Afghanistan - its Canada’s quagmire and killing field

February 18, 2007

Canadian troops shot and killed another innocent Afghan civilian this weekend - at the same time that another report by the highly regarded Senlis Council (see CanWest story) came out declaring that Canada’s “mission” in Afghanistan is doomed to fail and is a recipe for losing friends and making enemies.

This provides a good opportunity to get the Afghan war issue back in the news. Much of the opposition to the war was based on a spate of Canadian deaths and casualties and the military has clearly made enormous efforts to reduce those casualties - in part by being extremely aggressive towards any potential insurgents, shooting first and asking questions later.

But the main reason for opposing this immoral war is that it is hurting, killing and maiming Afghanis and doing nothing to improve their lives. This fact is being buried by the Harper govt and by a shamelessly complicit media, including the CBC, which is bending over backwards to make the war look like a humanitarian mission.

Write a short letter to the editor (click here for list of MPs) reminding Canadians that nothing has changed in Afghanistan except that Canadian soldiers are no long coming home in body bags. The fate of the Afghan people has not changed.

FRAMING: The Harper government and its trigger-happy military chief Rick Hellier have learned nothing from last year’s disastrous approach to its Afghan “mission.” Our military command is still killing innocent civilians, still focused blindly in war-fighting, and deliberately ignoring all the lessons of counter-insurgency. The most obvious result of our presence there: hundreds more recruits for the Taliban - and ultimately more Canadian casualties.

Some key finding of the Senlis Council report, based on 500 interviews of Afghanis over the past two months by a team of researchers (these are mostly lifted from the news article below - quotes are from the report itself). Choose two or three examples for your letters.

• the name of the study: “Countering the Insurgency in Afghanistan: Losing Friends and Making Enemies..”

• Canada and its allies in Afghanistan are waging a losing war against the Taliban that's killed thousands of innocent civilians, harmed the reputation of coalition forces and fuelled support for the insurgency

• coalition governments have failed to heed the fundamental rule that a counter-insurgency can't be won at the point of a gun, but rather with policies to win the trust and confidence of local people.

• failed coalition policies -- such as the bombing of villages, the poppy eradication program and the lack of school or hospital construction -- are directly responsible "for the rise of the insurgency."

• coalition governments have shown a "blatant disregard for established counter-insurgency theories," and their continuing mistakes have generated an army of "resentful and poor young men who cannot feed their families.
  
  "Through these misguided policies, the international community has turned southern Afghanistan into a recruitment camp for the Taliban."

• in southern Afghanistan, where it says NATO carried out more than 2,000 bombing attacks in 2006, leading to the deaths of an estimated 4,000 civilians.

• NATO makes no effort to provide medical care to wounded civilians -- a violation of the Geneva Conventions ... hospitals in the capitals of Kandahar and Helmand provinces remain "dilapidated, barren and filthy," and lack "basic war zone trauma treatment, medical diagnostic equipment, medicines, oxygen, and trained staff."

• Canada’s approach to the war is changing it from a fight against a small Taliban force to a grass roots insurgency –  insurgents are recruited because of grinding poverty, or because of resentment bred by coalition actions.

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