Another civil war in Afghanistan?

By Michael Petrou - Friday, June 17, 2011 at 11:00 AM - 6 Comments

Mikhail Galustov/Redux

Rust-crested skeletons of Russian tanks line the road that snakes through the mountainous Panjshir Valley, 100 km north of Kabul. More lie among the wheat fields, grapevines and tulips that cover almost all of the flat spaces between cliff walls and the silty river rushing between them. The tanks are war trophies and perhaps a warning.

It was here that the Afghan mujahedeen fought the Soviets to a standstill during the 1980s before forcing them from the country, and here also that Afghanistan’s anti-Taliban resistance retreated when the Taliban captured Kabul in 1996. Despite support from Pakistan and Osama bin Laden’s Arab Brigade, the Taliban never subdued the valley. For five years, they were held back here by Ahmad Shah Massoud, the military commander known as the Lion of Panjshir. Massoud rejected the Taliban’s harsh interpretation of Islam and the often-murderous ethnic Pashtun supremacism that went with it. He was assassinated by al-Qaeda agents posing as journalists days before the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and never lived to see his soldiers march back into the Afghan capital two months later.

Today, Massoud lies in a hilltop tomb visited daily by dozens of Afghans from all over the country. The Panjshir Valley remains an anti-Taliban heartland. Insurgents rarely penetrate it—though in some of the villages below its mouth they are said to have spotters who watch for kidnapping opportunities. But many Panjshiris, among other Afghans who opposed the Taliban during its time in power, are angered by developments elsewhere in the country that they see as a betrayal—namely President Hamid Karzai’s efforts to make peace with the Taliban, and concessions they fear he might offer to strike a deal.

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Standing firm in Afghanistan

By Michael Petrou - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 at 10:30 AM - 0 Comments

CPL Tina Gillies/DND/MDN

The staccato chattering sound of machine-gun fire drifts over Canada’s forward operating base at Masum Ghar in Afghanistan’s Panjwaii district shortly after dusk. The prolonged bursts are answered by other angry shots until, after a couple of minutes, the echoes fade away and silence returns. “That’s probably Wilson killing somebody,” says a soldier relaxing on a makeshift bench outside the metal shipping containers where many of them sleep on stacked bunks. Wilson is an American patrol base a few kilometres north of Masum Ghar, across the Arghandab River in Zhari district.

At dawn, from the same direction, the muffled crunch of a distant explosion sends a mushrooming plume of dust skyward above the green cultivated fields and rough mud compounds that spread from Masum Ghar beyond the river. It might have been an improvised explosive device, discovered and intentionally triggered, or perhaps something deadlier. No gunfire follows the blast, only birdsong and the puttering hum of a man coaxing a motorbike along a rutted dirt path.

“It’s the Americans at Wilson,” says another soldier. “They get more contact than we do. It’s closer to the highway, and now, with the prison break, there are 400 more Taliban there.”

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Rights and democracy

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, June 10, 2011 at 3:33 PM - 41 Comments

Speaking at this weekend’s Conservative convention, Jason Kenney explains the Conservative ethos.

“We don’t depend on the bloated bureaucracies of the nanny state; we thrive on our freedom and are upheld by the law,” he said. “We don’t assume that history began in the Summer of Love; we honour a tradition reaching back to the Magna Carta … Our adversaries were focused on the obsessions of the chattering classes – like Taliban prisoners – rather than the practical bread-and-butter concerns of hard-working families.”

Though neither are as old as the Magna Carta (established in 1215), both the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (adopted in 1948) and the Geneva Conventions (agreed to in 1949) predate the Summer of Love (1967).

Article 39 of the Magna Carta is translated as follows. Continue…

Mellissa Fung and her captors

By Anne Kingston - Friday, May 13, 2011 at 7:00 AM - 3 Comments

Photograph by Jessica Darmanin

“Do you want to see where I was stabbed?” Mellissa Fung asks, pulling aside the strap of her sleeveless pink blouse and pointing to the back of her right shoulder. The CBC reporter is proud of the bruise-like wound: it marks the resistance she put up during her abduction outside of Kabul in 2008.

A similar spirit of refusal animates Under an Afghan Sky, Fung’s memoir of her kidnapping and 28-day captivity in an underground hole the size of a closet. The publicity tour has brought her to a Toronto hotel, where she’s politely, if reluctantly, discussing it. “I’m an old-school journalist,” the 38-year-old says. “I’d rather tell the story than be the story.”

