is a "very good start." He says the problem has been that, "the United States has not had an integrated strategy for stabilizing Afghanistan and Pakistan."

The rights of women in Afghanistan

Van Ferrier — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 00:28:31 +0000

Mavis Leno of Feminist Majority on the need for Obama to focus on the rights of Afghan women. Mavis has been the chair of the Feminist Majority Foundation's Campaign to Stop Gender Apartheid in Afghanistan since 1997.

The secrets of Obama's surge

Van Ferrier — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 00:27:17 +0000

President Obama's highly anticipated new strategy for what the Pentagon now calls AfPak - Afghanistan and Pakistan - is full of grey areas. Most extra troops will be deployed to poppy-growing areas, not to fight al-Qaeda, the President's stated number one objective. The President talks about building trust - but as the US cannot trust the Pakistani ISI, the Pakistani people don't trust the US or even their own government.

Why are we in Afghanistan?

Van Ferrier — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 00:26:32 +0000

The Real News Cafe: Recorded live at the Gladstone in Toronto, a Real News panel takes on the Afghan war This is the first segment of a multi-part series on the Afghan war. Other segments will follow throughout the week.

Dangerous decisions in Afghanistan Pt. 1

Van Ferrier — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 00:22:13 +0000

Sharmini Peries speaks with Senior Analyst Aijaz Ahmad about the dangers of the long-term US involvement in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Ahmad says the only way for Obama to proceed in the region is to withdraw US military presence there and strengthen regional powers for a stable Afghanistan.

Fredericton rallies together for women of Afghanistan

Tracy Glynn — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 21:21:01 +0000

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Fredericton rallies together for women of Afghanistan
March 24, 2009
By Jessi MacEachern

This past Saturday, people of the Fredericton community gathered together for a cause that hits hard locally, but is in fact dedicated to communities nearly 10,000 kilometres away.

The Fredericton Peace Coalition, the UNB/STU University Women’s Centre, NB RebELLEs-Fredericton, and CUSO-VSO joined together to host Fredericton’s third Annual Benefit for the Revolutionary Association of Women in Afghanistan (RAWA).

RAWA began in Kabul, Afghanistan in 1977 under the leadership of Meena, an activist who was eventually assassinated for her advocacy against Afghanistan’s fundamentalist forces.

Today, RAWA continues to thrive as a political and social organization of Afghan women struggling for peace, freedom, democracy, and women’s rights. Knowing freedom and democracy can never be donated, what is needed from members of a community like Fredericton is solidarity and support.

Saturday’s lineup brought local talent to the auditorium stage of the Charlotte Street Arts Centre. The evening started off with a reception of free beverages and finger foods, accompanied by the soothing musical notes of Mark Currie, Tom Whidden, Brian Calder, and Matt Leger.

As these first musicians played, guests were encouraged to bid on the silent auction items displayed along one side of the room—a collection of art supplies, reading materials, tea sets, jewelry, kids’ items, gift certificates and more, entirely donated by the greater Fredericton community.

Myths for Profit: Canada's Role in Industries of War and Peace

Amy Miller — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 19:22:02 +0000

DN interview with Jeremy Hinzman

dawn — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 02:57:14 +0000

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This morning on Democracy Now! Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez did an excellent interview with Jeremy Hinzman, the first US war resister to seek asylum in Canada. Last Wednesday, Canadian border services ordered Jeremy and his family to leave Canada by September 23rd.

From the interview: "...on June 3rd, the Canadian parliament passed a non-binding motion by a vote of 137-to-110 saying that US war resisters should be able to remain in Canada. However, the conservative government is refusing to enact the legislation."

"Right now, there’s a conservative minority government. Canada has a parliamentary system, and they hold the balance of power. And I wouldn’t say they’re lapdogs to the US, but they share many of the same values of the Bush administration and aren’t really sympathetic to what we’re doing."

Photo by R. Whitlock.

