The
Toronto Star asked this question a few days ago. Here's the entire article from
Our Man in Afghanistan. I've chosen to accompany it with a photograph of the Prime Minister of Canada shaking hands with Hamid Karzai. This is the same photo that
Canadian Cynic used in
Sorry ... why exactly are we over there again?.
My words fail. So here's Britain's The Independent:
"The Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, has pardoned three men who had been found guilty of gang raping a woman in the northern province of Samangan.
The woman, Sara, and her family found out about the pardon only when they saw the rapists back in their village.
“Everyone was shocked,” said Sara’s husband, Dilawar, who like many Afghans uses only one name. “These were men who had been sentenced and found guilty by the Supreme Court, walking around freely.”
Sara’s case highlights concerns about the close relationship between the Afghan president and men accused of war crimes and human rights abuses.
The men were freed discreetly but the rape itself was public and brutal. It took place in September 2005, in the run up to Afghanistan’s first democratic parliamentary elections.
The most powerful local commander, Mawlawi Islam, was running for office despite being accused of scores of murders committed while he had been a mujahedeen commander in the 1980s and a Taliban governor in the 1990s, and since the fall of the Taliban in 2001. Sara said one of his sub-commanders and body guards had been looking for young men to help in the election campaign.
“It was evening, around the time for the last prayer, when armed men came and took my son, Islamuddin, by force. I have eye-witness statements from nine people that he was there. From that niGht until now, my son has never been seen.”
Dilawar said his wife publicly harangued the commander twice about their missing son. After the second time, he said, they came for her. “The commander and three of his fighters came and took my wife out of our home and took her to their house about 200 metres away and, in front of these witnesses, raped her.”
Dilawar has a sheaf of legal papers, including a doctors’ report, which said she had a 17mm wound in her private parts cut with a bayonet. Sara was left to stumble home, bleeding and without her trousers."
Remind me again what Canadians are getting killed and mutilated for?
Exactly. All we're doing is propping up a government that's as corrupt as the group we are fighting. We are caught in the middle of a civil war and the best thing to do is to get the heck out and let the Afghans sort it out for themselves.
The Toronto Star asked this question a few days ago. Here's the entire article from Our Man in Afghanistan. I've chosen to accompany it with a photograph of the Prime Minister of Canada shaking hands with Hamid Karzai. This is the same photo that Canadian Cynic used in Sorry ... why exactly are we over there again?.
4 comments :
I think the US can make a strong case for being there, even now with the Karzai government failing and the Taliban resurgent. But, as for Canada? It may be in Canada's best interests to keep the Taliban from regaining control of all of Afghanistan. As bad as Karzai's government is, the Taliban were demonstrably worse. So, there are human rights to consider. Still, as a US citizen, I wouldn't blame Canada for pulling its remaining troops.
c-serpent says,
As bad as Karzai's government is, the Taliban were demonstrably worse.
Then I don't understand why they have such strong support in Afghanistan. There seem to be many Afghans who disagree with you.
I'm not saying that if a majority of Afghans support rapists and murderers then we should be happy about it. What I'm saying is that trying to impose our values on them by force doesn't seem to be working.
larry moran says,
What I'm saying is that trying to impose our values on them by force doesn't seem to be working.
I agree. I think, however, that has more to do with who is running the show than attempting to change the regime per se. GWB's thoroughly incompetent handling of the war in Afghanistan probably has made things worse, rather than better, for everyone except himself and his cronies. But, I'm still pretty sure that going to Afghanistan in the first place was the correct move. The status quo there was worse for us than doing nothing at all. It is just that GWB jumped to Iraq as soon as the Taliban-run government fell and took the cheap route for installing a new Afghani government. Had the US spent a tenth of the time and money it spent on Iraq on reconstruction in Afghanistan instead, then I think things would have been much better for everyone involved.
Iraq, of course, was an unmitigated disaster.
Again, I think Canada and most other nations probably should have stayed out, not because they shouldn't help the US, but because GWB was running the show. Everything he touches turns to crap.
I thought we went to Afghanistan to remove the Taliban in order to give the US the space and time it needed to bring the 9/11 leaders to justice. But it hasn't happened. OLB and his crew are still at liberty. Now we are locked in an escalating insurgency and we are fueling it by our continued presence.
We did our bit; we sacrificed many many lives (Canadian and Afghan) in order to secure the ground and buy time; it has been a failed endeavour. Time to leave.
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