Canada and Afghanistan: Pro Development Rally?
Meh, lately, walking through campus, I get so annoyed seeing anti-war posters that lumps Iraq and Afghanistan together, both had been very different countries with very different circumstances. I guess this ignorant lumping also carries a special flavour of bitterness for me both as someone who has read up on this situation before marching out with a sign or tying yellow ribbons to my SUV, and that it somewhat echoes the "all Asian people must be Chinese" thing, urgh.
Iraq (pre-invasion): Secular Arabic state, ruled by the brutal, corrupted, but nationalistic dictator Saddam Hussein. A lot of people wanted him dead, almost everyone is afraid of him, but, especially in the light of the American invasion and the subsequent standardization of murder-rape-torture as a fact of life, his citizens are finding him the more respectable one, and miss the stability that used to be there, it sure was nicer when their infrastructure was intact, the world's first university still running, and women can walk on the street without bundling up (Secular!) eh? (See Baghdad Burning, a blog by an Iraqi woman stil in Iraq)
Saddam was a butcher, but he was Iraq's butcher, and unless someone get really, really, bad, people tend to respect their own butcher more, than a foreign one or a puppet belonging to a foreign butcher. Saddam has been ruling for decades, his face is on their money, he does try to keep the economy running even after the sanctions that killed the scientific community. If Saddam was a ruler centuries ago he'll be hailed as a heroic figure because nobody blinked an eye at brutalism then, God Save Queen Victoria. ...and while the sadistic excesses of Empress Zetian certainly do make me sick, compared to the rest of the Tang Dynasty she was a good ruler, and in the end, that the country would be better at the end of it matters more than rejecting anything less than the currently unattainable perfection while on the way up.
Afghanistan (pre-invasion): Theocratic state, ruled by the minority Taliban group, after they took over half a decade ago.
The Soviet Union invaded and occupied Afghanistan in 1979, to prop up a Communist government and to suppress a growing Islamic fundamentalist movement it feared would spread to southern Soviet republics.
But the war went badly for the Soviets. By 1989, they were driven out of the country by anti-communist mujahedeen forces (trained and supplied by the United States, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan). A third of the population fled the country while the various factions fought. Most went to Pakistan and Iran. - CBC
It took Mainland China decades after the Communists Party took over the democratic government, before the world would acknowledge it as an independent country instead of a renegade of Taiwan (where the democratic government retreated to). That the Taliban is a cultish military power that changed by force much of Afghanistan's values (banning the dancing of women on TV for example), certainly makes its legitimacy as the rightful government of Afghanistan more questionable.
Then what about the Soviet Union, who invaded in 1979? Though it was not democratic because only the parties they approve of, could run, Afghanistan was allowed elections, so though that wasn't democracy, Afghanistan have a much higher chance of going democratic then the American-destroyed-Iraq; They've experience some political development and social advancement during the Soviet era, with the elections, and the rights of women (while doctors were considered a male profession in United States, it was considered a female one in Russia, and there previously had been many qualified female professionals in Afghanistan during the Soviet era). The people of Afghanistan would understand what freedom means, after they have the ones they already have, lost self-determination under a foreign entity but is introduced to the process, and then lost a majority of the freedoms they previously enjoy beneath a minority group.
All that needs to be done now, in Afghanistan, is to restore stability, do it before the people who remember all that went before dies off, and then, when people aren't worrying about how to stay alive until the next day, and when they have access to information channels and infrastructure, they will be a democracy.
My concern for Afghanistan now, is that, the foreign occupying forces will either pull out now, leaving the populace to the Taliban again (why did nobody do anything about the Taliban when they were moving in?), or, Screw It Up. Real Life peacekeeping is not as simple as Yes/No deploy? You gotta make sure the plan is right, there are enough resources, and not only that you should keep the crazy people out of the army and the people in the army from going crazy, you must have measures in place that would ensure that the odd crazy that happen (remember Canada and the Somalia scandal, and it better be odd rather than usual), would be smoked out and dealt with accordingly (local trial). Attempt-cover-ups, even over a really, 'isolated incident' of soldiers assaulting civilians etc, would result in loss of trust from the populace, and trust is everything when you are not elected but there, even if you are on invitation.