She was a hesitant memoirist, too. “I wanted to move on.” Dredging it up again was “pretty horrible,” she says, but she needed to address “misinformation”—that money or Taliban members were exchanged for her release. A screenplay was rumoured to be in the works. “I wanted my own record, the way I remembered it,” says Fung, a self-described “control freak.”

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Good news, bad news: April 21-28, 2011

By macleans.ca - Thursday, April 28, 2011 at 2:00 PM - 2 Comments

Good News

Khadr context

Omar Khadr should never have spent nine years of his young life locked inside the U.S. military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. But as the Toronto native prepares for his imminent return to Canada—and the hero’s welcome he will no doubt receive—newly released Pentagon documents offer a timely reminder of why the Scarborough-born teenager was such a prized catch. According to a 2004 intelligence assessment published on the WikiLeaks website, Khadr’s father was al-Qaeda’s “fourth in command,” and young Omar provided “valuable information” about the inner workings of Osama bin Laden’s network. Child or not, Khadr was hardly a naive bystander.

Resurrecting road hockey

Another week, another doomsday report about Canada’s obesity epidemic. The latest version, from the advocacy group Active Healthy Kids Canada, says only seven per cent of children in the video game generation get the recommended 60 minutes of daily “active play.” Which is precisely why we’re rooting for Alexander Anderson, Andrew Polanyi, Liam McMahon and Bowen Pausey. The Toronto teens are petitioning the city to overturn its long-standing ban on road hockey—a misguided bylaw that has no place in any Canadian neighbourhood.

Doing the right thing

It was a good week for those who act on instinct. In Fayetteville, N.C., a high school basketball coach saved dozens from a tornado by herding 300 players and parents into a safe area of the school—just before the twister began shredding cars and flipping vans. Then on Sunday, crew members on an Alitalia fiight from Paris to Rome overpowered a would-be hijacker who was armed with a knife, and who demanded to be flown to Libya. Not everyone can play the saviour. But when crisis calls, it’s reassuring to know that some folks step up.

#$%! Tylenol

Researchers have found a natural remedy for stubbed toes and hammered thumbs: swearing at the top of your lungs. According to a British study, F-bombs and other curse words help relieve drastic pain, especially if the person cussing isn’t a typical potty mouth. Michael Ignatieff may want to remember that tip next week.

Bad News

Rude awakening

Bashar al-Assad’s bloody crackdown on Syrian protesters drove home the cost of political freedom in certain Arab countries—leaving open the question of whether the international community is willing to help pay the price. No sooner had U.S. drones levelled part of Moammar Gadhafi’s compound in Tripoli than al-Assad unleashed tanks and troops on his own people, killing as many as 25 in Daraa. Britain, France and other countries voiced outrage, but having already committed air and logistical support in Libya, the best they could do was seek a toothless condemnation from the UN Security Council. The long-awaited Arab Awakening may yet reach Damascus. For now, though, it must proceed without help.

Shawshank Kandahar

Later this year, Canadian soldiers will begin the next phase of our military mission in Kandahar: training Afghan security forces. Perhaps they could help the prison guards, too. In a plot straight out of Hollywood, nearly 500 inmates—including senior Taliban commanders—escaped from the Saraposa jail through an underground tunnel burrowed by insurgent allies on the outside. A Taliban spokesman said the getaway route took five months to dig, with the help of “skilled professionals” and “trained engineers.” Said one escapee, in between giggles: “The guards are always drunk. Either they smoke heroin or marijuana, and then they just fall asleep.”

Spare us the spin

Well, that’s puzzling: after the fatal tasering of Robert Dziekanski, the mysterious death of a man in custody in Houston, B.C., a series of botched 911 calls in Saskatchewan, an officer’s kick to the face of a co-operative driver in Kelowna, and obstruction of justice charges against an allegedly drunk-driving Mountie who killed a motorcyclist, a survey has found that nearly 85 per cent of Canadians still trust the RCMP. And who commissioned this survey? The RCMP, you say? Never mind. Puzzle solved.

Head in the clouds

The union representing U.S. air traffic controllers is pushing for new measures to stop members from sleeping on the job. Their recommendation? Monitored naps. Here’s a better suggestion: a coffee maker in each tower, and a good night’s sleep. At home.

What is Pashto for "gong show"?

By Andrew Potter - Monday, April 25, 2011 at 12:08 PM - 16 Comments

UPDATE: Lord, it gets worse by the minute. From the Guardian’s narrative of the bust-out, one Taliban escapee had this to say:

Suspicions were immediately roused that the escape plot must have enjoyed support and help from prison guards to suceed, but the Taliban escaper doubted it. “They were just sleeping,” he said amidst extended laughter.

