Canada & Afghanistan

Sadly the Liberals in Canada allowed George Bush to "talk them into" supporting the US in its jihad in Afghanistan. Certainly the US had a case to go in and knock heads after 9/11, but Canada really had no role except as docile puppet. And today Stephen Harper continues to play the waterboy role assigned by the US by "contributing" troops to a war that is not in our national interest in any sense except to appease the hegemon to our south.

Here is a bit from an article in the Globe & Mail by Irshad Manji that explains her disillusionment with the Afghanistan "misson":

There was a time when I believed. With every fibre of my feminist Muslim being, I believed in our Afghanistan mission. No longer.

On Sunday, the Taliban assassinated another Afghan women's rights activist. It happened only days after the world learned of yet one more anti-female statute that Afghan President Hamid Karzai had signed into law. Critics accused him of caving in to warlords ahead of the coming elections. Only when Western voices amplified the protests of liberal Afghans did Mr. Karzai put the law "under review." Human-rights advocates called it a triumph.

The victory, such as it is, will be short-lived. I'm increasingly convinced that Afghanistan's problem lies deeper than a recalcitrant Taliban or a gutless central government. It's a problem so profound that for the first time I have to ask: Should our troops just get out?

Make no mistake, I'm a fighter to my fired-up core. Challenged about the West's presence in Afghanistan by numerous audiences, I've been crystal clear about why humanitarian intervention deserves support.

...

But now I must ask: Exactly what are our soldiers falling for? Shortly after Afghanistan held its first free election, Mr. Karzai faced an elemental test of democracy: defending freedom of worship for an Afghan convert to Christianity who found himself charged with apostasy. Mullahs called for his execution and judges obliged them - hardly surprising since the constitution Afghanistan of proclaims sharia law supreme.

What shook me is that Mr. Karzai didn't publicly question their retrograde interpretation of Islam. He needed only to quote from the Koran, which states "there is no compulsion in religion." Full stop.

Ditto for the 2008 death sentence given to a 23-year-old Afghan journalism student. He'd downloaded and distributed an Internet article criticizing how the Koran treats women. The mullahs got their day in court. The student didn't even get a lawyer. He's still alive - in jail.

Since then, the suave and sophisticated Mr. Karzai has stayed mute about several more penalties inflicted in the name of tribal honour, from widespread gang rapes of women to acid attacks on schoolgirls.

Why would a president, routinely described as a "moderate," hand so much power to feudal warlords? Geopolitical strategists tell me it's because Mr. Karzai has to avoid carnage at all costs. But does violating innocents to pre-empt further violence makes sense?

Sadly, yes, and not just because the strategists say so. Culture is among the most obstinate forces anywhere. In societies influenced by Arab culture, a massive motivator of action is asabiyya or tribal solidarity.

This analysis originated with the Muslim intellectual Ibn Khaldun, sometimes known as the father of modern sociology. He studied how Muslim peoples evolve, especially in environments that are arid, remote, or, in the case of Afghanistan, mountainous. Where the land is harsh, there's virtually no division of labour. Human survival depends on bonds of kinship, and those bonds can easily degenerate into feelings of group superiority.

Now what happens when tribes compete for superiority? You get a cycle of vendetta and countervendetta. In the end, warlords could be more legitimate than any democratically elected parliament - more legitimate because they're more authentic to the Afghan experience.

No wonder a moderate president serially submits to thugs. No wonder military might has been a feeble backwater to the tide of history. No wonder I've got a sinking feeling that our troops can't adequately help the good people of Afghanistan.

Soldiers can restore stability, but when stability means cyclical violence, I'm at a loss for what it means to win.

I have a weak spot for Irshad Manji. She grew up in my "neighborhood" and is wonderfully progressive in her thinking. I read her book The Trouble with Islam Today and thoroughly enjoyed it. In my personal pantheon of "interesting person coming out of the east Africa", I put her up there with Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Both overcame their cultural background and successfully absorbed Western Enlightenment ideas.