Malalai Joya on Canada's Afghan Mission

Stuart Neatby — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 16:11:54 +0000

Rabble.ca's Derrick O'Keefe recently gathered a significant statement by Malalai Joya, one of the more courageous and heroic political figures in Afghanistan today. She makes the memorable statement below about the billions of dollars in military spending and aid money which has effectively been squandered in Afghanistan by the run-away corruption of the Karzai government.

The Congressional Budget Office says that the U.S. will spend $2.4 trillion over the next ten years on the "war on terror." If they instead spent this money properly and honestly, not only would Iraq and Afghanistan be made into heaven but, also, world poverty would be eliminated.

Definitely worth the read!

Radio Tadamon! Facing Racism in Quebec.

Stefan Christoff — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 06:39:30 +0000

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Download / Podcast the program HERE.

In Canada, a state commission on “Reasonable Accommodation” regarding the rights of minorities and new immigrants in Quebec has created a storm of controversy. This edition of Radio Tadamon! features Indu Vashist, a community organizer in Montreal and May Hayder of Al-Hidaya Association presenting alternative perspectives on ‘Reasonable Accommodation’ to the government sponsored commission...

From Occupied Afghanistan

Stuart Neatby — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 16:53:37 +0000

Part I: An Interview with Mike Skinner and Hamayon Ragstar

Mike Skinner and Hamayon Ragstar spent one and three months, respectively, in Afghanistan in the late spring/summer of 2007 on a fact-finding trip investigating the effect of the Canadian and International mission on Afghan civilian life. Mike Skinner is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of political science at York University and is also a member of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers and the Canadian Union of Public Employees. Hamayon is an Afghan-Canadian who experienced a foreign occupation under the Soviet Union first hand. He is finishing his last year as a political science student at York University, and has a thorough understanding of Afghan politics and history. They have, along with fellow-researcher Angela Joya, recently formed the Afghanistan-Canadian Research Group. Their fact-finding trip represents the first phase of their work.

Kabir Joshi-Vijayan recently interviewed Skinner and Ragstar in Toronto for The Dominion about their reflections and conclusions coming out of the fact-finding mission.

The Dominion: To begin, what was the objective of this trip you undertook to Afghanistan? What were you hoping to investigate?

Mike Skinner: The principal objective was to do an activist documentary film that asks Afghans what they think of the international intervention. We really wanted to listen to Afghans who don’t get heard in the West. We listened to people on the street, we listened to students in the university and in teachers college, shopkeepers, and teachers. That was really the intent, to hear Afghans who don’t get heard.

And what parts of Afghanistan were you able to visit?

Hamayon Ragstar: We spent lots of time in Kabul city and walked around the neighbourhoods. We went to Kabul University a few times. Mike and I went to Bamiyan – we spent about a week in Bamiyan. From Bamiyan, we also went to Yakaolang (which is a few hours away from the Bamiyan valley) – and we went back to Kabul from there. We spent one day in Ghazni, and before Mike’s arrival I went to Ghazni and Jaghori. Later I also went to Mazar and Kundus and I spent about 4-5 hours in Khandahar

Did you have any direct interaction with any of the foreign forces present (ISAF, NATO, the US-coalition) and were you able to speak particularly with any Canadian soldiers or commanders?

MS: Our most direct personal experience is when we almost got killed at one point.

We were in a taxicab in downtown Kabul and our cabdriver wasn’t looking as he pulled out into an intersection and almost ran into an ISAF (International Security Assistance Force) convoy. As he said, fortunately they were Turks. If they had been Canadians or Americans, they would have shot us if we had gotten as close to a convoy as we did. My door was literally a few inches from this military vehicle that almost hit us, so that was our closest experience with ISAF.

