Snow days

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, January 5, 2010 at 8:40 PM - 46 Comments

Rick Mercer unleashes a Merceresque rant of his own.

It is ironic that while our parliament has been suspended we are a nation at war. On New Year’s Eve we greeted the news that five Canadians were killed in a single day with sadness but not surprise. We are at war because ostensibly we are helping bring democracy to Afghanistan. How the mission is progressing is open for debate but this much is certain – at present there is a parliament in Afghanistan that it is very much open for business. Canada has no such institution.

In Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai’s government faces fierce opposition at every turn; many of his cabinet choices have been rejected in a secret ballot by the more than 200 parliamentarians that sit in the legislature. Simply closing parliament down and operating without their consent is not an option for Hamid Karzai; to do so would be blatantly undemocratic or at the very least downright Canadian. If Hamid Karzai suspended parliament on a whim we might be forced to ask why Canadians are dying to bring democracy to that country.

Stephen Harper doesn’t have that problem. The Parliament of Canada has been suspended for no other reason than the prime minister simply can’t be bothered with the relentless checks and balances that democracy affords us.

Warnings then and now (II)

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, December 14, 2009 at 1:05 PM - 24 Comments

Peter MacKay acknowledges the demoralizing effect of detainee mismanagement, dismisses the suggestion his government didn’t do enough to deal with a notorious Afghan governor, declines to tender his resignation. CTV wraps the day’s developments together.

The end is the beginning is the end

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, November 16, 2009 at 1:30 AM - 8 Comments

Defence Minister Peter MacKay comments from Kandahar.

MacKay said Natynczyk’s interpretation of Parliament’s instructions to withdraw from Kandahar was “reflective of what everyone from the prime minister on down views as those instructions.”

But MacKay was unclear on what direction the mission would take after 2011 and whether it would involve regions of the country outside of Kandahar. ”The military mission is changing,” he said. “It is obviously transitioning at 2011 to emphasis on reconstruction, development, things that we are doing now but we’ll be able to do more. And clearly, there is discussion as to how this is going to take place. We’re tasked with that now.”

The previously stated positions of Gen. Natynczyk and the Prime Minister’s Office are here. Full audio of the Defence Minister’s comments are here. And a rather interesting interview with Hamid Karzai is here.

The Interview: Chris Alexander

By Kate Fillion - Tuesday, November 3, 2009 at 2:56 PM - 13 Comments

Q:Why, after six years in Afghanistan, did you leave in May?

A: My wife and I left because we had a child and the children of UN employees in Afghanistan have to live elsewhere. Had that rule not existed, we might have stayed, because we felt it was a very welcoming environment for babies. In Kabul, life for families is relatively safe.

Q: Just after we went to press, six U.N. staff were killed in Kabul. Do you still think it’s a relatively safe place for young families?

A: Of course Kabul is far from entirely safe from terrorist attack, even though millions of people do live there with their young families. This attack was a cold-blooded attempt to prevent the UN from doing its job: supporting a fair and legitimate outcome from the second round of voting. It is sickening to think some in the Taliban leadership believe this sort of attack–the murder of innocent Afghan and international civilians–will help their cause. Its shows how radical and extreme they have become–and how dangerous. Until the sanctuaries housing the groups that train for and stage such attacks, especially North Waziristan, become subject to effective and sustained military operations, these dreadful incidents involving suicide attackers will continue. Everyone in Afghanistan and Pakistan is a potential target. My heart goes out to the UN family in Afghanistan: in spite of everything, they are showing fortitude. But they will need the support of the whole world at this difficult time. Continue…

Not so fast, Karzai

By John Geddes - Monday, November 2, 2009 at 11:30 AM - 0 Comments

For much of this fall, the most pressing question in world affairs—preoccupying leaders from U.S. President Barack Obama to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon—was how to sort out the messy aftermath of Afghanistan’s Aug. 20 election. As charges of massive voting fraud mounted, so did the stakes. Would Hamid Karzai, the incumbent president, be allowed to cling to power under a cloud of suspicion that he’d cheated his way to victory? How badly would such an outcome undermine already flagging support in Europe and North America for ongoing military sacrifice in Afghanistan? Near the centre of the controversy and uncertainty was a disarmingly low-key Canadian, whose job was to tell Afghans, and the world, if the election had been stolen or not.