I just wish, that there are rallies and committees or just open debates addressing the Afghanistan issue. The 'anti-war fractions' have their 'pull out of Afghanistan' rallies, where they bring up all the screw ups that is happening right now. Where are our rallies that addresses the issues and talk about what better must be done? From the last issue of Vancouver's Adbuster, it seem the mistake that Canada is making, is again, not understanding nor respecting the natives, there are soldiers kicking down doors and destroying opium crops while threatening farmers or offering them cash, as if that helps. Even if there are terrorists hiding in every village, the civil rights of the Afghani people still have to be respected, our soldiers must behaved in a lawful and orderly fashion themselves to be respected; along with adequately protecting the civilians from Taliban. Instead of burning opium crops, what we need to do is provide them with alternative crops and aid them in both self-sufficiency (food crops) and finding a market. For one thing, we don't have a right to burn their crops, even if it's opium. It is an illicit gang-related drug which is why the growing of it must stop, but how we've been going about it, is all wrong.
More publicity is need, for Canada's mission in Rebuilding Afghanistan, to ensure that no wrongful allocation of funding, corruption or bureaucratic waste is to take place. Stephen Harper announced back in February 27th, 2007, that $200 million will be put into reconstruction in Afghanistan. This is good, what I want to know, and what I want most of the public to know is, some of the specifics. Remember the Liberal Ad Scandal, where certain politicians sent in bills of upwards $100 for soda. Or, Halliburton in Iraq? I do approve of our taxmoney being allocated to aid Afghanistan and stability, let we the public keep an eye on the money this time to make sure that it is being used for that.
...also, I would like to give a shout-out to the Australians for their 'hands-on' efforts in rebuilding Afghanistan. Canada's main theme is to provide the people the resources to develop, which I agree with. What the Australians are doing though, is driving from village to village and offering their physical and material aid in rebuilding schools, mosques, whatever the locals ask of them. Both are needed, and another reason why I believe a multilateral approach is the best, the country must stand up on their own, but for some villages, they just can't wait.
Aussies, Canadians use different tactics building Afghanistan
Hamilton Spectator, Canada - 25 Feb 2007
By Murray Brewster
The Canadian Press
TERIN KOWT, Afghanistan (Feb 26, 2007)
The Australian combat engineers call them back yard blitzes.
Think of the popular United States television show Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, except with guns, armoured cars and blokes with Aussie accents.
One of the approaches the Australians take to reconstruction is to roll into the many villages sprinkled through the mountainous folds of Oruzgan province, north of Kandahar, and ask the elders of each community what they need done.
"We're not here to make promises," said Lieutenant-Colonel Mick Ryan in a recent presentation to Canadian journalists.
"We're here to build things."
With Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper's government poised to pour as much as $200 million more into reconstruction in southern Afghanistan, the question of how and where the money will be spent is crucial.
Ottawa already puts $100 million per year into this war-ravaged country through civilian agencies, but much of it goes toward long-term good governance and economic initiatives, such as micro-credit financing for Afghans to start their own businesses.
Infrastructure investment has amounted to between $6 million and $8 million per year, according to a fact sheet provided by the PMO.
The Canadian military only has a small pot of reconstruction money to spend and in the last five months the majority of it has gone into constructing a 4.5-kilometre road through what was the former Taliban stronghold of Panjwaii.
If you ask Afghans, especially those in regions torn apart by fighting, what they consider to be the priority, they will tell you infrastructure.
"The Canadians are witness in our area," said Shafikhan, who owns land in Pashmul, west of Kandahar, where many a pitched battle was fought last year.
"They see our mosques. They are fallen down, destroyed. They see our houses and homes. They see everything by their own eyes. They know our problems. It is up to them what kind of help they do in the future," he adds.
Canadians have paid for the digging of more than 1,000 wells to help restore irrigation canals and reservoirs. Improvements have been made to dozens of schools, four bridges and a number of roads, according to the handout from the PMO.
But much of this has taken place slowly because after asking village elders what they need, the Canadians contract the work out to Afghans, a process the commander of Canadian troops in the country defended.
By contrast, in Oruzgan, 400 soldiers belonging to Australia's 1st Combat Engineer Regiment, based in Darwin, have in their short time on the ground taken a more direct, aggressive approach.
"We go in and talk to the mullah and say what would you like and do the job there and then," Ryan says. "We take our engineers in. We have armoured trucks full of construction stores and prefabricated items. The first thing we'll do is renovate the village mosque, put in new windows, new doors. We put carpet in there."
Next, they move on to village water supplies and are doing an inventory of the needs of roughly a dozen villages in the area surrounding the provincial capital. In addition, the Australians, using one of their own civil engineers, have been planning larger capital works projects, such as renovations to the Terin Kowt hospital and building a bridge.
Canadian Brigadier-General Tim Grant said he much prefers the way his troops have handled redevelopment.