In Kabul itself ISAF is always visible, but it’s not an overpowering presence either. The Afghan Army and National police are far more evident in most places. We were staying on a main highway from Kabul to Khandahar and we’d certainly see Afghan army and ISAF convoys regularly coming back and forth on that highway. Just a few days after I arrived, we actually saw in the distance, a couple of kilometres away, one of the ISAF convoys hit by a remote control explosive device that blew up a vehicle. So as we were having breakfast we saw the smoke cloud from the explosion. A few seconds later we felt the concussion shake the building that we were in. The reports were that an American was killed in the convoy and that other soldiers in the convoy opened fire on innocent civilians who were just passing by the residential area where the convoy was hit.

We would have actually liked to meet some of the Canadians there. I tried to arrange something, to try and meet with some of the Canadian soldiers, but it was a difficult situation. Also it is hard to cross the line from talking to Afghan people and then talking to soldiers. So we really didn’t have any direct contact with Canadian troops or any other western forces. In a number of informal situations, we were able to talk with military contractors who were quite informative, but talked off record.

What did you see/hear of civilian deaths while there?

MS: I think on a daily, or almost daily basis during the time that I was there, there were news reports of civilian causalities. By far, the greater number of those casualties were caused by western forces in a number of different ways. I already mentioned the hit convoy – where by retaliation or fear or reaction in the moment, the soldiers blindly fired into a crowd. There have also been many cases of deliberate targeting from the air or air attacks – this is often when there’s a ground battle going on and the ground troops call in for air support; air support comes in and they are not necessarily firing at the right targets. There was one case when I was there where a mosque was targeted in Paktia. It was one of the two eastern provinces where there were several young girls that were killed in a mosque. So we were hearing these reports on a regular, probably a daily basis.

We also need to keep in mind that our military is causing far more damage than just civilian deaths. Many people who are injured do die later or suffer miserably. Many people are forced to become refugees when their homes and livelihoods are destroyed. Large areas of the countryside have become uninhabitable because of the war. We were told that the Canadian military is forcing evacuations of villages. Many people also suffer human rights abuses such as home invasions, arbitrary arrest and detention.

We occasionally hear about some of the worst cases of civilian deaths in the Canadian media, but most of the damage our military is doing remains undocumented.

Through the interviews and discussions you were able to have with regular Afghans - what were their perceptions of the international mission? How did they view the initial invasion, and how do they see the current military occupation?

MS: There were mixed reactions. When we were doing the actual interviews, some people wholly supported the invasion and occupation, and there were people that didn’t. There were some people that were fully against it from the beginning –and they had a really good analysis for that. There were also a large group of people –now I haven’t gone through the tapes and added up the numbers- but I think that probably the largest number of people actually had some really mixed feelings; a lot of people said initially they’d hoped there would be some progressive change. The Taliban were a repressive regime, certainly an incredibly anti-woman regime so people held out hope for some progressive change. But that hope has dissipated in the past 6 years because those changes have not occurred.

Conflicts between various colonial and imperial powers have been key in shaping Afghanistan’s history- whether this was colonial Britain and Russia, or the social imperialist Soviet Union against the US in the 70’s and 80’s. Do inter-imperial rivalries have a role in the current conflict?

MS: There are certainly many indications that they do, and there are a number of players in the mix now. Russia is still very important in the region, China is aggressively moving beyond its borders and Afghanistan is a neighbour of China, Pakistan and India which are all regional players in this. Iran is very important, there is also Saudi Arabia, which has been a big player in Afghanistan for a long time. The United Arab Emirates are very influential as well, along with all the western states aligned with the United States that are playing a big part. And certainly Canada has some real interest, and I expect particularly economically in mining in Afghanistan – because there are some very rich mining resources that are largely unexploited. I’m sure Canadian mining companies would love to get in there and get their hands on it. However, that is not what was driving the invasion. It’s one of those side benefits; while we’re there, let’s make some money by developing those mines.

A number of ‘progressive’ forces in Canada and elsewhere, such as the Senlis Council and the NDP, often draw a distinction between the ‘developmental’ and military role Canada plays in Afghanistan- claiming that the re-construction and developmental aid we are lending is playing a positive role. What evidence did you see of Canadian developmental projects while you were there- and do you agree with this distinction?

