Canada signs up for permanent war
Canada’s foreign policy is marching down the road to war.
The past Liberal government pioneered an aggressive “responsibility to protect” doctrine (with a beefed up military component) in so-called “failed states” such as Afghanistan and Haiti. Stephen Harper’s new Conservative government has sharply accelerated this interventionist trend.
Afghanistan has become the symbol ofCanada’s new military and foreign policy, and a centerpiece of the Harper agenda.
On May 17, the minority Conservativegovernment, with only hours notice, pushed a motion through the House of Commons to extend Canada’s combat mission in Afghanistan for two more years until 2009. The motion came at a time of strong public scepticism about Canada’s military intervention in Afghanistan. Polls even suggested a slight majority opposed.
The motion narrowly passed by 149 to 145, with the Liberal party splitting over the issue. The NDP and Bloc Quebecois, citing mission changes, voted No. Previously, they had done nothing to oppose the Canadian presence in Afghanistan.
The mainstream peace movement has done somewhat better, but they have not engaged in mass mobilization calling on Canada to bring its troops home. Harper’s quick vote forestalled any possibility of mass demonstrations in Ottawa.
The Liberal government was politically unable to send troops to Iraq. By contrast, the Afghan mission extension represents a defeat for the anti-war movement. However, Afghanistan will remain a central issue over the next few years and could come back to haunt Harper. The US has Iraq. Canada has Afghanistan.
The Canadian Forces are currently engaged in their biggest military mission since the Korean War, in which thousands of Canadian troops fought and hundreds died in the service of western imperialism.
The myth of Canadian troops as benign UN blue-helmeted peacekeepers remains widespread. But the reality of recent years is very much otherwise. 68 per cent of Canada’s international military spending is Afghan-related while only 3 per cent is devoted to UN peacekeeping operations.
Currently 2,300 Canadian troops are participating in counter-insurgency warfare in the Kandahar province in southeastern Afghanistan. They are engaged in “Operation Archer,” which is tightly linked to the US “Operation Enduring Freedom.” The mission is not currently under NATO command, though it may be in future. The Harper government’s successful extension vote opens the door for Canada to lead NATO operations in Afghanistan in 2008.
THE AFGHAN QUAGMIRE
In the wake of September 2001, the US unleashed its military machine on Afghanistan, chiefly in the form of massive bombardments. Overwhelming US military firepower and the well armed forces of the Northern Alliance forced the oppressive Islamic-fundamentalist Taliban regime to melt away. US forces occupied Afghanistan and helped install Washington’s friends in power.
But nearly five years after the occupation of Afghanistan, the country remains far from “stabilized.” Instead, the Taliban and others opposed to the pro-Washington government of Hamid Karzai have considerably stepped up their military operations.
Some 8,000 US troops remain engaged in offensive operations in Afghanistan, including indiscriminate bombing. They are sustaining steady losses, with the yearly death toll reaching new heights in 2005.
But Washington is far more preoccupied with Iraq, where victory is not in sight. The US military is overextended, so it has sought to transfer part of the responsibility for Afghanistan to NATO and a “coalition of the willing” that includes Canada.
On July 11 2005, Canada’s Chief of Defence Staff General Rick Hillier ranted about the forces arrayed against NATO in Afghanistan: “These are detestable murderers and scumbags. They detest our freedoms, they detest our society, they detest our liberties.”
Hillier has also sought to dispel notions of the Canadian military as a peaceful humanitarian force in world affairs: “We are the Canadian Forces and our job is to be able to kill people.”
In August 2005, Major General Andrew Leslie said, “Afghanistan is a 20-year venture. There are things worth fighting for. There are things worth dying for. There are things worth killing for.” In explaining why Canada had to be in Afghanistan for the long term, Leslie said, “Every time you kill an angry young man overseas you’re creating 15 more who will come after you.”
Stephen Harper, evoking the spirit and rhetoric of George W. Bush, has pledged his government will not “cut and run.” And, like Bush in Iraq, he wants to stay until “the job is done.” No one believes the job will be done soon, including Afghan President Karzai, who appealed for an extended Canadian commitment.