“The guards are always drunk. Either they smoke heroin or marijuana, and then they just fall asleep. During the whole process no one checked, there was no patrols, no shooting or anything.”

…

As many as five hundred Taliban prisoners were busted out of Kandahar’s Sarpoza prison yesterday. The circumstances are quite remarkable: Insurgents spent 50 months digging a 300-metre tunnel from a safe house northeast of the prison. Prison staff only realized what had happened a half hour after the prisoners had escaped. Continue…

This week: Good news, bad news

By macleans.ca - Friday, March 4, 2011 at 10:17 AM - 0 Comments

Good News

NASA/Getty Images

Closing in

Egypt’s former dictator Hosni Mubarak has been banned from leaving the country and had all his assets frozen as the interim government investigates 30 years of kleptocracy. Libyan strongman Moammar Gadhafi is running out of both time and money after a UN resolution denied him access to billions stashed away in the U.K., U.S., Austria and Switzerland. And even some of those who shared in the spoils have had a change of heart. Canadian songstress Nelly Furtado says she will now donate the $1 million she earned singing for the Gadhafi clan in 2007 to charity. Who knew that tyrants liked Top 40?

Pre-emptive strike

Speaking of a change of heart, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao has vowed to crack down on government corruption and narrow the income gap between the country’s rich and poor. The Communist leader also promised to rein in inflation, stabilize housing prices and address “social conflict.” Of course, his pledges came as thousands of security officials descended on Beijing and Shanghai to snuff out any planned Mideast-style protests. But the mere fact that China is even talking about tackling corruption and poverty is welcome news.

Grow baby, grow

A Massachusetts biotech firm says it has genetically engineered an organism that turns water, CO2 and sunlight into usable fuel—for cheap. The “biodiesel” produced by its cyanobacterium will cost about US$30 a barrel, the company says, with an acre of the algae yielding 57,000 litres of gas. But going green isn’t quite that simple. Burning the biofuel would still produce plenty of climate-changing gases.

It’s only a game

Relax, mom and dad. Just because your kids like to play gory, blood-soaked video games doesn’t mean they will become desensitized to real-life violence. New research has found that gamers and non-gamers displayed the same negative reactions when shown disturbing photos, including one of a man holding a gun to a woman’s head. In fact, parents should worry less about content and more about duration. A Chinese man was found dead at his computer after a three-day gaming bender with no sleep and little food.

Bad News

Reuters

A different kind of detainee

The Taliban say they are holding a Canadian tourist hostage, claiming he is a spy. Colin Rutherford, a 26-year-old recent graduate of the University of Toronto, travelled to Afghanistan in October for a two-week vacation and hasn’t been seen since. Foreign Affairs says it is working with local authorities to secure his release, but the precedents aren’t good. Beverly Giesbrecht, a Vancouver woman who converted to Islam and travelled to the Afghan border to make a pro-Taliban documentary, has been their prisoner since November 2008. Her fate remains unknown.

Out of order

A Manitoba judge is under pressure to resign after all but blaming a rape victim for the assault she endured. In a ruling that made headlines around the world, Justice Robert Dewar said the attacker was a “clumsy Don Juan” who doesn’t deserve jail because the woman was wearing lipstick, a tight shirt—and suggesting that “sex was in the air.” His conclusion? “This is a case of misunderstood signals.” The only thing difficult to understand is how Dewar still has a job. WikiLeaks founder and accused rapist Julian Assange can only wish he were facing charges in Canada.

Like master, like pet

Does nobody walk the dog anymore? A study released by the Association for Pet Obesity Prevention (yes, there is such an organization) says 53 per cent of cats and 55 per cent of dogs are overweight or obese. Like their masters, pudgy pets have lower life expectancies and are more likely to suffer from diabetes, arthritis and high blood pressure. The solution? Send your mutt to France, where a luxury hotel built specifically for pets includes swimming lessons, “doggy jogging,” and a pooch treadmill.

Final farewell

The last American veteran of the First World War has died at the age of 110. Frank Buckles joined the U.S. Army in 1917, at age 16, and went on to serve in England and France. Canada’s final vet, John Babcock, died at 109 last year. Authorities believe there are now only two remaining participants in the war to end all wars—109-year-old Claude Choules and 110-year-old Florence Green, both British. Lest we forget.