"It's too easy to go in and do it yourself," he explains.
"For us to go in and drill a well, refurbish a school, that doesn't help the economy of Afghanistan. If you do everything on our own, the country will be no better off at the end of the day."
Iraq (pre-invasion): Secular Arabic state, ruled by the brutal, corrupted, but nationalistic dictator Saddam Hussein. A lot of people wanted him dead, almost everyone is afraid of him, but, especially in the light of the American invasion and the subsequent standardization of murder-rape-torture as a fact of life, his citizens are finding him the more respectable one, and miss the stability that used to be there, it sure was nicer when their infrastructure was intact, the world's first university still running, and women can walk on the street without bundling up (Secular!) eh? (See Baghdad Burning, a blog by an Iraqi woman stil in Iraq)
Saddam was a butcher, but he was Iraq's butcher, and unless someone get really, really, bad, people tend to respect their own butcher more, than a foreign one or a puppet belonging to a foreign butcher. Saddam has been ruling for decades, his face is on their money, he does try to keep the economy running even after the sanctions that killed the scientific community. If Saddam was a ruler centuries ago he'll be hailed as a heroic figure because nobody blinked an eye at brutalism then, God Save Queen Victoria. ...and while the sadistic excesses of Empress Zetian certainly do make me sick, compared to the rest of the Tang Dynasty she was a good ruler, and in the end, that the country would be better at the end of it matters more than rejecting anything less than the currently unattainable perfection while on the way up.
Afghanistan (pre-invasion): Theocratic state, ruled by the minority Taliban group, after they took over half a decade ago.
The Soviet Union invaded and occupied Afghanistan in 1979, to prop up a Communist government and to suppress a growing Islamic fundamentalist movement it feared would spread to southern Soviet republics.
But the war went badly for the Soviets. By 1989, they were driven out of the country by anti-communist mujahedeen forces (trained and supplied by the United States, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan). A third of the population fled the country while the various factions fought. Most went to Pakistan and Iran. - CBC
It took Mainland China decades after the Communists Party took over the democratic government, before the world would acknowledge it as an independent country instead of a renegade of Taiwan (where the democratic government retreated to). That the Taliban is a cultish military power that changed by force much of Afghanistan's values (banning the dancing of women on TV for example), certainly makes its legitimacy as the rightful government of Afghanistan more questionable.
Then what about the Soviet Union, who invaded in 1979? Though it was not democratic because only the parties they approve of, could run, Afghanistan was allowed elections, so though that wasn't democracy, Afghanistan have a much higher chance of going democratic then the American-destroyed-Iraq; They've experience some political development and social advancement during the Soviet era, with the elections, and the rights of women (while doctors were considered a male profession in United States, it was considered a female one in Russia, and there previously had been many qualified female professionals in Afghanistan during the Soviet era). The people of Afghanistan would understand what freedom means, after they have the ones they already have, lost self-determination under a foreign entity but is introduced to the process, and then lost a majority of the freedoms they previously enjoy beneath a minority group.
All that needs to be done now, in Afghanistan, is to restore stability, do it before the people who remember all that went before dies off, and then, when people aren't worrying about how to stay alive until the next day, and when they have access to information channels and infrastructure, they will be a democracy.
My concern for Afghanistan now, is that, the foreign occupying forces will either pull out now, leaving the populace to the Taliban again (why did nobody do anything about the Taliban when they were moving in?), or, Screw It Up. Real Life peacekeeping is not as simple as Yes/No deploy? You gotta make sure the plan is right, there are enough resources, and not only that you should keep the crazy people out of the army and the people in the army from going crazy, you must have measures in place that would ensure that the odd crazy that happen (remember Canada and the Somalia scandal, and it better be odd rather than usual), would be smoked out and dealt with accordingly (local trial). Attempt-cover-ups, even over a really, 'isolated incident' of soldiers assaulting civilians etc, would result in loss of trust from the populace, and trust is everything when you are not elected but there, even if you are on invitation.
I just wish, that there are rallies and committees or just open debates addressing the Afghanistan issue. The 'anti-war fractions' have their 'pull out of Afghanistan' rallies, where they bring up all the screw ups that is happening right now. Where are our rallies that addresses the issues and talk about what better must be done? From the last issue of Vancouver's Adbuster, it seem the mistake that Canada is making, is again, not understanding nor respecting the natives, there are soldiers kicking down doors and destroying opium crops while threatening farmers or offering them cash, as if that helps. Even if there are terrorists hiding in every village, the civil rights of the Afghani people still have to be respected, our soldiers must behaved in a lawful and orderly fashion themselves to be respected; along with adequately protecting the civilians from Taliban. Instead of burning opium crops, what we need to do is provide them with alternative crops and aid them in both self-sufficiency (food crops) and finding a market. For one thing, we don't have a right to burn their crops, even if it's opium. It is an illicit gang-related drug which is why the growing of it must stop, but how we've been going about it, is all wrong.