MS: There’s a new developmental concept, a 3-D approach. It’s supposed to balance defence, diplomacy, development- and actually this concept of provincial reconstruction teams that is being applied in both Iraq and Afghanistan is supposed to do this- where you have the military and development agencies actually working hand in hand in the same base going out and working together.

We asked for a list of CIDA projects from the Canadian embassy in Afghanistan and they said they would contact us and we never heard back from them. We stumbled across one CIDA project that was an artificial insemination project – with a sign on an office – it was closed and the windows were broken. That was the only CIDA project we actually found on our own, but we didn’t go looking very hard, we kind of stumbled across it.

There was an interesting situation in Bamiyan. A New Zealand Provincial Reconstruction Team- a PRT base, a typical military base- a well-fortified military base, had a large airstrip so that planes could come in and out and it was on a high point of land, a plateau above the town of Bamiyan, about 8 km out of the town. And they did build a development project; they built a high school for girls. But they didn’t build it in the town of Bamiyan; they built it immediately below the base so that the workers at the base would be protected by the military. Bamiyan has been one of the most stable regions since the invasion. This is the town where the Taliban destroyed the giant statues of the Buddha. But since 2001, the Taliban has been gone. It’s a Hazara ethnic area - and the Hazara have really acquiesced to the occupation, and there’s been to my knowledge no attacks on coalition forces or ISAF in this area, so there’s not a big security problem - it’s as stable as it’s going to get. The school was built immediately beside the base below this plateau so as to provide security. It’s a clear shot from the base down to this area, with a clear view of the surrounding valley and a good secure place to build this thing. However, it is a 16 km round-trip walk for the girls from Bamiyan to get to the school and back, and you get pretty severe winters in this area as well. It’s not the ideal place to put the school; it should have been in town.

The university student who pointed it out to me said that this is just typical of the way these projects are – it was obviously considering the interests of the people who built this and not considering the interest of the Afghans who actually have to use it – and it was done without the consultation of the people who live in the area.

Along with development, the Afghan government is also constantly used as a justification for maintaining the occupation. We are told that the current government represents a vast improvement from the time of the Taliban- and that international troops are needed to support and help it. What changes in the government have we actually seen since the Taliban?

Hamayon Ragstar: I don’t think anything substantially has changed since the time of the Taliban – the Taliban was representing the feudal comprador ruling class of Afghanistan – especially the Pashtun ruling classes. This current government is again representing the ruling classes of Afghanistan and is directly at the service of an imperialist occupation. There have been some very minor cosmetic changes. This government is giving some positions of power to the non-Pashtun nationalities - the Taliban didn’t. This government is giving some symbolic positions to women – the Taliban didn’t bother with those kind of things. But I would say all these changes are cosmetic changes, there is nothing substantial. For example, the imperialists during the invasion talked a lot about the issue of women and in that regard have given to some women individuals and groups some positions in the ranks of the puppet regime; this has nothing to do with rights of women of Afghanistan, rather it is purely for the purpose of turning the question of women a political tool at the service of imperialist occupation. It’s still a chauvinist government - a male chauvinist government, an ethnic chauvinist government. It’s a theocratic government. Taliban was a single party theocracy; this government is a multi-party theocracy.

This government also states in its constitution that no law shall be put into place in Afghanistan that is in contradiction to Sharia law – and Sharia law is obviously not very friendly towards women or religious minorities. I would say there is no change substantially from the time of the Taliban. On so many levels this government is worse than the Taliban. For example, this government is more corrupt. There was no bribery during the Taliban’s time- it was much cleaner on those issues. However, in this government, from the President to the very low ranking officials of the government, everyone is taking bribes – so it is much, much more corrupt than the Taliban ever was.

[Continue reading in part II of the interview]

To read the dispatches written by Mike from Afghanistan and to learn more about the Afghanistan-Canadian Research Group visit: http://www.tuaw.ca/other/dispatch0.html

Teashop