Afghanistan

Saturday September 11, 2021

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Saturday September 11, 2021

The 20th anniversary of 9/11: no end in sight

Wednesday September 12, 2001

A new and deadly era began when the planes sliced into the twin towers on the morning of 11 September 2001. That evening, the historian Tony Judt wrote that he had seen the 21st century begin. The nearly 3,000 lives stolen by al-Qaida were only a small part of the toll. The horror began a chain of events that has claimed hundreds of thousands of lives, including huge numbers of civilians abroad and many US military personnel. It is still unfolding.

If the killing of the plot’s mastermind Osama bin Laden a few months before the 10th anniversary perhaps let some hope that an end to that new era might be in sight, there can be no such false confidence at the 20th. The establishment of a Taliban government in Kabul, two decades after the US ousted the militants for harbouring Bin Laden, has underscored two things: that far from reasserting its global supremacy, the US looks more vulnerable today; and that the echoes of 9/11 are still reverberating across the region – but will not stay there.

September 11, 2006

Al-Qaida itself survives and others claim its mantle. In the west, the threat from Islamist terrorism endures – from 7/7 and the Madrid train bombings, to the attacks at Manchester Arena, the Berlin Christmas market and Vienna – though the nature of the threat has shifted, from a heavily financed, complex and internationally organised plot to more localised, less sophisticated attacks. This week, 20 men went on trial over the 2015 massacre at the Bataclan concert hall and other sites in Paris. Ken McCallum, MI5’s chief, said on Friday that the agency had prevented six “late stage” terrorist plots during the pandemic, and that with the Taliban’s triumph, “more risk progressively may flow our way”.

The determination to pursue a military solution fed the political problems, as history should have warned. (A Rand Corporation study of 248 terrorist groups worldwide suggested that only 7% were ended by military force.)

September 11, 2011

In Afghanistan, the refusal to accept a Taliban surrender paved the way for America’s longest war and ultimate acceptance of defeat. Islamic State arose from the ashes of the invasion of Iraq. Extraordinary renditions, torture, the atrocities of Abu Ghraib and the unwillingness to acknowledge or atone for civilian deaths at the hands of US forces or their allies all stoked the fire. These abuses and crimes were not anomalies but intrinsic to the war on terror. Men swept up in the aftermath are still held at Guantánamo Bay.

Around the world, basic rights were erased at home too. The US saw a massive expansion of presidential power; the veneration of secrecy; the destruction of norms; the normalisation of Islamophobia; the promotion of a narrative linking immigration and terrorism, breeding broader intolerance; and the encouragement of the belief that ordinary citizens were in a state of war. It is not hard to draw the line to the rise of Donald Trump and white supremacy, or rightwing populism elsewhere. In the US, far-right terror groups were behind most attacks last year; in the UK, police have said that the fastest growing terror threat is from the far right. The biggest perils to the US now appear not external but internal. The future of a divided and distrustful country looks increasingly precarious, its status in the world weakened.

August 18, 2021

Whatever many in the country once believed, American citizens cannot be isolated from the dangers of the outside world; trouble is not “always someplace else”. On 9/11, the country transitioned from a dream of unending tranquility at home to a nightmare of forever war. With the return of soldiers from Afghanistan, the US is more distanced from the enemy. But the conflict continues by other means, and without boots on the ground, drone strikes are more likely than ever to claim the lives of civilians as well as terrorist suspects. The US, and the west, cannot be safe at home while insecurity reigns abroad. (The Guardian) 

 

Friday August 27, 2021

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Friday August 27, 2021

As the evacuation window closes, Trudeau should focus on the Afghan crisis

Who will be left behind?

As the Taliban’s evacuation clock races to its final, terrible hour, we are left feeling helpless in our minute-by-minute prayers for the Canadian citizens and permanent residents still on the ground in Afghanistan and the thousands of Afghans promised safe harbour in a grand resettlement plan.

The pulse races. Yet Prime Minister Justin Trudeau could not have sounded more of a naif when he said, after a meeting of G7 leaders Tuesday, that “we will continue to put pressure on the Taliban to allow people to leave the country in safety.”

November 17, 2015

To state the obvious: he’s not bargaining from a position of strength.

And to restate past assertions in this space, evacuation efforts have been late, slow and confused. How many more evacuees could have been assisted if the government had moved with speed?