More publicity is need, for Canada's mission in Rebuilding Afghanistan, to ensure that no wrongful allocation of funding, corruption or bureaucratic waste is to take place. Stephen Harper announced back in February 27th, 2007, that $200 million will be put into reconstruction in Afghanistan. This is good, what I want to know, and what I want most of the public to know is, some of the specifics. Remember the Liberal Ad Scandal, where certain politicians sent in bills of upwards $100 for soda. Or, Halliburton in Iraq? I do approve of our taxmoney being allocated to aid Afghanistan and stability, let we the public keep an eye on the money this time to make sure that it is being used for that.
...also, I would like to give a shout-out to the Australians for their 'hands-on' efforts in rebuilding Afghanistan. Canada's main theme is to provide the people the resources to develop, which I agree with. What the Australians are doing though, is driving from village to village and offering their physical and material aid in rebuilding schools, mosques, whatever the locals ask of them. Both are needed, and another reason why I believe a multilateral approach is the best, the country must stand up on their own, but for some villages, they just can't wait.
Aussies, Canadians use different tactics building Afghanistan
Hamilton Spectator, Canada - 25 Feb 2007
By Murray Brewster
The Canadian Press
TERIN KOWT, Afghanistan (Feb 26, 2007)
The Australian combat engineers call them back yard blitzes.
Think of the popular United States television show Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, except with guns, armoured cars and blokes with Aussie accents.
One of the approaches the Australians take to reconstruction is to roll into the many villages sprinkled through the mountainous folds of Oruzgan province, north of Kandahar, and ask the elders of each community what they need done.
"We're not here to make promises," said Lieutenant-Colonel Mick Ryan in a recent presentation to Canadian journalists.
"We're here to build things."
With Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper's government poised to pour as much as $200 million more into reconstruction in southern Afghanistan, the question of how and where the money will be spent is crucial.
Ottawa already puts $100 million per year into this war-ravaged country through civilian agencies, but much of it goes toward long-term good governance and economic initiatives, such as micro-credit financing for Afghans to start their own businesses.
Infrastructure investment has amounted to between $6 million and $8 million per year, according to a fact sheet provided by the PMO.
The Canadian military only has a small pot of reconstruction money to spend and in the last five months the majority of it has gone into constructing a 4.5-kilometre road through what was the former Taliban stronghold of Panjwaii.
If you ask Afghans, especially those in regions torn apart by fighting, what they consider to be the priority, they will tell you infrastructure.
"The Canadians are witness in our area," said Shafikhan, who owns land in Pashmul, west of Kandahar, where many a pitched battle was fought last year.
"They see our mosques. They are fallen down, destroyed. They see our houses and homes. They see everything by their own eyes. They know our problems. It is up to them what kind of help they do in the future," he adds.
Canadians have paid for the digging of more than 1,000 wells to help restore irrigation canals and reservoirs. Improvements have been made to dozens of schools, four bridges and a number of roads, according to the handout from the PMO.
But much of this has taken place slowly because after asking village elders what they need, the Canadians contract the work out to Afghans, a process the commander of Canadian troops in the country defended.
By contrast, in Oruzgan, 400 soldiers belonging to Australia's 1st Combat Engineer Regiment, based in Darwin, have in their short time on the ground taken a more direct, aggressive approach.
"We go in and talk to the mullah and say what would you like and do the job there and then," Ryan says. "We take our engineers in. We have armoured trucks full of construction stores and prefabricated items. The first thing we'll do is renovate the village mosque, put in new windows, new doors. We put carpet in there."
Next, they move on to village water supplies and are doing an inventory of the needs of roughly a dozen villages in the area surrounding the provincial capital. In addition, the Australians, using one of their own civil engineers, have been planning larger capital works projects, such as renovations to the Terin Kowt hospital and building a bridge.
Canadian Brigadier-General Tim Grant said he much prefers the way his troops have handled redevelopment.
"It's too easy to go in and do it yourself," he explains.
"For us to go in and drill a well, refurbish a school, that doesn't help the economy of Afghanistan. If you do everything on our own, the country will be no better off at the end of the day."