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Hamid Karzai and his ministers have a peculiar way of saying thank you to the foreign forces fighting and dying to keep their regime in power. Last week, Karzai & Co. dropped Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper into his most perilous political crisis to date regarding Canada’s military mission to Afghanistan.
At issue: the reported harsh treatment by Afghan security personnel of Taliban fighters captured and handed over by the Canadian Forces. To the Canadian public, every aspect of the conflict is troubling, not least because of mounting sacrifices by their servicemen and women. Since 2002, fifty-four Canadian soldiers and one of the country’s foremost diplomats, Glyn Berry, have given their lives to the struggle against the Taliban and al Qaeda.
Often enough, President Karzai has offered words of appreciation and sorrow. Sadly, his actions speak louder, and it hasn’t been pleasant listening – especially for families of the fallen.
Specifically, Karzai has left Harper completely exposed on the crucial flank of human rights: Canadian voters are very much concerned that their armed forces' conduct towards battlefield prisoners is correct and effective, which hardly describes the reports of rough handling and claims of torture levelled at the Karzai administration's security apparatus.
Of course, no one keeping even a casual eye on the deeds of Mr. Karzai’s justice and security officials would be surprised to know that captured Taliban fighters face a grim time. If journalists in Kabul can be taken away by armed police and beaten in the office of the Attorney General, it doesn’t take much imagination to picture how an enemy combatant might fare.
Canadian public opinion has all but turned on a dime over the issue. A majority now want to see their troops out of Afghanistan promptly when the current deployment ends in 2009. That’s a profound disappointment to those of us who’ve witnessed the bravery and professionalism of Canadian troops operating in and around Kandahar province – and the Afghan population’s overwhelming welcome for assistance in keeping the Taliban and al Qaeda out of their lives.
But once again, civilians - and our own soldiers - have been let down by the political potentates who are mismanaging both the war and the search for peace and reconstruction.
Mr. Harper can hardly feign surprise over the system of injustice presided over by President Karzai’s administration. There is not so much a chain of command in ministries and agencies concerned with law and order – it’s much more a trail of debris. Each day, Afghan citizens cringe as fundamentalist throwbacks and grasping warlords show the world who’s boss in Kabul.
It’s not Hamid Karzai, the smooth-talking media darling who offers western countries a convincing apologist for their own inept Afghan stratagems. Instead, it is the cabal of top advisors and ministers who stand concealed by Karzai’s chapan, his colourful long-sleeved coat. These scoundrels are deeply anti-democratic by nature and fully prepared to resort to violence against citizens, as evidenced by Attorney General Abdul Jabar Sabet’s recent order for police to raid the studios of Tolo TV.
Next on skyreporter, a closer look at another of Sabet’s dark angels in the Presidential Palace, and the President’s own predilections not only to support his legal Rasputin, but to celebrate him.
Just this week Karzai said of Sabet: “The Attorney General we have today is one that is in a head-on clash with the bad guys.”
Note to the President: you might have trouble distinguishing good from bad, but the polls say that Canadians, and Afghans, do not.
6 Comments
As a Canadian i feel shame and anger that the lives of our soldiers are being sacrificed in order to propel such nit wits.
To PM Harper: Why is it that we are we wasting our precious tax payer dollars to support undemocratic regimes and individuals?
We pay the wages of over 300 members of parliament . Harper and the prime minister's office are proving how incompetent they are at doing the work of 300 .
What do we do ? Tell Harper to be open and honest to the electorate and reflect Canada's wants to Karzai and Nato .
There is no shortage of politicians in Canada or Afghanistan .There is no shortage of people to assist in Canada or the world .
Michael and Keith, Mr. Harper's office refuses to answer questions on these issues. Since early March, skyreporter has been trying to get answers from Foreign Affairs and the Prime Minister's Office. Their response: a wall of silence - in keeping with off-the-record remarks by senior public servants that the Harper government enforces the sternest secrecy of any Canadian government in memory. What are they hiding?
First of all I wish to say Thank You to Canada and the citizens of Canada for their help and sacrifices for Afghans and Afghanistan.
But also please take a step back and think of what the Taliban have done to Afghanistan and even the world since their arrival to the scene.
They are not soldiers, they don't fall under no Geneva conevention rules.