Mozhdah: The Oprah of Afghanistan

By Nancy Macdonald - Friday, December 17, 2010 at 3:20 PM - 9 Comments

For her safety, Mozhdah seldom leaves her house. When she does, she’s mobbed by fans. | Andrea Bruce/Getty Images

On the face of it, the taping of the The Mozhdah Show looks like that of any other U.S. talk show. Green lights dim as the house band—Afghanistan’s only known rock group—starts up. A white spotlight sweeps the audience. Whistles and cheers erupt as the host, Mozhdah Jamalzadah, emerges, hopping gracefully onto the bright-pink set. “Salaam!” says the charismatic, Canadian-raised star, whose nine-month-old TV program has taken Afghanistan by storm. “Salaam!” she says again, smiling, her adoring crowd refusing to return to their seats.

Mozhdah, who like Beyoncé is known by her first name, and is mobbed whenever she leaves her Kabul home, has been labelled the Oprah of Afghanistan. The comparison is of course imperfect. Oprah doesn’t sleep with a gun. She doesn’t ride in bulletproof cars or travel with guards armed with AK-47s. Death threats don’t flood her inbox. Mozhdah, whose first thought on entering a new building is how she might escape, is gutsy in a way Oprah doesn’t need to be. Her black leather leggings, six-inch heels and silver hoop earrings wouldn’t get a second glance in Vancouver, where she’s spent all but five of her 26 years, but this is Afghanistan. Until a few years ago, the bare ankles alone could have earned her a public whipping.

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How many? (II)

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, December 2, 2010 at 7:48 PM - 13 Comments

For the fourth consecutive day, Lawrence Cannon was pressed during QP to say how many children have been detained and transferred by the Canadian Forces in Afghanistan. For the fourth consecutive day, this did not result in an answer.

Afterward I emailed Mr. Cannon’s office with the following.

According to the Canadian Forces records released in September, 439 individuals were detained by the CF in Afghanistan between 2002 and 2008. Two-hundred and eighty-three of those individuals were transferred. Two questions: How many of those detained were juveniles? How many of those transferred were juveniles?

That was eventually forwarded to the Department of National Defence, which responds as follows. I’ve bolded the portion that seems most particularly applicable to the questions at hand. Continue…

History lesson

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, November 25, 2010 at 10:54 AM - 153 Comments

Stephane Dion has some questions about our mission in Afghanistan.

He expressed concern that some trained Afghan army members don’t stay long, some defect to the Taliban and “they don’t want really to fight” the insurgency. ”After all, we are speaking about people that have been able to win against the Soviet Union,” he said. “If they were willing to win against the Taliban they would not need so much training … How come those people who won against the Soviet Union need training?”

The Commons: Transparent contradictions

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, November 15, 2010 at 8:46 PM - 91 Comments

The Scene. The Liberal leader furrowed his brow. Michael Ignatieff had tried twice to gain some kind of clarity from the Foreign Affairs Minister and twice Lawrence Cannon, sticking to the script set out on the desk in front of him, had provided only the vaguest of notions.

“Mr. Speaker, these answers are genuinely absurd,” Mr. Ignatieff ventured with his third opportunity. “We are five days away from the Lisbon summit and the government is unable to stand in the House and tell us exactly what the post-2011 combat mission looks like.”

He gesticulated with both hands, putting on a surrealist puppet show to explain the confusion. ”How can the government explain this silence,” he begged, “how can it explain its improvisation, how can it explain its secrecy, how can it explain its lack of transparency with the Canadian people?”

His eyebrows jumped toward the ceiling as he finished.

With that asked, Mr. Cannon stood here to make a daring claim to seriousness. “Mr. Speaker,” he said, “we have been repeatedly clear on this particular issue.” Continue…

What's the difference?

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, October 22, 2010 at 1:22 PM - 0 Comments

Here again is what Jack Layton said four years ago.

Here now is what Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who favours the complete withdrawal of Canadian Forces from Afghanistan in 2011, said today about recent reports of negotiations between the Karzai government and members of the Taliban. Continue…

The Layton doctrine

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, October 20, 2010 at 9:07 AM - 0 Comments

Four years after the NDP leader was mocked by nearly everyone for suggesting as much, the makings of a comprehensive peace process in Afghanistan are now being facilitated by NATO.

Talks to end the war in Afghanistan involve extensive, face-to-face discussions with Taliban commanders from the highest levels of the group’s leadership, who are secretly leaving their sanctuaries in Pakistan with the help of NATO troops, officials here say…

The Taliban leaders coming into Afghanistan for talks have left their havens in Pakistan on the explicit assurance that they will not be attacked or arrested by NATO forces, Afghans familiar with the talks say. Many top Taliban leaders reside in Pakistan, where they are believed to enjoy at least some official protection.