From his manner, Grant Kippen, chairman of Afghanistan’s Electoral Complaints Commission (ECC), seems an unlikely sort to play such a pivotal part in an international crisis. In the crowd of flamboyant Afghan politicians and big-ego diplomats dispatched to Kabul, Kippen stands out by standing back. Seemingly unflappable, doggedly methodical, he guided the ECC through weeks when many observers doubted that the results of its investigation would be allowed to carry the day. Speculation swirled that Karzai would be permitted to triumph no matter what—a suspicion that suddenly looked more than plausible when Peter Galbraith, a U.S. diplomat, was fired from a top United Nations job in Afghanistan after charging that his UN superior was biased in favour of Karzai. Continue…

Next steps after Afghanistan's run-off vote is scrapped

By John Geddes - Monday, November 2, 2009 at 10:33 AM - 3 Comments

News that Afghanistan’s planned Nov. 7 run-off presidential election has been canceled after the withdrawal of Abdullah Abdullah, main rival to incumbent President Hamid Karzai, casts a new light on a story in this week’s Maclean’s about Grant Kippen, the Canadian who heads the country’s Electoral Complaints Commission.
Continue…

Gen. Rick Hillier on his biggest strategic error, the Taliban, and Canada's future in Afghanistan

By Kate Fillion - Friday, October 23, 2009 at 12:00 PM - 8 Comments

Gen. Rick Hillier was chief of defence staff from February 2005 to July 2008. As he explains in A Soldier First: Bullets, Bureaucrats and the Politics of War, the Canadian Forces have long been underfunded, under-trained, underappreciated and overextended. The most visible and outspoken CDS in recent history, Hillier sought to reverse those trends while fighting a war in Afghanistan—and, as it turned out, Ottawa.

Q:In A Soldier First, you write that most Canadians do not know what the rationale behind the Afghanistan mission is. What’s the biggest misperception?

A: That everything is dark and gloomy. What Canadians hear about the mission is that Canadian soldiers have been killed, and they hear about improvised explosive devices and corruption in the government. There are some very bright spots, from the reconstruction and development of Afghanistan, to the development of the Afghan national army, to the fact that two-thirds of the country now essentially runs as normal. Canadians hear not a single thing about any of that.

Q: Whose fault is that?

A: I start with average Canadians. They should demand that kind of information from their government when they’ve got their sons and daughters participating in a war. Secondly, the Afghanistan task force has a strategic communications policy, but I wonder where the communications is being done because hundreds of thousands of Canadians don’t know what’s happening. Thirdly, our media have not done a very good job. Very few journalists have actually been outside the wire, because their editors are very concerned about the risks and their insurance policies almost always prohibit them from going out.

Q: Why did we first send troops to Afghanistan, in your opinion?

A: We were going somewhere in 2003, just as a way to relieve the pressure of saying no to the Americans on Iraq, and it ended up being Afghanistan. But I think now we view the world through a more strategic lens: we have to bring stability to places where there’s chaos, to help those areas develop.

Q: Does Canada have a coherent strategic plan for what’s going to happen post-July 2011, when our troops are scheduled to pull out of Afghanistan?

A: That’s very difficult to say. I think Canadians have heard very little about it and are therefore reasonably asking, “What is the plan and what is our strategy there?” When I was chief of defence staff, our view of what we were doing was to try to help Afghans determine, with some assistance, just what it was they wanted as a country and how they wanted to live their lives. We were very, very clear on that. As President [Hamid] Karzai told me the first time I met him, “The number one threat to Afghanistan is our lack of capacity to govern ourselves, to provide jobs for the people and provide for their basic needs, and to provide for their security. The sooner we can be helped to provide those capacities, the sooner we can get going on our own.”

Q: How can you help Afghans do all that after 2011 without troops?

A: You cannot, so the troops, if they’re not Canadian, will have to come from somewhere else. Make no doubt about it: the security mission and therefore the need for forces will not be finished in southern Afghanistan in 2011. You can come up with all kinds of schemes to hide away in a camp and train people for the Afghan army or police, but they lack credibility. If you try to help train and develop the Afghan army or police in southern Afghanistan, you are going to be in combat.

Q: Should our troops stay in Afghanistan after July 2011?

A: Whether they should stay or not will be a decision the government of Canada will make. What I would actually like to see is a strategic discussion, not just about what we do in Afghanistan but about Canada’s place in the world. But in this constant minority government, always in election campaign mode, with a very vitriolic Parliament, it’s impossible to have that sort of strategic discussion. Do I think that if Canadian troops stayed on the ground we could help foster a more stable Afghanistan that would in turn be a stabilizing force in Southwest Asia and help reduce terrorists’ ability to hide? Yes I do.