It was no comfort to listen to a triumvirate of Liberal ministers Wednesday – Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan, Immigration Minister Marco Mendicino and Foreign Affairs Minister Marc Garneau – attempting to express hope and optimism for better days ahead, the better life that Canada offers. In real time, the government’s so-called corridors of protection have not been up to the task of shepherding the desperate into safety at Kabul’s airport.

August 24, 2021

A bombardment of pleas and videos from those desperately trying to flee will continue to rain down.

And in yet another penny-dropping moment, it has finally sunk in that with U.S. forces scheduled to evacuate from their longest war by Aug. 31, a process that will take days, the last opportunity for a Canadian supported exit may be just hours away. And that’s assuming the risk of attack against U.S. troops by the ISIS affiliate — and Taliban enemy — ISIS-K doesn’t become a reality. U.S. President Joe Biden defined that risk this week as acute and growing.

In Wednesday’s press conference it fell to Marc Garneau to acknowledge the obvious: that there’s a “possibility” that the Canadian effort will fail to successfully complete its rescue mission. We’re on the job, Garneau said, “even though there may be some election going on.”

It’s not an easy hand that Trudeau has been dealt. It would be folly to argue otherwise. That the Taliban briskly took the capital on the same day as the election was called should be material for Trudeau’s memoirs. That’s far in the future. How the Biden administration failed to anticipate the Taliban’s lightning-fast takeover will be one for the history books.

July 15, 2021

In the instant, it’s obvious that the Afghanistan crisis has emerged as a trip wire for Trudeau, one that’s becoming more barbed with each passing moment. A month has passed since the government backtracked on its ill-considered 72-hour deadline for Afghan interpreters and others who worked in support of Canadians to file resettlement paperwork. That shemozzle revealed wonky bureaucracy at work.

And it was a signal to Trudeau to prioritize the Afghan file. This he has failed to do.

That has left a broad opening for opposition leaders. When Conservative party Leader Erin O’Toole charges, as he did Wednesday, that Trudeau failed to take timely action on Afghanistan months ago, and that the prime minister put the political interests of the Liberal party ahead of the crisis, it sounds discordant to hear Trudeau on the same day pledging to raise corporate taxes on the big banks.

The remedy would be for Trudeau to get off the campaign trail and high tail it back to Ottawa. The next 48 hours will be crucial to the outcome of the Afghanistan crisis. Getting updates, as the prime minister calls them, as he travels through Hamilton, or Winnipeg or Surrey, B.C., releasing the Liberal platform drip by drip, is not the mien of a seasoned G7 leader. (Toronto Star Editorial) 

 

Tuesday August 24, 2021

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Tuesday August 24, 2021

Canada doesn’t need more social media trickery

The last thing this election campaign needs is a drift toward American style social media political manipulation and disinformation.

April 21, 2021

We saw an example of that over the weekend, and the offender is someone we would have hoped was above it — Chrystia Freeland. 

It starts with an online question-and-answer session made in 2020 during the Conservative leadership race. In a tweeted video of the session, which was retweeted by Freeland, O’Toole is questioned about privatized health care. Asked if he would advocate private, “for-profit” health care in Canada, his clear response was “yes.”

The only problem is, the video was edited to manipulate the message. In the same segment, the original video shows O’Toole also noted that universal access to health services is of paramount importance. The condensed clip used in Freeland’s tweet did not include that statement.

Justin Trudeau later retweeted the video, and Twitter marked Freeland’s tweet as “manipulated media.” Conservative lawyers sent a complaint to Elections Canada demanding an investigation and disclosure of who was involved in making the video. Conservative manager of media relations Mathew Clancy said: “It’s disappointing to see the Liberals resort to American-style divisive politics.”

March 1, 2012

That’s rich, considering the Conservatives had their own social media mud slinging event just a week ago, distributing a video mocking Trudeau by placing his face on a character from the movie “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.” It was so offensive even some sitting Conservatives called the tweet juvenile, amateur and a bad idea during an election campaign.

April 10, 2019

Fair enough. The Conservatives are hypocritical and too precious by half, but that doesn’t excuse what the Liberals did. Their campaign social media gurus manipulated a piece of content to change the message from the original. And the Conservatives did the same thing by adding Trudeau’s face to a fake partisan message. 

Both these things are wrong. We should not be concerned about the feelings or reputations of the politicians and parties involved, but Canadians certainly deserve an apology.

