Canada to Stay in Afghanistan?
Sun, 2008-01-20 20:52
#1
James Curran
Canada to Stay in Afghanistan?
Sun, 2008-01-20 20:52
#2
James Curran
Canada to Stay in Afghanistan til 2011?
The Manley report is due to come out soon. It won't paint a great picture of our mission in Afghanistan either. Nonetheless, the committee, lead by former Liberal cabinet minister John Manley, will recommend we stay in Afghanistan until 2011.
Among other notes from the report, it is noted that CIDA is doing a poor job of delivering aid. Afghanistan is now responsible for 93 per cent of the opium on the planet. The central Afghan government is wildly corrupt (I've said before that Karzai will enjoy his retirement greatly). Suicide bombings are at an all time high. The insurgency is spreading and not being quelled.
So why the extension? Apparently to prolong the inevitable.
Sun, 2008-01-20 22:06
#3
Aside from a two-year extension, sources said the report will include the following blunt assessment of [url=http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20080120/manley_pane... in Afghanistan:[/url]
[LIST][*] CIDA and Foreign Affairs have poorly coordinated the delivery of aid;
[*] The insurgency is spreading and suicide-bombings have risen eight-fold since 2006;
[*] Record opium production now counts for 93 per cent of the world's supply; and,
[*] [b]Afghanistan is run by a weak and corrupt government[/b][/LIST]
Mon, 2008-01-21 03:44
#4
James Curran
Thanks for finding that.
Mon, 2008-01-21 05:20
#5
I haven't read anything recently pointing out that Afghanistan is inherently unstable.
Roughly, it's a pre-nation state relic, territory left over from the "Great Game." If Canada is, as some say, the first post-national state -- one in which no one national group is a majority (albeit 57% of Canadians have English as their mother tongue) -- Afghanistan is a polyglot for the old reason: like the Austro-Hungarian Empire of the 1800s, which had not yet been touched by the idea of national liberation of nations.
Its northern border is the line where the Russians agreed to stop. Its eastern border is the line where the British agreed to stop. Either one could, with difficulty, have conquered it in the early 1800s. The locals fought back, but what really stopped imperial expansion there was the tacit agreement to leave it as a buffer.
The only stable thing about Afghanistan is the provinces. An 1835 map shows, if I recall correctly, the same provinces (like Kandahar) which are on today's map.
Why are we helping hold the last remnant of feudalism together?
[ 21 January 2008: Message edited by: Wilf Day ]
Mon, 2008-01-21 05:49
#6
quote:
Why are we helping hold the last remnant of feudalism together?
Why indeed! Whats another few million dead indigents in a world full of misery. We have successfully ignored Darfur and we have turned a blind eye to Canadian transgressions in Haiti so it should come naturally to turn our backs on Afghanistan.
quote:
SPIN BOLDAK, Afghanistan - An elderly man pulled a wooden cart through the crowd and stopped, exhausted, before the main gate to this dusty city's regional district centre.In the payload of his wagon was a thin, frail figure: His ailing wife. "She is dying,"said the man.
He brought his wife here Sunday in the hope she might receive medical attention from a team of Afghan and Canadian military doctors, dentists, nurses, and medical technicians.
The aged couple joined almost 300 other men, women and children clamouring for assistance. Ragged, poor, and ailing, they came from all around Spin Boldak, a city of 30,000 that's just six kilometres from the porous Afghanistan-Pakistan border, at the very edge of Kandahar province.
An initiative of the Canadian military, the so-called Village Medical Outreach (VMO) clinic was advertised on local radio and on roadside billboards. Word also spread by word of mouth and even reached nomadic Kuchi living on the city's fringes.
People came in droves; some walked to the clinic barefoot. Others limped along on crutches. Dozens of children arrived in the arms of their fathers, or their mothers, clad in blue burkas.
Some, like the elderly woman bundled in the cart, were too sick to be helped.
quote:
Around back, children were invited to swap their existing footwear - if they had any - for new shoes and boots, either purchased by the 12e Regiment, or donated by people back in Canada and mailed here.More than 800 pairs were handed out.
Kids marched from the compound in their new shoes. Some, however, had stuffed their gifts into plastic bags and left barefoot. Others were wearing their old sandals. "We'll probably see some of them for sale in the local bazaar,"said one Canadian officer.
Not that it really matters, he added. [url=http://www.nationalpost.com/news/story.html?id=251681]"Those shoes might fetch a meal"[/url]
Why should we help when we have our own problems in Canada?
Its not like we get any respect in NATO anyway, after 60 years of running to the can when the bill comes.
The EUROS don't care to help either. In Afghanistan, NATO is committing [b]only 4% of the troops and 2% of the funding they provided for the Bosnian conflict.[/b]
By abandoning the Afghanistan basketcase, NATO can husband its resources for important missions - [b]assisting white Europeans[/b] [img]rolleyes.gif" border="0[/img]
Mon, 2008-01-21 08:34
#7
This discussion seems to have popped up in two forums. I'm going to close this one up. Please direct new comments to [url=http://www.rabble.ca/babble/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic&f=1&t=007049]this thread. [/url]