Q: Do you agree with de Gaulle, that “genius sometimes consists of knowing when to stop”?

A: I teach that as one of my leadership points. But also, you don’t achieve anything by stopping at the first sign of difficulty. If we’d stopped after Dieppe in World War II, where would we be right now as a nation? If we’d stopped before Vimy Ridge, we wouldn’t have been a nation at all. So yes, you’ve got to know when to say “stop” as a leader, you sure do, but you’ve also got to know when to push for the final thing that’s going to give you the full benefit.

Q: You write that when you were chief of defence staff, some of the toughest battles were fought not in Kandahar but against the bureaucracy in Ottawa.

A: I liken it to a boa constrictor. We were at war in Afghanistan, with young men and women laying their lives on the line on a daily basis, and we were trying to move at lightning speed to give them the capabilities to reduce risks and ensure they were set up for success. What we did not see, from the vast majority of the bureaucracy back in Ottawa, was the same sense of urgency. Everything became difficult, really moved slowly, projects were often parcelled into very little bits and pieces. We had to fight a war in Ottawa to get things done, from getting the tanks upgraded to getting helicopters. We should’ve had those things from the time the need was identified, in weeks if not days. It took months, and in several cases years.

Q: You once said, famously, that the Taliban are “detestable murderers and scumbags.” Do you still believe that?

A: Absolutely. I spoke about people who were trying to kill Canadians’ sons and daughters. I would also challenge people to come up with any other description for those who, as part of their policy, want to murder defenceless Afghan men and women.

Reasons to stay in Afghanistan #2: spread democracy

By Paul Wells - Monday, October 19, 2009 at 9:37 AM - 27 Comments

Meanwhile, Afghanistan’s lying vote-thief president is getting ready to reject calls for the run-off that would be Afghanistan’s final slim chance for an even minimally legitimate government.

We need a new guy in Afghanistan

By John Geddes - Friday, September 11, 2009 at 9:23 AM - 2 Comments

It’s impossible to know what will happen next in Afghanistan, but it’s obvious new leadership is needed to turn the situation around.

A partial recount of last month’s election, ordered by Canadian election referee Grant Kippen, throws open the chance that President Hamid Karzai might have to face a run-off ballot against this rival, Abdullah Abdullah. There are troubling hints of a split between Britain and the U.S. on how to handle the recount issue. Hard to guess how that might turn out, but it’s looking messy.

Continue…

This Week: Good news/Bad news

By The Editors - Friday, August 21, 2009 at 9:00 AM - 0 Comments

Face of the week
Suaad Hagi Mohamud is reunited with her son in Toronto after spending three months in Kenya due to an identity dispute

A week in the life of Y.E. Yang
The 37-year-old South Korean arrived at the PGA Championship in Chaska, Minn., ranked 110th in the world. On Friday, he scored a two under par 70, leaving him six strokes behind the leader and odds-on favourite, Tiger Woods. But a 67 on Saturday drew Yang within striking distance of Woods, and on Sunday, he clinched victory on the 18th with a brilliant shot over a tree. After the win, Yang received a congratulatory phone call from South Korean President Lee Myung-bak. Continue…

A new hope for Afghanistan

By Michael Petrou - Thursday, August 20, 2009 at 10:00 AM - 4 Comments

In the weeks following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks against the United States, journalists scattered across northern Afghanistan would periodically gather in a mud-walled compound in the small and sand-blown village of Khwaja Bahauddin to attend press conferences hosted by a well-dressed ophthalmologist with thin hair brushed straight back from his forehead and a close-trimmed black beard.

His English was flawless and devoid of slang or colloquialisms. Years earlier, during the anti-Soviet Afghan jihad, he had been taught English by agents in Britain’s MI6 foreign intelligence service. He was patient with the questions thrown at him, but his back seemed to stiffen when asked how much the Americans and British were sharing intelligence they had gathered on the Taliban with the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance, of which he was a member.

“We don’t need any advice,” he replied. “We know our enemies. The international allies have been striking the Taliban for two weeks. We have been fighting them for years.” Continue…

Just visiting: Afghanistan edition

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, August 19, 2009 at 4:19 PM - 14 Comments

Afghanistan appears to have made great strides in its pursuit of Western democracy.