This sort of social media distortion is a toxic import from our friends down south. It has become big business and high art in American politics to manufacture social media demonizing the opposition. The Trump Republican leadership and presidential campaign used literally hundreds of operatives to generate false and misleading storylines about their opponents. Many pundits argue that had an impact on Trump’s successful campaigns.

June 26, 2019

Granted, it was probably naive to hope this twisted tactic would not eventually migrate north, and in fact there have been previous examples. But things are getting worse, and that is not something Canadians should sit quietly and tolerate. 

Much as we have been critical of social media giants for accepting and even encouraging this sort of behaviour, Twitter is to be congratulated for its practice of clearly labelling manipulated content. Other social media platforms have taken their own measures, but Twitter’s is among the most clear and identifiable, and that should sufficient incentive for political parties to lay off the disreputable tactic. 

It cheapens already damaged election discourse. It disrespects our democratic process and ideals. Everyone knows election campaigns have their share of spin and partisan fakery. But outright manipulation is a line parties should not to cross. Parties need to understand that, and the best way to ensure that is by public reaction to this sort of unethical behaviour. We don’t need this garbage in our election. (Hamilton Spectator Editorial) 

 

Friday August 20, 2021

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Friday August 20, 2021

Not the Bad Guys Anymore

When the Taliban first sacked Kabul 25 years ago, the group declared that it was not out for revenge, instead offering amnesty to anyone who had worked for the former government. “Taliban will not take revenge,” a Taliban commander said then. “We have no personal rancor.” At the time of that promise, the ousted president, Mohammad Najibullah, was unavailable for comment. The Taliban had castrated him and, according to some reports, stuffed his severed genitals in his mouth, and soon after, he was strung up from a lamppost.

November 14, 2001

The reports from Kabul are probably more reassuring to those unfamiliar with this history. The Taliban has once again declared a general amnesty, and asked everyone to show up for work in the morning and prepare to unite behind a Taliban government that will rule according to Islamic law—but perhaps, the group has suggested, not in the harsh manner that made it infamous during its rule from 1996 to 2001. Women can continue their education so long as they wear the hijab, and the Taliban will guarantee human rights and freedoms of speech and expression, it said, so long as they comply with sharia. (Spoiler: The Taliban does not believe they do.) A Taliban spokesperson consented to an interview with a female television presenter whose face was visible. During the Taliban’s previous regime, it discouraged depiction of the human form, and would certainly not have countenanced the broadcast of a woman’s face to the entire world.

The Taliban now owns Afghanistan, and its first priority is avoiding anything that resembles chaos. In 1996, the group’s leader, Mullah Omar, told residents of Kabul to resist the temptation to flee, that the Taliban would keep them safe. Omar died in 2013, but his successors—who include his own son, the Taliban’s top military official—are saying exactly the same thing now. They have made sure the police phone number works, and they are calling for workers, including cops formerly loyal to the previous government, to report for duty. The Afghans I have reached by phone in Kabul say the same: Taliban are in the streets, acting not as avengers but as guarantors of public order. They are not executing people on street corners; instead they’re watching for looters and troublemakers. (The Taliban has always returned to this core role, since the movement’s founding: In the 1990s, when the Afghan countryside was beset by highwaymen, murderers, and rapists, the group won its first followers by securing the roads and providing order where the worst kind of anarchy had reigned.) (Continued: The Atlantic) 

August 17, 2021

Meanwhile, in Canada, there may be no better example of the unique and difficult challenge Erin O’Toole faces as leader of the federal Conservative Party than his recently announced policy on mandatory vaccinations.

Mr. O’Toole is against measures that force Canadians to get vaccinated, regardless of what line of work they may be in. Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau has said federal workers must be vaccinated, as well as anyone who wants to fly or travel by train.

The Conservative Leader says he believes in the power and safety of vaccines, but doesn’t feel people should be forced to take them. Mr. Trudeau doesn’t believe people should be forced to take them either, but nor should the unvaccinated have the right to potentially pass COVID-19 on to others. Thus, the mandate.

July 15, 2021

A majority of Canadians are fully or partially vaccinated. And most of them, polls suggest, support vaccine mandates or vaccine passports that bestow certain rights and privileges on those who have chosen to get jabbed. In his heart, I think Mr. O’Toole believes this also. He just can’t endorse that policy because it would alienate a faction of his base – the libertarians and vaccine deniers – who think the state has no right imposing restrictive measures on anyone. These are voters Maxime Bernier and his People’s Party of Canada are trying to steal away from the Conservatives.

