Afghanistan Debate Too Late

Watching the Canadian Political Parties in Parliament debate Afghanistan (noted a lot of empty seats in the house ) on CPAC, and I come to the conclusion that for all the high and mighty moral rhetoric about the rights of the Afghan people, women's rights, the need for economic development, security of person and property, the need for reconstruction, the debate is three decades late.

This should have been the debate that happened when the Mujahedin guerrillas swept out of the hills, inspired by the Iranian Islamic reactionary coup, to overthrow the Soviet allied government. An independent government that provided for education, healthcare, women's rights, and economic development that was not based upon opium. All the reasons the Conservatives have given for being in Afghanistan now. Tch, tch.

She can remember the cinemas and the picnics in the sun. She can remember the packed cafes and the student parties and the libraries with their shelves heaving with books and the clean, modern hospitals with the calm, competent doctors that made her decide she wanted to be a doctor herself. 'They were the good times,' she says. 'When the Soviet Union was in control. Since then everything has been a long dark night.' The Observer | Special reports | The Afghan women who saw freedom ...


The centuries-old burka, variations of which have been worn in the Middle East, Africa, Europe, and Asia, has often been a symbol of the struggle between competing conservative and modernist factions in Afghanistan. During the Soviet regime in the 1980s, women were not obliged to wear it. They participated actively in public life in the cities: 50 percent of government workers, 70 percent of schoolteachers and 40 percent of doctors in Kabul were women. The rural areas were more conservative, but women moved about relatively freely as professionals, aid workers, and members of the community. Afghanistan/Stories from the field-About-face for Afghan women: to ...

But of course we forget that the reason the Taliban came to power in Afghanistan was thanks to CIA funding of their overthrow of the Soviet regime, under Reagans dirty war. And the millions paid for stinger missiles to the CIA saw an expotential growth in opium production in order to pay for those missiles. The Taliban and their ilk were the direct result of America's Cold War. Then the chickens came home to roost.


Now we are claiming that we are there to defend democracy and economic development, that was destroyed by the CIA and the Mujahedin. US Brought Grief To Afghan Women

The warlords and Mujahedin in Afghanistan do not want our help, and will overthrow whatever tenuous regime is in place within the next decade. Despite all the rhetoric about pluralism and democratic values the Karzai regime has, it is ruled by Sharia law, one that denies basic democratic rights of free speech, religion etc. as has been shown over the past few months.

Hamid Karzai, the president of Afghanistan is considered a U.S. puppet by most Afghans. His authority outside Kabul is merely symbolic. Local control in the provinces is left to a mix of opium gangsters, former Taliban commanders and tribal elders. Mark Schneider, president of International Crisis Group has said, “It's not merely about drug money financing candidates. Drug lords are candidates.”Why are we in Afghanistan?

Had we really wanted to halt the Mujahedin and the Taliban and supported a pluralist civilization in Afghanistan we would have supported the Soviet 'invasion' , instead of supporting the American 'invasion' twenty years later.


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