In at least one case, Taliban leaders crossed the border and boarded a NATO aircraft bound for Kabul, according to an Afghan with knowledge of the talks. In other cases, NATO troops have secured roads to allow Taliban officials to reach Afghan- and NATO-controlled areas so they can take part in discussions.

The coordinator of the UN’s Al-Qaeda-Taliban monitoring team considers the way forward.

Afghan detainees sans scandal?

By Andrew Potter - Monday, October 18, 2010 at 9:20 AM - 0 Comments

PHOTOGRAPH BY ANDREW POTTER

If there is one thing the hysteria over the “detainees” scandal that preoccupied Parliament for most of last winter points to, it is a widespread resolve amongst Canadians to distance ourselves as far as possible from the abuses of executive authority that stained the American record in Iraq and Afghanistan. The names of prisons like Guantánamo, Abu Ghraib, and Bagram will remain synonyms for the moral collapse of the leadership of the West.

We tend to forget, though, that Canadian officials are themselves just as keen to be seen upholding the Geneva Convention and the basic principles of due process. That is pretty much why I found myself in southern Afghanistan last week, part of a journalistic foursome touring the buffed-up detainee centre at Kandahar Airfield, and, a day later, the infamous Sarposa prison in Kandahar City itself.

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Newsmakers

By macleans.ca - Friday, October 15, 2010 at 8:00 AM - 0 Comments

The prince gets down
Prince Charles, donning a red bindi, charmed locals with a charmingly poor dancing form while visiting the northern Indian city of Jodhpur during India’s Commonwealth Games. After some cajoling, he began to follow the movements of the elderly farmers, and began to smile as he twirled about.

And long may you run
Omemee, Ont., a wide spot on the highway between Lindsay and Peterborough, is the early childhood home of rock icon Neil Young. It’s also the site of Youngtown, a museum packed to the rafters with rock memorabilia of every sort, and a tribute to the Young family, including Neil’s late father, storied sportswriter and author Scott Young. Last week Neil and his older brother, Bob, visited the museum for the first time since it opened in 2008. “The hour-long visit was simply an awesome experience for this writer,” museum founder and collector in chief, Trevor Hosier, wrote on Youngtown’s Facebook page, “and I’m glad to report that we passed the audition.”

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Capt. Robert Semrau dismissed from the Forces

By Michael Friscolanti - Tuesday, October 5, 2010 at 12:23 PM - 0 Comments

[Updated: October 6, 7:21 a.m.]

A Canadian soldier has been kicked out of the army—but spared a stint in prison—for shooting a severely wounded insurgent on the battlefields of Afghanistan two years ago. Capt. Robert Semrau, whose controversial case sparked a nationwide debate about the ethics of mercy killing in a war zone, stood at the front of a packed courtroom Tuesday morning as a military judge announced his punishment: a demotion in rank, and dismissal from the Forces.

Semrau—who at one point faced the possibility of life behind bars, with no chance of parole for ten years—will not serve jail time for his “disgraceful conduct.” But his career in uniform is now over. “You failed in your role as a leader,” said the judge, Lt.-Col. Jean-Guy Perron. “How can we expect our soldiers to follow the rules of war if their officers do not?”

Countless Canadians have rallied behind Semrau since his arrest, convinced that he did the moral thing by putting a gravely injured insurgent “out of his misery” (a Facebook page set up in his honour has thousands of members). But Perron painted a very different portrait of the 36-year-old officer, saying he violated the military’s most basic rules of discipline and no longer deserves to serve. “Shooting a wounded, unarmed insurgent is so fundamentally contrary to our values, doctrine and training that it is shockingly unacceptable behaviour,” Perron said, pausing often to look Semrau in the eyes. “You made a decision that will cast a shadow on you for the rest of your life.” Continue…

On the ground in post-flood Pakistan

By Julia Belluz - Tuesday, September 14, 2010 at 1:35 PM - 0 Comments

World Vision President and CEO Dave Toycen in Sukkur, Pakistan

It’s been seven weeks since monsoon rains submerged one fifth of Pakistan’s landmass, displacing more than 20 million people and leaving 1,700 dead. As the deadline for government-matched funding looms on Oct. 2 (following a recently announced three week extension), Canadians have been slow to respond to this humanitarian crisis. (An Angus Reid poll shows that Canada gave Haiti nearly 10 times more than it has donated to Pakistan.) Military officials south of the border have expressed concern about “donor fatigue,” while some say the lack of lending has opened space for controversial Islamic charities—some banned by the government—to step in.

