PhilPaine.com

Cana­da is at war with Pak­istan. It is symp­to­matic of the stu­pid­i­ty, con­fu­sion and cow­ardice that has brought us into this sit­u­a­tion that hard­ly any­one in Cana­da seems to know it, and few of those are will­ing to admit it. In the Alice-In-Won­der­land log­ic of this new mil­len­ni­um, we are at war with a coun­try who is our declared ally. That coun­try’s dic­ta­tor toured our coun­try to loud applause, and cracked jokes on our tele­vi­sion talk shows. Few had the courage to point out the obvi­ous: Pakistan’s dic­ta­tor, Per­vez Mushar­raf, is con­duct­ing a ter­ror­ist war on Afghanistan, a coun­try which we are com­mit­ted to defend­ing, and it is his sur­ro­gates, con­fed­er­ates, and agents who are killing Cana­di­an sol­diers. He is armed with nuclear weapons, his repres­sive regime is the polar oppo­site of every­thing Cana­da is sup­posed to stand for, and he is attack­ing us, killing our cit­i­zens — and yet our lead­ers kiss his bum every chance they get. We are bow­ing and scrap­ing before the man who is killing our sol­diers. Wash­ing­ton has so declared, and our gov­ern­ment zeal­ous­ly obeys. That is what Prime Min­is­ter Harp­er con­sid­ers to be “sup­port­ing our troops”.

These are the facts:

The Tal­iban were armed and installed in Afghanistan by Musharraf’s dic­ta­tor­ship in Pak­istan, with the col­lu­sion of the Unit­ed States Gov­ern­ment. There, they insti­tut­ed a reign of ter­ror of hideous bar­barism. The Afghan peo­ple suf­fered great­ly under this regime, even more than they had suf­fered under Sovi­et imperialism.

Mushar­raf used the Tal­iban regime to house, fat­ten, and embold­en the ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tion known as Al-Kai­da. Pakistan’s mil­i­tary jun­ta, which has been allied to Amer­i­can Con­ser­v­a­tives since the time of Nixon and Kissinger, has been the prin­ci­pal fun­nel of funds to Al-Kai­da. Sau­di Ara­bia, the main source of these funds, has also been a beloved ally of Amer­i­can Conservatives.

Al-Kai­da attacked the Unit­ed States, killing thou­sands of Amer­i­cans. Instant­ly, Amer­i­can Con­ser­v­a­tives rushed to pro­tect the inter­ests of the crim­i­nal aris­toc­ra­cies of Sau­di Ara­bia and Pak­istan, who had financed and facil­i­tat­ed the attack on Amer­i­ca. Since the Amer­i­can pub­lic would not tol­er­ate inac­tion in such a sit­u­a­tion, Afghanistan was invad­ed, and the Tal­iban removed from the cap­i­tal and some regions of the country.

While Sau­di mon­ey and the Pak­istani mil­i­tary were the prin­ci­pal expe­diters, financiers and allies of the Tal­iban and Al-Kai­da, Amer­i­can Con­ser­v­a­tives declared that Mushar­raf and the Sau­di aris­toc­ra­cy were glo­ri­ous allies in the “war on ter­ror”. Mushar­raf con­tin­ued to shel­ter, arm, train and pro­tect both Al-Kai­da and the Tal­iban, grant­i­ng them strate­gic asy­lum in the moun­tains of Pak­istan adja­cent to Afghanistan.

The Bush Admin­is­tra­tion, and most of its Con­ser­v­a­tive oli­garchy, remain unin­ter­est­ed in fight­ing Al-Kai­da. Al-Kai­da is not some­thing to be fought — it is some­thing extreme­ly use­ful to keep around. It is an all-pur­pose tool for the Con­ser­v­a­tive agen­da of destroy­ing America’s civ­il lib­er­ties. Any seri­ous inroads on Al-Kai­da, such as the defeat and cap­ture of Osama bin Laden, would high­light its inti­mate con­nec­tions with Con­ser­vatism in Amer­i­ca. Instead, the Bush Admin­is­tra­tion exploit­ed pub­lic con­fu­sion to do what it real­ly want­ed to do, which was to invade Iraq. So Mushar­raf was allowed to put up a pup­pet show of oppos­ing the Tal­iban and Al-Kai­da, while in fact con­tin­u­ing to shel­ter and sup­port it.

