A good piece by Jeffrey Simpson in the
Globe and Mail:
The travels of Flora: going where few Westerners go
http://www.rbcinvest.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/ArticleNews/PEstory/LAC/20070627/COSIMP27/Columnists/columnists/columnistsNational/2/2/3/
Flora MacDonald, the well-known Conservative cabinet minister from the Mulroney era, turned 81 earlier this year but looks at least 15 years younger. While others her age, and younger, slow down, Ms. MacDonald keeps moving. She's just returned to Canada from her eighth trip to Afghanistan in the past seven years.
Flora, as everyone calls her, goes where few Westerners go.
Arriving in Kabul, she is met by the Afghan leader of the group she supports, Future Generations. They drive 12 hours west over "roads that you might not call a road" to the Shahidan valley in Bamyan province. There, she sleeps in villagers' huts and continues to work on small projects, financed by Future Generations and Care Canada, that make life better for humble people - solar and wind power to provide villages' first electricity, schools to educate youngsters for the first time, access to clean water.
Canadians hear much about Kandahar province, where Canadian soldiers are fighting (and dying) and where $40-million of Canada's $140-million in Afghan aid is spent. But we hear nothing about provinces such as Bamyan, where the Taliban blew up the historic statues of Buddha carved into the mountainside.
The people in Bamyan are largely Hazaras, whom the Pashtun majority often deride. In addition, the Hazaras are Shia Muslims in a majority Sunni Muslim country. There is a Hazara diaspora in Pakistan, Australia, the United States and Canada.
The writ of Afghanistan's national government in Kabul barely runs in the Shahidan valley, Ms. MacDonald says. Hamid Karzai might be the elected president of Afghanistan, but, in the valley, he "is known as the mayor of Kabul because his influence doesn't extend much beyond Kabul."
Little aid reaches this corner of Afghanistan. Ms. MacDonald believes most of the international assistance is going to four large cities. "Unless the rest of the country sees some money, their hostility and alienation will increase," she says. "People get discouraged when they hear about all these things that are happening in Kabul and Kandahar."
She adds, "There still isn't stability in the countryside. People are still feeling alienated, and if the Taliban moved strongly into other parts of Afghanistan, those places might fall. People don't want the Taliban back, but if they are going to help them climb out of abject poverty, then they might have them back."..
"I see tremendous things happening in the places I visit, tremendous creativity," she reports. Nonetheless, the country remains "on the brink. It could go either way, but I have great faith in the Afghan people. If they are given some encouragement, they will see things through."
As for Canada's mission in the southern province of Kandahar, Ms. MacDonald, a former foreign minister, says the Taliban danger there "has to be contained." She's doubtful, however, that aid can be effective in a "war zone," and wishes that more attention was paid to other parts of Afghanistan so that Taliban influence does not spread...
And a piece by Andrew Coyne that I do not think really undercuts the arguments made in my post at
The Torch cited in the comment immediately above:
Harper's J-turn on Afghanistan
http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/editorialsletters/story.html?id=d4a14cf2-5148-4d51-8359-fff8274ab8e3
What did it mean, that little offhand comment of the Prime Minister's the other day, to the effect that he would want "to see some degree of consensus" before renewing the Canadian Forces' current mission in Afghanistan?
Did it mean, as the defeatist chorus in certain sections of the media triumphantly proclaimed (triumphalist defeatists?), that Stephen Harper had buckled to his critics? Was the Toronto Star's Tom Walkom right to claim, on the strength of this one statement, that "Canada's Kandahar adventure is effectively finished," that "Canadian soldiers will continue to die in Afghanistan's south until the mission reaches its official end, 19 months from now," but after that it's back to the barracks? Should we trust The Globe and Mail's Lawrence Martin's judgment that "these were code words for the end of our war mission," that "in a year and a half, other North Atlantic Treaty Organization partners can take their turn at the combat role."
I don't believe it. That's not what the Prime Minister said, and it doesn't fit with anything else we know about him. I know he's reversed himself before, sometimes spectacularly. But this is something that goes to his very core. I do not believe that the same man who not a month ago, on his second visit to Afghanistan, declared that "our work is not complete," that "we cannot just put down our arms and hope for peace," that "we can't set arbitrary deadlines and simply wish for the best," would suddenly have decided to do just that.
What in fact did the Prime Minister say? He said "I would hope that the view of Canadians is not to simply abandon Afghanistan. I think there is some expectation that there would be a new role after February, 2009, but obviously those decisions have yet to be taken." He said "this mission will end in February, 2009. Should Canada be involved militarily after that date, we've been clear that would have to be approved by the Canadian Parliament." And he said this: "I would want to see some degree of consensus around that. I don't want to send people into a mission if the opposition is going to, at home, undercut the dangerous work that they are doing in the field."
Perhaps my decoder ring is not working as well as Lawrence's, but I don't see any U-turns in this...
...By declaring that he will seek consensus on any future deployment, the Prime Minister shifts the focus from his own intransigence to the opposition's. He implicates them in the decision, and in so doing puts the onus on them to explain their position.
And explain it they must. The NDP's at least has a kind of coherence. They are against fighting the Taliban, preferring to negotiate-- though what incentive the Taliban would have to negotiate after we had declared we would not fight them would be interesting to hear. The Liberals, on the other hand, would seem to believe that the Taliban should be fought, just not by us; that our troops should be there, but not use their weapons.
All right, I'll bite: who should fight them? Whom do the Liberals nominate to replace us, among the countries that have refused to fight thus far? The French? The Italians? How are they to be compelled to step forward, even as we retreat? The reality is that, should Canada pull out of the fighting, the gap will have to be filled by the countries that are doing it now -- the British, the Americans and the Dutch. Their mission won't end in February, 2009 [actually the Dutch parliament will vote this summer on whether to extend their mission beyond 2008; vote could be close]. Only ours will...
There's another sense in which it is a good thing to seek "consensus" from the opposition. Read the last part of the Prime Minister's remarks: "I don't want to send people into a mission if the opposition is going to, at home, undercut the dangerous work that they are doing in the field." Translated: that's exactly what's happening now.
The Taliban read the Western press. They are looking for the weak link in the NATO chain, and having found it, they will exploit it -- by killing as many soldiers from that country as they can.
If critics of the war should not be accused of supporting the Taliban, neither should critics of the critics be accused of suppressing debate if they point out that there are consequences to their fecklessness. The Prime Minister has invited them to grow up. They should accept [emphasis added].
They won't.
Mark
Ottawa