World Vision president and CEO Dave Toycen just returned from Pakistan where the NGO has been setting up medical clinics and distributing relief items, from clean drinking water and food to tents. He gives Maclean’s his view from the ground and talks about the challenges facing NGOs during the worst crisis in the country’s history.

Q: You just flew in from Pakistan. Where did you visit and what did you see?
A: I did a five-day tour of the capital Islamabad, where World Vision’s national office is, and the Sindh province in the south of Pakistan. The number of people who have been displaced and the breadth of the flooding from the river are really overwhelming. There are literally thousands of people in camps dispersed around the countryside.

Q: Was there a particular moment when you were overwhelmed by what you saw?
A: One of the toughest moments was meeting with a family who was receiving some non-food items—beds, towels, food supplies, cooking utensils. As I was talking to the mother, she said, “There’s nothing you can give me that will replace the loss of my 4-year-old child during the flood.” That was a reminder of the loss of life. You realize that it’s not just about the loss of property but that people have lost loved ones.

Q: There’s also a looming food crisis since the floods hit the breadbasket of the country, and farmers lost some 8.9 million acres of farmland.
A: Yes, one of the features of this disaster is that many of the people who have been affected are tenant farmers and some who own their own land. These tenant farmers work for landowners so their concern now is whether there’s a job for them when they get back to their land.

Q: The Pakistani government has been lambasted for not responding quickly enough to the crisis, particularly when President Zardari was on a European tour as the flooding began. What did you find over there?
A: It depends on which province you’re working in because the governments will vary. Pakistan is heavily provincially focused. In Sindh, the government has been engaged in responding to the disaster, though they would be quick to acknowledge that they don’t have adequate capacity to deal with a disaster of this scale. It’s clear that more needs to be done in preparation for a disaster like this in the future but it’s also extremely difficult for any mechanism to be able to cope with a flood like this, partly because monsoon rains come in such a concentrated fashion.

Q: What are the greatest challenges facing aid agencies like World Vision?
A: It’s natural during one of these disasters to begin from a town or city and work out from there. But this means there are still people in outlying areas who have received little or no substantial aid. As NGOs, we’re also facing staff shortages. It would be difficult to get volunteers at this point because there’s a security issue in Pakistan, and we rely mostly on local people. [World Vision has 105 local staff, and an additional 14 expatriates.] The other issue is that even though the rain has stopped in the north, because of the nature of the rivers, there’s a funnel-effect so you have flooding in the south as a great volume of water moves down the country.

Q: There’s been talk of the Taliban threatening foreign aid agencies. Were there any hindrances to getting your work done on the ground?
A: We’ve been focusing on the humanitarian aspect. We’re doing everything we can to work as quickly as we can. There are some conflict issues but we’re talking about children and mothers who are suffering as a result of the conflict so I think it’s important for us as Canadians to reach out when our aid can be so helpful to people who have lost—in many cases—everything.

Q: How does this situation compare to other disaster-hit regions you’ve visited?
A: Pakistan doesn’t have the high number of deaths we saw in Haiti but the number of people who have been affected by the flooding—who have lost homes, livelihoods, land—is far greater. We’re close to 23 million people affected by the floods. So in terms of the simple raw need for human survival, it’s arguable that the situation is even worse than Haiti.

Q: And yet Canadians and the international community have not been as forthcoming with donations. Why is that?
A: It’s been much more difficult. Pakistan is a long way from here—not a neighbouring country like Haiti—and in some ways, it’s a culture that’s less familiar to people. Also, flooding takes time to have impact so it wasn’t a powerful singular act like the quake in Haiti. There’s also the conflict issue: some Canadians feel if they give money it would be stolen or won’t be used in the right way. But World Vision and other agencies have strict parameters to ensure the aid goes to people who need it.

Q: What is the outlook for Pakistan after this flooding?
A: Once the water has receded, the question is how do we get people back to their farming areas, back to their means of livelihood. Further north, some families are eager to return to their lands now that the water is starting to recede. Plus, this disaster hit in a number of areas just prior to harvest so if they don’t get planting by the end of October, they will miss their next crop as well.

Video game reality

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, September 8, 2010 at 4:01 PM - 0 Comments

Two weeks ago, Defence Minister Peter MacKay stated his objection to the inclusion of the Taliban in a multiplayer mode of the video game Medal of Honor. In the wake of that and other statements of concern, the New York Times’ Seth Schiesel sorts through the trouble.