Welcome to Erin O’Toole’s world – or rather, his nightmare. While his central challenger in this election, Justin Trudeau, can be many things to many people, the Conservative Leader does not have that option. He is bound, in many ways, to a segment of the population resistant to change and who are suspicious of government intrusions of any sort into their lives, regardless of the reason. (Continued: Globe & Mail)

L E T T E R S  to the  E D I T O R  The Hamilton Spectator, Saturday August 21, 2021

Letter to the Editor, The Hamilton Spectator, August 23, 2021

Letter to the Editor, The Hamilton Spectator, August 24, 2021

Social Media chatter:



 

Wednesday August 18, 2021

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Wednesday August 18, 2021

Russia and the U.S. share the blame for the terrible fate facing Afghan people

In the year 2000, five years after the Taliban came to power in Afghanistan, nobody elsewhere cared what happened in that landlocked, benighted country. It was ruled by angry rural fanatics who tormented the local people with their demented rules for proper “Islamic” behaviour, but it was not a military or diplomatic priority for anybody.

July 15, 2021

It is about to return to that isolated and isolationist existence. Neither then nor now do the Taliban even have a foreign policy. They are more like a franchise operation whose various elements share certain basic principles — e.g. foreigners, women and democracy are bad — but whose members are primarily focused on local issues and personal ambitions.

This is not the first time that the country has been in such a mess, and about the only useful thing that the current lot of foreign invaders can do on their way out is offer refuge abroad to as many as possible of the Afghans who trusted their promises. That will certainly not be more than 10 or 20 per cent of those who earned their protection.

The Russians and the Americans share the blame for this catastrophe. It’s hard to believe that an uninvaded Afghanistan could have peacefully evolved into a prosperous democratic society with equal rights for all, but “uninvaded” is the only condition in which it could conceivably have approached that goal.

There was the germ of such a locally-led modernization process in the overthrow of the king in 1973 and the proclamation of an Afghan republic. Other Muslim-majority states have made that transition successfully — Turkey did, for example, despite its current government — but the Afghan attempt did not prosper.

Violent resistance by traditional social and religious groups started at once, and the tottering new republican regime was overthrown in 1978 by a bloody military coup. The young officers who seized power were Marxists who imposed a radical reform program.

February 2, 2019

They gave women the vote and equal access to education, carried out land reforms, and even attacked the role of religion. By 1979, the Marxist regime was facing a massive revolt in conservative rural areas, and one faction asked for Soviet military help.

The moribund Communist leadership in Moscow agreed, and 100,000 Soviet troops entered the country. The subsequent war devastated the country for a decade — with much help from the United States.

“The day that the Soviets officially crossed the (Afghan) border, I wrote to president Carter: We now have the opportunity of giving to the U.S.S.R. its Vietnam War,” said former U.S. national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski. He immediately started sending money and weapons to the rural rebels who later became the Taliban.

It took 10 years, $40 billion of clandestine U.S. military aid, and around a million Afghan dead, but by 1989 the Taliban and their various Islamist rivals forced the Russians to pull out. Shortly afterwards the Soviet Union collapsed, and Brzezinski arrogantly but implausibly claimed credit for it.

“What is most important to the history of the world?” he asked. “The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Muslims or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the Cold War?” 

In reality, the Soviet Union was heading for collapse anyway, but the “stirred-up Muslims” turned out to be a fairly large problem.

The Taliban took power in Kabul in 1996 after a long all-against-all war between the various Islamist groups, and ruled most of the country badly and brutally for five years. Then an Arab Islamist called Osama bin Laden abused the hospitality of the Taliban leader Mullah Omar by launching the 9/11 attacks against the United States in 2001.

November 14, 2001

An American invasion was inevitable after 9/11 because some spectacular retaliation was politically necessary. That led to another 20 years of war: the Taliban against another set of foreigners who understood little about the country’s recent history and why it made local people profoundly mistrustful of “helpful” foreigners.

Even now Americans don’t realize how closely they have recapitulated the Soviet experience in the country. The ending that is now unfolding was foreordained from the start, although it has taken twice as long to arrive because the United States is much richer than Russia. Nevertheless, the aftermath will also be the same.

The various factions of the Taliban will split, mostly on ethnic lines, and another civil war of uncertain length will follow. The rule of the winners will be as cruel and arbitrary as it was last time. And the rest of the world will rapidly lose interest, because Afghanistan won’t pose a serious threat to anywhere else. (Gwynne Dyer – The Hamilton Spectator)