Ghani came back to Afghanistan after the fall of the Taliban having co-written a book called Fixing Failed States and having co-founded an institute to study them. His reputation as an academic, technocrat, and reformer is close to sterling, but his international appeal plays to a narrative Afghans are programmed to reject. In a country that has been a stepping stone for empires and a chessboard for foreign interests, politicians with external ties are to be watched closely. On the streets of Kabul, I have variously heard Ghani dismissed as “not Afghan”; “a foreigner”; and, most charitably, “an intellectual, yes, but not presidential.”

… Unlike other exiled politicians who have returned to their native lands and been greeted by welcoming crowds, Ghani wasn’t forced out of Afghanistan, so he doesn’t have the hero’s privilege of a public that either obligingly forgets the reason he left or celebrates it. Ghani’s campaign must constantly prove that his loyalties lie with Afghanistan—Afghans expect him to leave if things really heat up. Ghani represents everything Afghanistan needs, but he’s also precisely what its people can’t stomach. A vote for Ghani is a concession of pride.

… it plays to Karzai’s strengths. His Afghan-ness is harder to question, and that’s critical to an electorate whose most frequent expression of nationalism is collective resentment for other countries’ meddling. Karzai has convinced most of the Afghans I’ve talked to that he has rebuked the West when they’ve overstepped their boundaries, but Ghani has no record to prove that he has or will.

So what do we do now?

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, August 17, 2009 at 11:13 PM - 23 Comments

March 31. “If these reports are true, this will create serious problems for Canada,” said International Trade Minister Stockwell Day. ”The onus is on the government of Afghanistan to live up to its responsibilities for human rights, absolutely including rights of women … If there’s any wavering on this point from the government of Afghanistan, this will create serious problems and be a serious disappointment for us.”

April 1. Defence Minister Peter MacKay said he will use this week’s NATO summit to put “direct” pressure on his Afghan counterparts to abandon the legislation. “That’s unacceptable — period,” he said Wednesday. “We’re fighting for values that include equality and women’s rights. This sort of legislation won’t fly.”

April 2. Immigration MInister Jason Kenney reiterated the government’s deep concern about the law, but he did not raise the spectre of holding back aid money. Instead, he said the government plans to use its “significant influence” with the Karzai government. ”Obviously our men and women [of the Canadian Forces] have been in Afghanistan to defend human rights and that includes women’s rights. And we intend to use it in every way possible to ask that the right of women be protected,” Kenney said.

April 2. “We haven’t had a chance yet to talk with the other ministers, so we haven’t made any decisions or had any discussions on next steps,” International Co-operation Minister Bev Oda said. “It’s very problematic. It’s a great concern and it is going to be a difficulty for Canada.”

April 4. “The involvement in the international community, and particularly Canada and our NATO allies, is based on the pursuit of very fundamental values in opposition to the kinds of values the Taliban stood for,” Harper told a news conference … ”If we drift from that, there will be a clear diminishment in allied support for this venture,” Harper said.

April 6. Foreign Minister Lawrence Cannon says he has been assured by the Afghan government that it will remove “contentious clauses” from a proposed law that critics say legalizes marital rape. Cannon said he spoke to the Afghan foreign minister, Rangin Dadfar Spanta, on Sunday. ”He reassured me that the law will not be implemented as it stands now, the more contentious parts of the law have been taken out, and the minister of justice in Afghanistan has the obligation to rewrite the law,” Cannon told CTV Newsnet’s Power Play.

Today. Bowing to international pressure and unprecedented protests by hundreds of women on the streets of Kabul, the Afghan government promised in April to review a new law imposing severe restrictions on women in Shiite Muslim families. Last week, though, Human Rights Watch discovered that a revised version of the Shiite Personal Status Law had been quietly put into effect at the end of July — meaning that Shiite men in Afghanistan now have the legal right to starve their wives if their sexual demands are not met and that Shiite women must obtain permission from their husbands to even leave their houses, “except in extreme circumstances.”

‘Who knew what when and who reported what when to which?’ (II)

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, April 16, 2009 at 10:22 PM - 0 Comments

Getting back to Bob Rae’s question of a couple weeks ago, Jessica Leeder traces the creation and awareness of Afghanistan’s so-called rape law.

The law that exploded Afghan women’s rights onto the world stage began in obscurity two years ago, when it was published as a proposal in a magazine for Shia clerics.

From there, it was circulated to the Ministry of Justice, where it began its bureaucratic progress into law.

