I participated in an operation that was designed to disrupt the enemy buildup and draw off heat from the Panjwai-Zharey district confluence. After the helicopters left the landing zone, I accompanied American and Canadian troops into a village complex in western Zharey district. A dog search team working with the Afghan police uncovered a small but significant insurgent cache. The stash amounted to a terrorist “starter kit.” I spoke with an American civilian counter-IED specialist as I picked up one of the IED components after he had cleared the site. “Where is this from?” I asked. “It doesn’t look ‘improvised’ at all. It looks machined.” “Oh those,” the specialist exclaimed. “I saw them in Iraq. They’re mass-produced in an Iranian factory. They even have advertising that’s sent out to insurgent groups bragging about how effective they are.” An IED brand? Exactly how many Canadians have been murdered using Iranian IED components? Or how many Afghan soldiers and Canadian mentors have been wounded by Iranian mortar bombs fired from Chinese mortars against our strong points over in Panjwai? And the Chinese 82-mm recoilless rifles used against our vehicles? These weapons weren’t dug out of the ground from mouldering 1980s mujahedeen caches. They come from somewhere else, not Afghanistan.
Since the Canadian Forces in Kandahar have no mandate to operate outside of Afghanistan against the insurgent support networks in Pakistan and elsewhere, we must rely on diplomacy. What is Canada’s foreign policy apparatus doing to help staunch this arms flow? Very little, apparently, and this is a weakness in Canada’s approach to Afghanistan. Canada has, ostensibly, a “whole of government” approach in Kandahar whereby the Canadian government departments co-operate in the pursuit of Canadian interests. Canada doesn’t appear to have a “whole of government” approach to deal with the strategic and regional aspects of the conflict. Indeed, those departments seem stuck in the 1990s. We have not seen a comprehensive information campaign from the Department of Foreign Affairs explaining how the Taliban manipulate and abuse young men for their terroristic purposes—but we do hear all about the plight of child soldiers in Africa. There is no evidence of a serious Canadian diplomatic offensive directed toward the recalcitrant Pakistani government that governs a country where the madrasas continue to pump out seemingly unlimited numbers of brainwashed fighters to fight our forces in Afghanistan, and where money continues to flow from certain Gulf countries to support those madrasas and radical Islamist groups: this, nearly half a decade after we commenced operations in Kandahar province.
Canadian diplomats led the charge in getting the United Nations to adopt the “responsibility to protect” doctrine and moralized about genocide in Africa on numerous occasions. Does this doctrine not apply to Afghanistan too, with all the accompanying moral rhetoric that Canadians like to muster? Why is Canada’s foreign policy apparatus less strident in the case of Afghanistan?
Similarly, where are our public démarches against Iran and China for permitting Iranian- and Chinese-made weapons to be smuggled into Afghanistan and fired at Canadian sons and daughters as they go about the business of reconstruction? Pakistan, China and Iran are not supportive of Canadian interests in the region and we should signal our displeasure as often and as loudly as possible, with as many Canadian voices as possible. Their ordnance is killing Canadian soldiers and Afghan civilians.
After I finished with the American IED specialist, I encountered an elderly man, who asked that I not use his name out of fear of retaliation by, as he put it, “the young ones.” He had a tanned, deeply lined face, an impeccably clean turban, and a gregarious laugh. Through my interpreter, Habib, I asked what it was like during the 1980s. “Oh, that was our time, back then,” he said, his eyes lighting up, and he regaled me with tales of valour against the hated infidel enemy, fading events now nearly forgotten except in local oral tradition.
“Please tell me this,” I asked him. “The Taliban and others say that we are as bad as the Soviets. Do you agree?” He looked at me and cackled with an old man’s laugh. “My friend, no. The Soviets behaved like crazy dogs [one of the lowest forms of life in Afghan culture], shooting people randomly and bombing randomly from the air with their planes and helicopters. You do not. We know you are here to help, but we need your help here in the villages, with the people. Our largest problem is we lack leadership. Most are dead—and I am too old to provide it. My time has passed. Afghanistan will continue to bleed until there is leadership and unity.”
