[R-G] Talking to the Taliban

[Anthony Fenton]

Talking to the Taliban
http://www.thewhig.com/PrintArticle.aspx?e=993600
Kingston Whig-Standars
April 19, 2008
Canada's military mission in Afghanistan was looking murky as the week  
began. On Sunday, Foreign Affairs Minister Maxime Bernier told news  
reporters that Canada felt it was time to replace Kandahar governor  
Asadullah Khalid, who has been linked to persistent reports of torture  
and corruption.

Then, on Tuesday, Chief of Defence Staff Gen. Rick Hillier announced  
his retirement after three years as Canada's top soldier.

By the end of the week, opposition MPs were calling for Bernier's  
resignation. "The minister still doesn't understand that he put the  
government of Afghanistan in an impossible situation," said Liberal  
foreign affairs critic Bob Rae.

Nobody articulated it, but Bernier was acting and talking like he  
worked for the U.S. State Department, not Canada's Foreign Affairs  
department. Americans have no hesitation about telling other countries  
what to do and how to do it. Their meddling is renowned, right down to  
plotting coups and takeovers and attempting assassinations. Bernier  
was, indeed, trying to influence an internal Afghan matter, albeit in  
softer tones.

Hillier's retirement announcement came out of the blue.

Many feel that his leadership made the Afghanistan mission possible.  
In his three years as chief of defence staff, Hillier skilfully  
changed the perception of the Canadian Forces among Canadians. Their  
first job, he told us, was to kill. He boosted morale among the troops  
with his unreserved support and respect for them. He got them the  
funding and equipment they needed to be, for the first time since the  
Korean War, full-fledged combatants.

Between the foreign affairs faux pas and the general's departure,  
could Canada's military mission in Afghanistan collapse? That's not  
likely, according to journalist and author Linda McQuaig, who was in  
Kingston this week to talk about how Canada, since marching into  
Afghanistan, has become complicit in U.S. militaristic designs.

McQuaig says we've made a big mistake trading in our famous blue  
United Nations peacekeeping helmets for the khaki desert camouflage of  
a U.S.-led NATO conflict. She believes Canadian troops will always be  
viewed by Afghans as an invading force and, as such, will always be  
held in suspicion and subjected to attacks.

The political reality of the mission's future, McQuaig argues, is that  
even should the Liberals oust the Conservatives in an election, the  
deal the Tories struck agreeing to extend the mission to 2011 will be  
honoured. Liberal leader Stephane Dion, she says, was "bullied by [MPs  
Michael] Ignatieff and [Bob] Rae" into cutting a deal with the  
Conservatives.

The last thing anyone wants, McQuaig concludes, is for our troops to  
become bogged down in a war that offers no hope for social progress in  
Afghanistan.

The deal cut between the Liberals and Conservatives calls for the  
pullout of Canadian soldiers by the end of 2011. But will we be able  
to do that in good conscience knowing that the vacuum left by a  
withdrawal would be filled by either the return of the Taliban or the  
warlords who have historically divided and conquered the nation? Of  
course not. That's why Canada must open the way for negotiations  
between the current, democratically elected Afghan government and the  
Taliban. Detente is the only hope for peace and progress in  
Afghanistan after 2011.