They behead teachers in front of their family members to make sure no other teacher ever dares to teach kids, espceially girls. They torch schools every day.
They recently used a boy to behead a man and made a public video of it.
They held Friday night hangings and beheadings in Kabul stadium. They kill doctors, aid workers, translators, journalists and ordinary people on a daily basis.
The half ass policy that was used in fighting the Taliban in 2001 is the main reason that 6 years later they are still around and still killing your soldiers.
No one wants to finish the job.
And now for political reasons against a weak and inept Karzai or Harper in Canada we are making the so-called torture of the Taliban an issue??
So fine you guys pack up and leave because us animalistic Afghans mistreat the Taliban prisoners.
Great, go ahead and leave. We are used to that and once again it will be ordinary Afghans paying for it. The Taliban will be back and this time finish the ethnic cleansing and the destruction that they left off half way.
Your soldiers will be home safe, and Afghanistan will be fogotten as she was before. For close to 7 years the Taliban committed the worst crimes against Afghans and had it not been for the events of 9/11, it would still go on and none of you would care or probably hear anything about it.
And whether your Canadian soldiers are there are not, your tax money will still aid the Taliban because every cent that you send to your "ally" in Pakistan finds some way to the Taliban pockets.
I am not heartless and have respect for the laws and humanity, but this weakness against the Taliban is also ONE of the reasons that the West is losing the war there.
If we are to be a party to torture , drug production , corruption etc our representatives and the free press have a duty to make the facts known . The story we are being fed is that we are there to help ordinary Afghanis not to make a few millionaires .
During WWII one of many incidents was the fire bombing / incineration of a Nazi university city full of non combatants .This shortened the war so it was a good thing ?
Kamran, you're wrong to think people in the West don't care. We do care greatly, and that is one of the reason you read our comments here. The problem is that we get so little information about Afghanistan and what is going on via our "news" services here -- that is, until the creation of this website. Stay with us and keep helping to inform the West what's going on. You will see a difference if the people of the West have anything to say about it, and we do. Keep posting! Tell us how we can help you!
Dear Keith,
I think you are confusing and mixing the issues here. I just gave you a very small sampling of the things that the Taliban do and have done.
Lets not lump the torture of the Taliban with the drug trafficking and corrupt government officials.
Not all of your causes are lost there.
How on one hand can you say that you are helping Afghans and on the other hand feel sorry for the treatment of the very Taliban that behead and bomb and kill Afghans?
That is at the core of this topic isn't it? Actually the big error is with this statement:
"If journalists in Kabul can be taken away by armed police and beaten in the office of the Attorney General, it doesn't take much imagination to picture how an enemy combatant might fare."
First of all it is a well known fact that the AG Sabet is a Gulbuddin man who is in bed with the Taliban. Sabet's actions against the journalists is right from the pages of the Taliban manuals. So you can rest assured that the same people that went after the journalists would actually serve tea for the Taliban.
As for your example of WWII, why not go big and mention Japan. Especially the totally unnecessary 2nd nuclear bomb.
Do you think those Taliban would extend the same prisoner of war rights to any Candian soldier if they catch one?
Thank you and please note that I love this site and appreciate all the work that Mr. Kent and his colleagues have put in this.
I have forwarded the link to this site to hundreds of Afghans on my email list, have posted a link for the site on many discussion forums and blogs so people can find there way here and read far more then what we get too.
It is already concerning that the failures in Iraq is affecting support for the cause in Afghanistan too. And when I read some folks wanting the troops out simply because Taliban prisoners might not be treated well it raises the level of concern even more.
Most of these Taliban are not even Afghans. For 10 years we fought the Soviets, we never bombed an embasy, never bombed a plane or never resorted to suicide bombings. Afghans don't do that so rest assured that none of these suicide bombers of today are Afghans. Maybe that is why I feel no sympathy for these foriegner Taliban who don't belong in Afghanistan in the first place.
Dear Kamran
Sorry you found my post confused and mixing issues . I tried to say that our soldiers , government and citizens must follow a clearly laid out set of laws .During wars these laws still apply even if cases can be made otherwise .
Please tell me more about Taliban being foreigners. I had thought Mullah Omar (1959) and his forces originated in Kandahar area .