There are two groups that the peo­ple of Afghanistan fear and hate, two forces that have oppressed and exploit­ed them: the Tal­iban and the rur­al war­lords. These two groups flow into each oth­er, and are pret­ty much inter­change­able from moment to moment. The Amer­i­can gov­ern­ment recruit­ed large num­bers of these vicious thugs as allies. The Bush admin­is­tra­tion forced the shaky new Afghan gov­ern­ment to share pow­er with these war­lords. The fledg­ling Afghan gov­ern­ment does, in fact, con­tain some peo­ple who sin­cere­ly want to see Afghanistan devel­op into a func­tion­ing democ­ra­cy. How­ev­er, they are now pow­er­less. The Bush admin­is­tra­tion has forced them to “share” their par­lia­ment with some of the most cor­rupt, vio­lent, blood­thirsty gang­sters on the con­ti­nent, most of them col­lab­o­ra­tors with Al-Kai­da, and almost all of them play­ers in the hero­in trade. At all turns, gen­uine democ­rats and gen­uine Afghan patri­ots have been forced to shut up and cater to these vermin.

Mean­while, Al-Kai­da is safe­ly shel­tered in Pak­istan, where it can­not be touched. The Tal­iban can use Musharraf’s pro­tec­tion to con­duct a long-term war to regain con­trol of the coun­try. The rur­al pop­u­la­tion, who are caught between the U.S.-backed war­lords and the Tal­iban, have noth­ing to choose. They try to lay low and obey any­one who shows up and barks an order. The Tal­iban can roam around the coun­try­side, demand­ing aid from the peas­antry. Since the bulk of Afgha­nis know that the Unit­ed States hasn’t the slight­est inter­est in their free­dom or their well-being, and that it is vir­tu­al­ly cer­tain that some per­mu­ta­tion of war­lords and Tal­iban will even­tu­al­ly rule the coun­try, then the safest strat­e­gy is to be as co-oper­a­tive with the Tal­iban as pos­si­ble. They know that any­one who is not will pay dear­ly when the Tal­iban rule again. The dream of a demo­c­ra­t­ic Afghanistan is now so improb­a­ble that no oth­er response is viable.

Enter Cana­da. The Cana­di­an gov­ern­ment, in a rare show­ing of courage, defied the efforts of Wash­ing­ton to bul­ly it into par­tic­i­pat­ing in the quag­mire of Iraq. But a price had to be paid. We pret­ty much had to agree to par­tic­i­pat­ing in Afghanistan. Ottawa’s rea­son­ing was obvi­ous: we could just bare­ly get away with refus­ing to join the Iraq adven­ture. A sop was nec­es­sary. The illu­sion of inde­pen­dent action could be main­tained: it was, in the­o­ry at least, an oper­a­tion under the flag of the Unit­ed Nations. Unlike the self-evi­dent­ly stu­pid Iraq scheme, it had a ratio­nale that Cana­di­ans could agree to. The pro­tec­tion of a new demo­c­ra­t­ic regime from gueril­la action, hunt­ing down Al-Kai­da, build­ing a demo­c­ra­t­ic infra­struc­ture, aid to suf­fer­ing peo­ple, and peace­keep­ing were things that Cana­di­ans would sup­port, and were plau­si­ble giv­en the infor­ma­tion at their disposal.

Unknown to the Cana­di­an pub­lic, our mil­i­tary had, from the very begin­ning, coun­seled against send­ing our forces to Afghanistan. We did not have good qual­i­ty intel­li­gence in the are­na, which would be essen­tial for suc­cess, and our exist­ing forces were already over-extend­ed. Our equip­ment was not suit­able to the ter­rain. Our region­al experts were unan­i­mous in the opin­ion that this was one of the stu­pid­est places in the world to send our troops. The Lib­er­al gov­ern­ment over­rode these objec­tions, and sim­ply ordered our forces to do it any­way. Polit­i­cal con­sid­er­a­tions, name­ly our chron­ic dilem­ma of “sleep­ing with an ele­phant”, over­ruled mil­i­tary exper­tise. The Lib­er­al gov­ern­ment reluc­tant­ly com­mit­ted us to a large-scale involve­ment. The sub­se­quent­ly vic­to­ri­ous Con­ser­v­a­tive gov­ern­ment eager­ly com­mit­ted us to more.