So what has appeared to prompt the defense ministers of three Commonwealth countries to blast Medal of Honor is their visceral reaction against the idea that the Taliban is human. The very concept that “their side” has soldiers (not thugs, criminals or terrorists, but soldiers) on an equal footing with “our” soldiers can be tough to swallow.

Is that fictional entertainment, or is that reality?

Likewise, Dan Gardner adds his thoughts.

Still crazy?

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, August 25, 2010 at 6:04 PM - 0 Comments

As we approach the four-year anniversary of Jack Layton saying that really crazy thing, General David Petraeus speaks with Fox News about the way forward in Afghanistan.

Karzai has offered a list of conditions Taliban fighters must meet to be a part of Afghanistan’s future — accept the constitution, lay down weapons, cut ties to Al Qaeda and become productive or participating members of society. If those “redlines” are met, Petraeus said he doesn’t see “why you would not support reconciliation.”

“We sat down across the table in Iraq from individuals who had our blood on their hands. That’s what was done in northern Ireland. It’s what’s done in just about any insurgency as you get to the end stages of it,” he said. “If there’s a willingness of those at the high-levels to do that, and they do indeed agree to the safeguards. … then certainly you would want to reconcile,” he said.

Where 'nice' Obama has got us

By Mark Steyn - Thursday, July 1, 2010 at 8:00 AM - 368 Comments

ATTA KENARE/AFP/Getty Images

In 1939, Capt. Peter Sanders, serving with the Tochi scouts on the Afghan-Indian border, was blown up by a Waziri booby trap and lost his right arm. Shortly afterwards, he accepted an invitation to lunch from the tribesman who’d planted the bomb. Awfully decent of the chap, and not a bad spread, all things considered.

Not everyone cares for the old stiff upper lip: “I spit on your British phlegm!” as the Khazi of Kalabar remarked in what remains the seminal work on Afghanistan, Carry on up the Khyber. But imperialism requires a certain dotty élan. Without it, it’s no fun. You’re just a guy holed up in a Third World dump occasionally venturing out in the full RoboCop to pretend to implement some half-assed multilateral “nation-building” strategy that NATO defence ministers all agreed to at some black-tie banquet in Brussels and then promptly forgot about. Instead of the Tochi scouts—Pathan irregulars commanded by British officers—we now have Afghan units “trained,” or at any rate funded, by Western governments. A headline in the Washington Post captures the general malaise: “Afghan forces’ apathy starts to wear on U.S. platoon in Kandahar.” On a recent patrol through the city, 1st Lieut. James Rathmann stopped at a police checkpoint and found them all asleep in a nearby field.

Continue…

Meet one of Afghanistan’s most influential women

By Michael Petrou - Friday, June 18, 2010 at 3:32 PM - 1 Comment

Fatima Gailani, president of the Afghan Red Crescent Society, remembers the last time Afghanistan was abandoned. She was a young activist in exile and spokesperson for the anti-Soviet mujahideen during the Russian occupation. Her father, Pir Sayed Ahmad Gailani, founded the National Islamic Front of Afghanistan, a political party that helped funnel CIA-funded weapons to Afghans fighting the Soviets.

“During the Cold War, Afghanistan was the star of the stars,” she tells Maclean’s during a recent visit to Ottawa. “Then, as soon as the last Russian soldiers got out of Afghanistan, we looked left and right, and we didn’t see anyone around to help us. Only a few NGOs.”

The September 11th attacks and the subsequent American-led overthrow of the Taliban refocused the world’s attention on Afghanistan, and, despite the frustrations that have come with the Taliban’s resurgence and the ongoing war, Gailani says Afghans have benefited from it.

“For the people of Afghanistan, this is still better than what they had,” she says. “When I talk to my colleagues [about their lives before Western intervention], they say they virtually didn’t have a tomorrow. They didn’t know if a rocket would land on their house, if the school would be standing tomorrow, how many people in the house would be alive. If they compare today with what they had 10 years ago, they are still happy. You would be surprised.”

Gailani is now one of Afghanistan’s most influential women. She attended the Bonne Conference on Afghanistan in 2001, was a delegate to the 2002 Loya Jirga, and took part in drafting the 2004 constitution. Most recently, she was invited to join the “peace jirga” conference President Hamid Karzai convened this month to seek support for his efforts to negotiate an end to the Taliban’s insurgency.

