WAR ON TERRORISM - LOOKING GLASS NEWS | |
Canada’s real role in Afghanistan |
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by Michael Nenonen The Republic of East Vancouver Entered into the database on Sunday, April 30th, 2006 @ 11:27:01 MST |
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We’re only there to further the aims of a highly destructive,
imperialistic US agenda, and we’re propping up some of the planet’s
worst monsters With every passing day, Canada is becoming more intertwined in the imperial
ambitions of the United States, ambitions that military historian Gwynne Dyer
believes may overturn the framework of international law that’s preserved
our planet for over sixty years and may thereby force the nations of the world
to seek security in the kind of regional alliances that generated two world
wars. Despite its US$8.4 trillion national debt, the collapse of its manufacturing
sector, the erosion of its middle class, and with only 4% of the world’s
population, the US is attempting to establish permanent mastery over all humanity.
Such monstrous hubris is doomed to fail, but doom breeds desperation, and the
desperation of a military colossus is terrible to behold. Unless this raging
Gulliver can be pulled to the ground, he’ll trample our civilization back
into the soil from which it arose. The giant has only begun to stomp; despite
flattening many tens of thousands of people, his footprints in the Middle East
and Central Asia are as yet shallow and few. They’ll multiply and deepen
as time goes on. Canada should be vigorously opposing this rampage; at the very
least, we shouldn’t be lending this brute any more muscle than he already
has. Afghanistan borders Pakistan, Iran, and China, and lies less than 2,000 km
away from Russia to the north. By controlling Afghanistan, the US can launch
attacks throughout the Middle East and gain leverage over its Asian rivals.
It can also lay claim to Afghan-istan’s reserves of water and oil. The
war in Afghanistan is part of the same war for global supremacy that is being
fought in Iraq. The elections that rubber-stamped Afghan president Hamid Karzai’s regime
in Kabul were deeply flawed. According to Sharon Smith’s article, “Afghanistan’s
Rigged Democracy,” in issue 24 of the International Socialist Review,
the CIA made substantial payments to the warlords comprising the United Front/Northern
Alliance. These warlords determined the selection of candidates for the 2002
elections. Rival candidates were intimidated and barred from running; for example,
Karzai imprisoned 700 of his political rivals in the weeks before the election.
It was impossible to adequately monitor the election process. One UN election
observer stated, “When election observers entered the city of Gardez,
the local commander fired rockets at them.” The outcome of the election
was pre-arranged. Karzai announced that he had been elected to the presidency
before the election even took place. The current regime is composed of some of Afghanistan’s worst criminals
and human rights abusers. According to a 2001 Human Rights Watch background
paper, the abuses committed by the United Front/Northern Alliance include “summary
executions, burning of houses and looting, principally targeting ethnic Pashtuns
and others suspected of supporting the Taliban. Children, including those under
the age of fifteen, have been recruited as soldiers and used to fight against
Taliban forces. The various parties that comprise the United Front also amassed
a deplorable record of attacks on civilians between the fall of the Najibullah
regime in 1992 and the Taliban's capture of Kabul in 1996.” These warlords
have since grown fat upon Afghanistan’s drug trade, which produced an
income of $6.82 billion between 2002 and 2004. If this isn’t a mafiocracy,
I don’t know what is. Humanitarian organizations have condemned the role of military forces in reconstruction
efforts. An April 2006 briefing note produced by the Canadian Coalition to End
Global Poverty warns that “Confusion between military and development
activities puts both the recipients of aid and aid workers at risk. They become
targets for attack due to association with forces aligned with one party in
the conflict. The neutrality of the military’s community service activities
is compromised as they switch from service activities to take up arms against
forces in the armed conflict. . . . Aid is being used for military purposes,
to gain the support of the population for one side in an armed conflict. In
more extreme cases, the provision of assistance is tied to the provision of
information or intelligence to the military. This can be done subtly or directly;
in either case it puts the population at risk.” Furthermore, the money being devoted to reconstruction is thoroughly inadequate
to the task. University of New Hampshire professor Marc W Herold, in his essay
“Afghanistan As An Empty Space” (cursor.org/stories/ emptyspace.html),
writes, “Whereas pledges of aid from the international community between
January 2002 to April 2006 amounted to $14.4 billion, only $9.1 billion were
actually committed by February 2005, and of that only $3.9 billion disbursed
(January 2002 to February 2005) and $3.3 billion has been disbursed for ongoing
projects. Of the total disbursements, a mere $0.9 billion worth of projects
have been completed. . . . For its part, the US has spent $1.3 billion on reconstruction
in Afghanistan over four years, ‘intending to win over Afghans with signs
of progress.’ By way of contrast, the United States spends $10 to $12
billion annually on military operations in Afghanistan.” The Canadian International Development Agency allotted a paltry $6 million
for reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan in 2005, but, because of escalating
violence in Southern Afghanistan, Canadian aid projects have now been put on
hold. These figures strongly suggest that all the invaders’ talk of reconstructing
Afghanistan is nothing but a smokescreen designed to obscure their true intentions. Canadians are spilling their blood to prop up a corrupt, vicious, and
undemocratic puppet government, to facilitate the murderous Pax Americana, and
to bring the world a little closer to catastrophe. |