JUSTIFYING WAR
Stephen Harper has framed Canada’s role in Afghanistan in terms of national security and the war on terrorism. Harper does not hesitate to invoke the ghosts of 9-11, Al Qaeda and the World Trade Centre.
However, such motivations are unconvincing to millions. At the beginning of the year, public opinion surveys suggested weak support for Canada’s mission in Afghanistan. Since then, we have been treated to a steady diet of war propaganda in the corporate media and the CBC.
Much of this propaganda seeks to get the public to identify with the military – “our troops.”
The military is portrayed as part of a balanced “3-D approach” (defence, diplomacy and developmental assistance) to a democratic Afghan government. Soldiers’ humanitarian role is magnified.
The government claims to be defending human rights, women’s rights, freedom, democracy and the rule of law in Afghanistan.
It says Canada is playing a vital role in assisting with the reconstruction of Afghanistan. This much is true: Afghanistan has now become the largest single recipient of bilateral Canadian aid. By 2009, the Canadian government will have contributed $1 billion. But this aid is far less than the military costs: $4 billion and rising.
HARSH REALITIES
Life expectancy in Afghanistan is 42 years. The large majority of the population lives in desperate poverty. The economy has been shattered by years of war. The people, seeing themselves as victims of war from many sides, yearn for peace. With the Taliban gone, tribal warlords and the drug trade have flourished.
Opium seems to be the main source of ready wealth. Afghanistan is now estimated to produce 90 per cent of the world’s supply. Up to 2 million poor farmers, lacking other alternatives to survive, are now growing poppies.
Afghanistan held US-style elections, and thus passed the test of formal democracy. However, the process has been orrupted. Drug lords not only buy the support of candidates, in some cases they are candidates.
Canadian forces are working in Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs), pioneered by US troops to show that the US was helping the Afghan people. Teams of soldiers engage in a strange mix of providing security, carrying out small reconstruction and humanitarian aid projects and gathering intelligence information.
Aid groups like Doctors Without Borders have sharply objected to mixing military and humanitarian projects. They say this process jeopardizes the safety of aid workers, who are no longer seen as neutral, and that the PRTs effectively hold the receiving population hostage to military demands.
The Bush administration claims that millions of Afghan girls are now attending school. But there are very few schools in rural areas, and those in operation have very limited and non-secular curriculums focusing on Islamic studies. In 2005, Amnesty International released a damning report titled “Women Still Under Attack.” It says violence against women and girls in Afghanistan is pervasive, including abductions, rapes by armed individuals, forced marriages and sale to settle disputes and debts. Women face discrimination from strict religious traditions and state officials.
The Canadian government claims it is supporting human rights. Yet, ordinary Afghan civilians arrested in military operations cannot challenge the basis of their detention, and have no access to legal counsel. The economic stakes for control of Iraqi oil are self-evident, but global geopolitical considerations and economic interests are also in play in Afghanistan. There are large and untapped reserves of oil and gas in the Central Asian republics east of the Caspian Sea. Corporations want to build a pipeline through Afghanistan (bypassing Iran and Russia). The US is trying to bolster its presence in central Asia. The Pentagon is obsessed with the growing power of China and its potential alliance with Russia.
The US serves as the main military protector of the new world order. Canadian imperialism has benefited from this without getting too deeply implicated.
STAKE IN GLOBALIZATION
Canadian capital has a huge stake in the globalization process. It wants its interests protected. It wants freedom to invest and it wants access to global resources.
Canadian corporations profit from war production but Canada successfully portrays itself as more multilateral and less militaristic than the US.
Nonetheless, Canada spends a lot of money on the military. This is projected to rise to $25 billion annually in the next few years, well over 10 per cent of federal program spending. This reflects the new imperialist mentality of protecting the people of the world from failed states (in reality a recycled version of the racist notion of the “white man’s burden”).
