Make Afghan mission an election issue

Make Afghan mission an election issue
by Haroon Siddiqui, The Toronto Star, September 11, 2008. (Found via Dominion Weblog.)

If American bombs go on killing Afghan civilians, and if American planes and troops continue to violate the sovereignty of Pakistan by mounting cross-border raids and killing civilians there as well, the Canadian mission in Afghanistan is even more imperilled than we think.

In fact, it is going to get worse, as George W. Bush commits only 4,500 more troops in search of a military solution that has eluded NATO. A mini-surge won't work.

Stéphane Dion, Gilles Duceppe, Jack Layton and Elizabeth May should be making an election issue of how to salvage our sinking mission. Just waiting it out until 2011, as Stephen Harper implies, is irresponsible.

Canadian soldiers are getting killed at such regular intervals that the news is no longer guaranteed front-page treatment.

The far more numerous deaths of Afghans and Pakistanis go largely unreported here but obviously not by the media there. Public opinion, poisonously anti-American, is becoming anti-Canadian. We risk being seen as the Ugly Canadian.

NATO is losing ground. Its air attacks in different parts of Afghanistan prove that Taliban activity is no longer confined to the south.

Too often, panicked NATO troops are calling in air strikes that are killing civilians, fuelling further anger.

Too often, NATO intelligence is flawed; the "top Taliban operatives," whose presence is said to trigger the attacks, are not there.

Too often, NATO is trying to hide its criminal mistakes with disinformation campaigns. It is seen by Afghans and Pakistanis to be lying.

Take the Aug. 21-22 night attack on a village near Herat to target "a key Taliban leader" at a meeting of insurgents. There was a gathering all right, of civilians – at the remembrance ceremony of an anti-Taliban man killed last year.

Yet the U.S. called the attack "a successful operation" and said it "remained confident" that no civilians had been killed.

As word of a civilian carnage spread, the U.S. dismissed it as "outrageous Taliban propaganda." Later it said, variously, that five insurgents had been killed, maybe seven, or perhaps seven civilians and 25 insurgents or 30 or 35.

The police chief in Herat put the toll at 90. The United Nations Special Representative for Afghanistan confirmed the news: "We found convincing evidence, based on the testimony of eyewitnesses and others, that some 90 civilians were killed, including 60 children."

Phone video footage emerged showing gruesome images of 40 bodies lined up in a mosque, "a majority of them babies and toddlers, some burned so badly they are barely recognizable," said the BBC.

The Canadian media remained mostly mute. Afghan TV naturally kept up with the story, and also that of the mounting public anger.

The Americans changed tack and announced an inquiry. But such probes generally lead nowhere.

For example, not much has been heard of one launched in July after a wedding party was bombed, killing 47 civilians, including 39 women and children.

Civilian deaths in air strikes tripled between 2006 and 2007, from 116 to 321. This year, the toll has already hit 500. The Taliban have, of course, killed far more civilians. But we can't argue that we kill only a third of the civilians that they do.

Taliban do hide amid civilians. But that doesn't absolve the U.S. of its obligations, as noted in a report this week by Human Rights Watch. "It is, after all, American bombs that are doing the killing."

Americans have lately taken to bombing sites in Pakistan as well, in search of Taliban/Al Qaeda elements but killing civilians.

This week, five missiles fired by U.S. drones killed 23, including women and children, while the intended target, a Taliban commander, was visiting Afghanistan. Ironically, Jalaluddin Haqqani is a veteran of the 1980s anti-Soviet resistance backed by the CIA.

Last week, helicopter-borne commandos carried out a ground assault in Pakistan, killing 20, including three women and four children.

This is no way to win a war, let alone hearts and minds.

The biggest price is being paid by Canadian soldiers, dying at a disproportionate rate among the allies. Yet our politicians – and our media – are mostly silent.