Kamran, I don't think most Canadians would want our service men and women to leave Afghanistan to backslide to the Taliban branch of the Pushtuns. But, and it is a big but, just because a Taliban who is a thug, murderer, criminal treats non-Talibans with intense cruelty, we do not and will not choose the same route. Enough that the Taliban are backward, no need for others to emulate their sickening examples. Actions do indeed speak louder than words. If our troops are in any way involved in the torture of Taliban prisoners, then we are no better than they are - just a different nationality of torturers. We must set a higher standard or there is no hope of change in a better direction. If nothing else, taking the 'high' road, however insane it may seem in the moment, will set the tone for your children and the future generations of Afghan citizens. We are with you in this - just help us keep to the right.
It's just terrific to take in your exchange of views. Kamran, Keith, Patrick, Cathy and Michael - go over everyone else's contribution and I think you'll agree with me. We all have concluded that the war is a brutal waste, one that needs to be brought to an end as soon as possible. Which requires much more in the way of political smarts and courage than we're seeing right now from the West, and a definitive end to corruption in Kabul, and soon.
Let's keep talking. The suits eventually will have to listen, and do something more than posture and evade.
Dear Kent,
Why this jump all of a sudden from the thuggish Sabet guy (a known golbodini) to Canadian politics and taking side with an opposiiton party who is using their media buddies to create a case a la AbuGhraib before upcoming elections and using Afghans and an unsubstantiated story in the GandM for power reasons?
I thought you could keep your partisan politics out and stick to an honest and principled position. Sorry to see that you are using the detainee issue and jumping to conclusions about Karzai and his weak Gov. (because you are mad about sabet guy) while there is no evidence but lots of hearsay and unfounded allegations all over to this day. Let's not mix issues and i agree with Kamran (who is probably a patriotic afghan) about the real threat being the taliban and their paki isi supporters. They will not hesitate one second to cut the balls , then the ears and nose and then the throat of canadian if they can get one. Try teaching them about geneva conventions. yes, we should respect laws, but do those laws made in a different time for a different set of conditions (conventional warfare) still apply in the case of criminal terrorists and jihadists who can behead their own mother and attack targets with suicide bombers?
You tell me, without your partisanship. Let's go back to sabet minus the detainee issue.
Journalists do not hold bias between political parties, but they do criticize the one in power as it is the only way to get something done. Don't misread reporting as political siding.
I do not like the framing of this debate between the current situation vs the Taliban. That is a political trick to try and negate the wrongs of those in power and has been used in the US to enact laws undermining the very constitution the country is built on. Statements heard in the US like: "Enemy combatants don't deserve the Geneva Convention because they don't follow it themselves" make for a very slippery slope and manifestations of this such as Gitmo only serve to confirm and validate the "enemy". Let us not become the Taliban in trying to defeat them, because ultimately it is not the people we are trying to defeat, it is their values and a way of thinking.
Keith,
I am not the only Afghan who thinks this way, there are many of us that believe Mullah Omar doesn't even exist. In the form of the one-eyed Afghan from Farah province.
It is a figure created by Pakistan's ISI and the people that played that role were ISI agents. No photos, no record, people that claim to have had an audience with him say he always had his face covered. Who knows how many people played the part?
The whole thing as mysterious as a bunch of holy students (Taliban) coming to the scene and knowing how fliy MiGs, drive tanks, set mines, fire RPG's etc etc.
Taliban came to the scene in 1994 and since 1996 no one has been able to convince me that Mullah Omar TRULY existed.
Dan & Patrick,
I understand what you guys are saying and I also understand that my stance for harsher treatment of these people is not very popular. Agreed that treating harsh would make us just as bad.
But also please note that as an Afghan I have personal reasons for having such a stance the wounds of which won't go away easily.
Almost all of us in Afghanistan are Muslims and we don't need criminal Pakistanis, Arabs, Africans, Chechens and Uzbeks under teh guise of Taliban to come to Afghanistan and make us "better Muslims".
To divide us along ethnic lines.
We already have to deal with the comical myth that Osama fought the Soviets for us - no he didn't - and now have the same people terrorize us.
It is all an ISI plan to rob us of our identity, history and basically being an Afghan. The destruction of the statues were not Islamic. Muslims lived with them for centuries. It was to wipe out a part of our history. The even changed our alphabet while in power and took out the 4 letters that don't exist in Arabic alphabet. The list is endless and the crimes unforgettable.