The Martin government, while mouthing occasional rhetorical criticism of US policy, took the lead in allocating billions to a new military build up. But they were not alone. NDP leader Jack Layton insisted his party was not antimilitary, pointing to the NDP’s support for the last Liberal government budget, which included large increases in military spending.
The Conservative budget has offered the military another billion dollars a year, both to purchase new equipment and to expand regular and reserve armed forces. The military has gone on an aggressive recruiting drive, even targetting high schools.
This drive to boost military spending was fuelled by the generals and a powerful military corporate complex. Canada has a substantial war industry, largely controlled by a small number of giant corporations. They stand to profit from open access to US government and global arms contracts, as well as increased Canadian government orders.
The Afghanistan mission is very much in line with Corporate Canada’s pursuit of “deep integration” with the US. Canadian corporations see unfettered access to the US market as vital to their economic interests. To get it, they favour increasing harmonization with US policies on defence, border security, immigration, energy supply, etc. This process, initiated by the Liberals, is being fast tracked by the new Harper government. But we should not focus solely on Harper or Bush. It was Liberal interventionists who entangled us in Afghanistan. The Liberals are choosing a new leader. If Michael Ignatieff or someone of similar ilk wins, Canadians will have the freedom to choose their poison – either hard-line Bush-style neo-conservative interventionism or more two-faced morality-laced liberal interventionism. Meanwhile, NDP Leader Jack Layton has suggested that Darfur is the right mission for Canadian troops. It’s a moot point, since Harper and the Canadian military are totally locked into Afghanistan. But it does reflect a hunger for “Canada the Good,” in which Canadian peacekeepers help build a better world. But in a world dominated by imperialist military and economic power it is naive and diverts energy from building a movement opposed to military interventionism and occupation.
CHALLENGES AND OBSTACLES
The Canadian people are not stupid. People are capable of learning from history, including the US government’s dishonest and ruinous war in Iraq. Many sense that our political leaders are taking Canada down the garden path to war and don’t want to go there.
But no one should underestimate the task of building the kind of mass movement necessary to force the Canadian government to withdraw its troops from Afghanistan.
Wars, even on a small scale, generate virulently patriotic forces. This in turn dampens political courage and feeds political opportunism.
The NDP and Bloc Quebecois had previously acted with utter spinelessness on Afghanistan. When they opposed the extension of Canada’s mission in Afghanistan, Harper came out swinging with a smear campaign saying they don’t support our troops.
Will the labour bureaucracy and other social forces show political courage and take a clear political stance opposing the war in Afghanistan? Or will opposition have to be built from the grassroots up?
Over the last year, a Haiti solidarity movement picked up steam and played a modest but effective role in unmasking Canadian alignment with the coup forces that ousted former president Aristide.
The movement succeeded in identifying with the aspirations of the Haitian people and their determined struggleagainst a repressive new regime.
DIFFICULT PROBLEMS
But Afghanistan is not Haiti, and it poses many difficult problems. As a result, there is no Afghan solidarity movement.
The Afghan people have been entombed by what Gilbert Achcar has described as the “Clash of Barbarisms.” The oppressive rule of the Taliban has ended, only to be replaced by foreign imperialist occupation while mass misery continues.
Some Canadians, like former Liberal health minister Ujjal Dosanjh, claim the people are now better off than under the heel of “clerical fascism” and Canada needs to stop the return of the Taliban. But this misses the point. People in the Muslim world have many reasons to istrust and hate the West. Occupations are never well received. They inevitably generate resistance. In the case of Afghanistan, this has largely been led by Islamic fundamentalist forces with a very reactionary social agenda. But this should not blind us to the primary responsibility of imperialism.
It is folly to believe that Canada, acting as a representative of “the civilized world,” can help liberate Afghanistan. Unlike the generals and gung-ho interventionists like Harper, many Canadians don’t see a legitimate reason to wage war, kill and be killed in Afghanistan. Thank goodness! If fully mobilized, these sentiments have the potential to stop Ottawa from plunging us into an unending series of permanent imperialist wars.