Most of the Unit­ed States’ more enthu­si­as­tic allies in Afghanistan quick­ly jock­eyed to acquire zones in the north, which did not involve seri­ous risk. But Cana­da found itself pro­tect­ing Kan­da­har, the most dan­ger­ous spot. The White House was quick to find a pat­sy that would take respon­si­bil­i­ty for this area. It is eas­i­ly reached from the porous Pak­istani bor­der, and is the most dra­mat­ic prize the Tal­iban can take in a log­i­cal pro­gres­sion towards return­ing to pow­er. It is thus the most like­ly place where an embar­rass­ing defeat can occur. The White House is not eager to have such a defeat focused exclu­sive­ly on Amer­i­can forces.

At present, Cana­da is stuck. We are at war, but that war can­not be won. To win it would require invad­ing Pak­istan, and that country’s bru­tal dic­ta­tor­ship is our “ally”. It is our “ally” who is orga­niz­ing and man­ag­ing the war against us. Also, we are not allowed to touch any of the drug-rich war­lords, who are pro­tect­ed by the Amer­i­cans. Strate­gi­cal­ly, we can­not do any­thing except under Amer­i­can direc­tion, and that direc­tion is to manoeu­vre us into dis­as­ter. If we leave, Kan­da­har will imme­di­ate­ly col­lapse into chaos and be swept up by some war­lord-tal­iban combination.

Despite the absur­di­ty of the sit­u­a­tion, the ordi­nary peo­ple in Kan­da­har still see us as pro­tec­tors. Our pres­ence pre­vents the extin­guish­ing of what lit­tle civ­il soci­ety has been able to sur­vive. Con­trary to the twad­dle ped­dled by aca­d­e­mics and jour­nal­ists, ordi­nary Afgha­nis under­stand per­fect­ly well what democ­ra­cy is, how it is sup­posed to work, and the ben­e­fits it can bring to their lives. In fact, like most of the world’s rur­al poor, they have a deep­er under­stand­ing of democ­ra­cy than 99% of the world’s intel­lec­tu­als. But they can also tell phoni­ness when they see it, and there is noth­ing more patent­ly pho­ny than George Bush’s claim to be fur­ther­ing democ­ra­cy. Bush’s agents have done every­thing in their pow­er to sub­vert, ham­string, and crush any gen­uine democ­rats in the fledg­ling Afghan government.

Ordi­nary Afghans can tell that the Cana­di­an sol­diers in Kan­da­har are try­ing to be on their side. That is why Cana­di­an forces con­tin­ue to retain good­will with those Afghans who remain with­in the effec­tive cir­cle of their pro­tec­tion. How­ev­er, the frame­work under which Canada’s armed forces has been sent to Afghanistan makes it impos­si­ble to sus­tain this state of affairs. We are forced to be at war with a dan­ger­ous, pow­er­ful mil­i­tary machine — and yet we are not allowed to even name whom we are fight­ing! Mushar­raf, a dic­ta­tor who is killing our sol­diers, can even come on our TV and pub­licly ridicule us, and still we are forced to pre­tend that he is our ally.

This is the sad, sad sit­u­a­tion we are now in. The pre­vi­ous Lib­er­al admin­is­tra­tion was too cow­ard­ly to be hon­est with the Cana­di­an peo­ple about how we were being pres­sured and swin­dled into this sit­u­a­tion, and the cur­rent Con­ser­v­a­tive admin­is­tra­tion, which is noth­ing but the squeal­ing pet ham­ster of the Bush admin­is­tra­tion, is eager to dig us in deeper.

Only a few thou­sand Cana­di­an sol­diers are direct­ly involved, but the Cana­di­an peo­ple do not, repeat do not want any of those sol­diers to be used to screw inno­cent peo­ple. We most def­i­nite­ly do not want to walk into some­place, make a big mess, and then sneak out. That is some­thing that comes eas­i­ly to our neigh­bours, but we were raised dif­fer­ent­ly. We would think it shameful.

It looks like that shame is now inevitable.