Editorial
Against the Long War
STEPHEN HARPER SAYS MILITARY SACRIFICES IN AFGHANISTAN are necessary to ensure Canada a prominent place in world affairs. In other words, ever-growing militarization is necessary to defend what apologists for war and empire have the gall to describe as the “civilized world.”
The claim that Canadian soldiers are on a humanitarian mission to spread democracy and women’s rights is a lie. The US military’s record of bombing civilians, arbitrary detention, torture and murder in Afghanistan is clear. The role of the US led NATO force of which Canadian troops are a part is to prop up the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan under Hamid Karzai, the president installed by the US occupiers in 2001 after they had backed the warlords of the Northern Alliance to topple the Taliban government.
In the words of the Afghan feminist group RAWA, the US “replaced one fundamentalist regime with another.” The Karzai government has even revived the Department for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice to enforce religious morality, threatening dissent and the rights of women and girls to education, health care and paid work.
During Karzai’s visit to Canada last fall, the corporate media in Canada failed to report what everyone in Afghanistan knows: Karzai is a US puppet. His government is full of reactionary religious figures and corrupt warlords (armed and trained by the US in the 1980s to fight the military of the USSR during its occupation of the country). Many are responsible for killing thousands during the civil war of the early 1990s, when they also imposed ultra-conservative religious law.
None of this matters to Bush, Blair and Harper. What they want is a “stable” Afghanistan.
The country matters to them because it is close to the strategically important Caspian Sea region, the site of huge untapped resources of natural gas and oil. The US wants to control Central Asia, countering Russian and Chinese influence. If NATO troops can impose “stability” in Afghanistan, then corporations, including Canadian firms, can move in and profit from pipeline construction and other investments.
But stability for Western capital seems unlikely. The brutality of the US-led occupation is fuelling a growing resistance. Canadian generals are trying to prepare us for a long war, and the government may try to extend the Canadian military presence beyond its scheduled end in 2009.
The situation in Afghanistan is not at all unique. The spreading tentacles of global capitalism generate resistance, which is often met with campaigns of violent counter-insurgency. Military repression is a long term necessity of imperialism.
Canada, as a secondary imperialist power, has sometimes focused on the diplomatic rather than the military front. This has contributed to widely-held illusions at home and abroad about Canada’s role as a peacekeeper.
But Canada has a tried and true history of complicity with US imperialism, from Vietnam to Iraq. Canada is the world’s seventh largest arms exporter, helping supply the bullets and machinery of death for US forces in Iraq. Canada’s military is being enlarged, upgraded and made increasingly interoperable with US and NATO command so it can more easily be deployed in other “hot spots” around the globe.
At the moment, mobilizing to demand the immediate withdrawal of Canadian troops from Afghanistan is a central political task. Pan-Canadian actions on October 28th were a step forward in turning the massive, but passive and unclear, opposition to intervention in Afghanistan into visible protest.
Concerned to shore up its base, the federal NDP adopted a policy in favour of withdrawal. The Canadian Labour Congress has taken a position against Canada’s military role in Afghanistan. This is welcome, since it can help build larger, broader mobilizations. However, NDP and CLC leaders have done virtually nothing to mobilize their members to demand “Troops Out Now.”
Building a movement around that demand will require more than organizing protests, although protesting is a vital tactic. Activists need to be able to explain why Canadian troops are in Afghanistan, and whose interests this serves. Without such an analysis, political understanding will remain superficial and necessary connections will be missed. It will be very hard to build and sustain a movement over the long haul if it fails to address the roots of war.
The problem goes much deeper than Harper or Bush. Increased militarization and the spread of neoliberal policies go hand in hand. Electing the Liberals or the Democrats won’t change that.
Imperialism is being pushed to war in the Middle East and Central Asia over the control of key resources such as oil. Canadian capital seeks to profit from gaining access to natural resources (especially for mining), land, cheap labour, investor protection and open markets. It wants greater military and national security integration with the US to help obtain these.
Inside the borders of Canada, capital’s drive for resources leads it to try to dispossess indigenous peoples of their lands. This will be a long war. We need to build opposition to the roots of the system that is inflicting it on the people of the world.
.
.
.
.
WITH THIS ISSUE, NEW SOCIALIST GOES FROM PUBLISHING FIVE
times a year to quarterly. Our next issue, Spring 2007, will be
available in early March. Subscription prices has been altered to
reflect this change and are detailed on the back cover and the
final page of the magazine.