The Taliban have so far shown little interest in a deal. They rocketed the conference and say they won’t talk until all foreign troops leave. Karzai, however, is committed to reconciliation with the Taliban—motivated, surely, by the inability of his government and its foreign backers to defeat them militarily.

Gailani worries what political accommodation with the Taliban will mean for Afghan women, who, during Taliban rule, were forbidden to work, attend school, or leave the house wearing anything other than an all-concealing burqa.

“We, the women of Afghanistan, are the most vulnerable people in this situation,” she says. “When you go to the negotiating table, I would like to know if my future is your bargaining chip. Are you going to compromise on my future, on the schooling of my daughters, my work, freedom of the press, things that are so valuable to me? We have achieved a lot. I don’t want to lose it.”

Gailani says foreign troops should leave Afghanistan—but not yet. The police, the military and civil society are still in “shambles,” she says. If foreign troops go now, the country risks collapse. Foreigners, however, can’t fight for Afghanistan forever, she says. “We will never have a safe Afghanistan unless our forces are capable of guarding their own country. The army of Afghanistan needs to be rebuilt. It needs to be trained. Not just how to fight and how to protect, but the ethics of soldiering. We have to learn to be human with the people in our hands.”

The insights Brig.-Gen. Jon Vance brings (back) to Afghanistan

By John Geddes - Monday, June 7, 2010 at 10:17 AM - 20 Comments

Jon Vance (THE CANADIAN PRESS/ Murray Brewster)

I find it fascinating to see Brig.-Gen. Jon Vance returning to Kandahar to command the Canadian forces there again, replacing Brig.-Gen. Daniel Ménard, who had to come home after being accused of engaging in an intimate relationship, which the military doesn’t allow out in the field.

Vance was our top soldier in Afghanistan not so long ago, through much of last year, and at the time I wrote about how he brought a unique analytical perspective to the job. That’s because he was the author of paper with the intriguing title “Tactics without Strategy, or Why the Canadian Forces Do Not Campaign,” published five years ago in a military textbook called The Operational Art: Context and Concepts.

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EXCLUSIVE: The man who trained the Times Square bomber

By Adnan R. Khan - Monday, May 17, 2010 at 3:05 PM - 10 Comments

Getty Images

One week following the attempted bombing of New York’s Times Square, a Maclean’s investigation has learned that the man allegedly behind the latest plot to attack the U.S. had been searching for a militant group in Pakistan to back him for years. Faisal Shahzad, the 30-year-old Connecticut resident, was captured by U.S. authorities while on a flight about to depart for Dubai, after leaving a crude but powerful bomb in an SUV in the heart of Manhattan’s iconic tourist district. But he had visited Pakistan in mid-June 2006 to receive training at a camp belonging to the Lashkar-e-Taiba in Kashmir, according to one of its senior commanders.

The LeT, a banned militant outfit set up in the late 1980s with the help of Pakistan’s largest spy agency, the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence, was blamed for a vicious attack on Mumbai in November 2008 in which more than 160 Indians were killed and scores more injured. According to the commander at the LeT’s main base of operations in Dulai, a village 25 km south of Muzaffarabad, the capital of Pakistani-controlled Kashmir, Shahzad was brought to the LeT camp by another member of the organization. “He was an eager recruit,” he recalls. “Very intelligent but also very intense, and driven to make his mark for the sake of Islam.”

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“He felt it was the humane thing to do”

By Michael Friscolanti - Wednesday, April 28, 2010 at 5:11 PM - 16 Comments

Capt. Robert Semrau fired two bullets into the chest of a severely wounded Taliban fighter because he “couldn’t live with himself” if he left another human being “to suffer like that,” a fellow soldier testified today. “He said it was a mercy kill,” said Cpl. Steven Fournier, the only Canadian who was with Semrau at the time of the alleged shooting. “He said he felt it was necessary. He felt it was the humane thing to do.”

A key witness for the prosecution, Fournier provided a damning account of what he claims unfolded on the morning of Oct. 19, 2008, when he and Semrau stumbled upon an injured insurgent who, moments earlier, had been shot out of a tree by a U.S. Apache helicopter.

Both soldiers were part of a small Canadian team assigned to mentor a company of Afghan National Army (ANA) troops, who were conducting a “sweep and clear” patrol in a dangerous district of Helmand Province. When ANA members first discovered the maimed fighter—who had a gaping hole in his stomach and a mangled left leg—their commander, Capt. Shafiqullah, ordered them not to provide medical treatment. As Fournier quoted him saying: “If Allah wants him, he will die. If not, he will live.” Continue…