At that point, few outside the Afghan government were paying attention. But inside the country, news of the legislation raised eyebrows. Months before President Hamid Karzai quietly signed it into law, legal activists in Kabul sounded alarms about its content to international stakeholders, but got nowhere, they say.

The Commons: 'We will continue to insist'

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, April 2, 2009 at 6:01 PM - 0 Comments

The Scene. To everyone’s infinite credit, Question Period passed today without a single reference to a bathroom, toilet, loo or water closet. There were two snide references to the Prime Minister’s ability to keep his photo op appointments, but given the bad puns that might have been employed, our Parliamentarians are otherwise probably to be congratulated for their restraint.

This afternoon, the last regular Question Period before a two-week Easter break, was instead dominated by far less giggle-worthy subjects like the economy and far more cringe-worthy matters like our continued engagement in Afghanistan.

On the former, the story remains much the same as it’s been for weeks. The opposition finds the Prime Minister confusing at best, hapless at worst. The government continues to struggle with their democratic responsibility to answer such charges. With the Prime Minister and Finance Minister in London, it was Ted Menzies’ duty to take most of the questions today and, though normally a good-natured sort and dressed today in a dashing pink tie and pink shirt ensemble, he seemed in a terrible mood, snapping and glaring and moaning about the bothersome nature of his inquisitors. Questions were asked, responses were offered, little if anything was achieved.

On the latter, there was a half-hearted attempt at once more trying to understand the Afghan legislature’s recent attempt to undermine everything we say we ‘re over there fighting for. Continue…

The Commons: How do you solve a problem like Afghanistan?

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, April 1, 2009 at 5:28 PM - 13 Comments

The Scene. Forced for the third consecutive day to defend his government’s position on the auto industry and perhaps tired of making the same attack on the leader of the opposition, Industry Minister Tony Clement decided today to go with the mid-90s pop culture reference.

“The honourable member talks about leadership. There is no leadership on the other side,” Clement said in response to Liberal Ruby Dhalla. “They actually remind me of that Seinfeld episode where the person knew how to take the car reservation, they just did not know what to do with the car reservation. On that side they aspire to the leadership, but if they ever got it, they would not know what to do with it. That is not leadership.”

This metaphor may or may not have been applicable. Reviewing the scene in question, it’s not clear who Jerry would be in this analogy. Possibly the Canadian people. Or perhaps the rental car is the Canadian people and Jerry is Tony Clement and Michael Ignatieff is Elaine and the rental car lady is the personification of Liberal arrogance. Or maybe it’s the other way round.

Anyway. Whatever the case, this quip did leave Dhalla a rather sizable opening she did fairly well not to miss.

“Mr. Speaker, this is not a Seinfeld episode,” she shot back. “This is a reality that Canadians are living day in and day out.”

The Liberals stood and yelled and cheered.

Otherwise the day was dominated by discussion of a place where democracy is taken far more seriously. Namely, Afghanistan. Continue…

Maclean’s Interview: Tooryalai Wesa

By John Geddes - Wednesday, February 18, 2009 at 3:00 PM - 1 Comment

Agriculture expert Tooryalai Wesa, 58, grew up in Afghanistan’s Kandahar province, but has lived in Coquitlam, B.C., for 13 years. After spending much of the past four years back in Afghanistan working as a development consultant, he was appointed Kandahar’s governor late last year.

Q: You were in Europe in 1991, with your wife and three daughters, when mujahedeen fighters overthrew what had been the Russian-backed government in Kabul. How did you end up in Canada?

A: We went first to Switzerland. I applied to different universities in Canada and luckily the University of British Columbia accepted me as a Ph.D. student, and we moved to Vancouver. It was a hard time—no word of English, three children. My wife was a professional medical doctor, but she wasn’t able to practise. In 2002, I completed my program. I taught for a year or so in the Asian studies department of UBC, then started working as a consultant on Afghanistan with international organizations.

Q: And that work brought you to President Hamid Karzai’s attention?

Continue…

'Our parliament is a collection of lords'

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, November 21, 2008 at 11:18 PM - 2 Comments

Of Canada’s 308 MPs, 69 are presently women. Of Afghanistan’s 249 MPs, 68 are women.

And so it is somehow true that Afghanistan’s Parliament has a higher percentage of women than ours does.

And that despite everything detailed in this remarkable piece from the Guardian. Some excerpts. Continue…