CIDA Funds Child Labour In Afghanistan

We are fighting for women and children in Afghanistan say the Harpocrites. Shouldn't these kids be in a Canadian funded school?

Outside the hospital, Senlis members travelled to the construction site of a new bridge funded by CIDA.

But workers told the group they had no accident or medical insurance, and footage of the visit appears to show children working on the bridge.

Canada's new development minister, Bev Oda, called the findings overly simplistic. But in an interview with CTV News, she didn't dismiss the report.

"I can't say whether they're right or they're wrong," she said.

About this, or about reports of children being used as police/soldiers on Canadian PRT highway projects in Kandahar, or the existence of child brides.

CIDA's biggest success yet has been to fund Timmies in Kandahar.

And speaking of simplistic, how about this explanation for CIDA's success in Afghanistan.

See here for the SENLIS report complete with photos of child labourers.

The Honourable Beverley J. Oda,
Minister of International Cooperation,
meets with His Excellency Omar Samad,
Ambassador of Afghanistan to Canada,
while taking part in Afghanistan Independence
Day Celebrations (Toronto – August 25, 2007)

For Oda it appears that her new job has meant going from the frying pan into the fire. From cutting women's programs in Canada to providing funding for phantom programs in Afghanistan.

"As far as the accountability of the dollars, I am quite confident that the dollars we're committing to support Afghanistan is beneficial. We have real results that we can show," Ms. Oda said.

Like providing warlords with cell phone cards you get at the 7/11?

$4,500 CAD to supply cellular phone cards to local leaders in Panjwayi and Zharey districts.

The reality is that reconstruction is still NOT occurring according to this March 2007 Report for the Canadian Defence & Foreign Affairs Institute

Reconstruction in Kandahar is woefully insufficient. For security reasons there are few civilians engaged in aid and development in the province, and NGOs are leaving because of the same concern for their safety

Reconstruction has been very slow in the south. The food aid distribution system has failed, causing a severe famine. Much of the population of southern Afghanistan is alienated from ISAF. Unless these circumstances change, the Canadian mission in Kandahar will become less and less acceptable to the local population. Time is not on NATO and Canada’s side.

RATING CANADA’S DEVELOPMENT ASSISTANCE IN THE SOUTH TO DATE

With Canada’s major military commitment in Kandahar, one would expect to see a comparable level of humanitarian assistance, and where possible, development assistance. The CIDA expects to spend up to $20 million this fiscal year in Kandahar (of the planned $100 million aid disbursement across the country) to be delivered primarily through the PRT. It will disburse even more next year in coordination with the relevant local Afghan ministries. Canada also contributes to the Afghan National Programs that benefit Kandahar Province as well as the rest of the nation.

Foreign Affairs and International Trade Canada (DFAIT) is spending approximately $10–14 million in Kandahar this fiscal year through the PRT. The Department of National Defence (DND) also contributes through the Commander’s Contingency Fund on numerous smaller initiatives. The critical question is whether this is enough to reverse the situation in Kandahar.
The distribution of food aid is rarely monitored beyond Kandahar City; this makes food supplies and distribution networks in the province vulnerable to abuse and corruption and intensifies the political power of corrupt individuals and institutions based on their control over essential resources. The problem of corruption in Afghanistan has begun to receive acknowledgement by donors and is consistently flagged by Afghan civil society organizations as a major concern. But little has been done to address the causes of corruption at all levels of government – such as the insufficient salaries of civil servants and police – and in the aid industry, or to put in place monitoring and accountability systems to punish those perpetuating corrupt practices.

Development goals are also hindered by the understandable reluctance of international and local NGOs to operate in the region owing to endemic insecurity. Humanitarian workers have been threatened, attacked, and killed in the southern provinces; project sites are vulnerable to sabotage and attack by insurgents, and they receive little direct protection from the ISAF troops operating there, as they have other priorities. Numerous Afghan organizations (such as the Danish Committee for Aid to Afghan Refugees [DACAAR]) have halted all operations in the south, as have large international agencies like Oxfam. In the south, one in four children will die before the age of five, 70 percent of children are malnourished, and 2.5 million people are in urgent need of more food assistance, as estimated by the World Food Programme (WFP).

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Harpers War II

Over the past year I have been called on the rug by pro war commentators on my blog posts claiming that Canada's 'new' military operations, by the 'new' Canadian Government, in Afghanistan since the 2006 election, are Harpers War. They like to claim this was merely a continuation of previous Liberal Government policy. Yeah Right.

This is not a quote from a left wing peacenik.....If the shoe fits....

After remaining silent about Afghanistan throughout the 2005-2006 election campaign, Harper made his feelings known on the day after the election. “We will continue to help defend our values and democratic ideals around the world – as so courageously demonstrated by those young Canadian soldiers who are serving and who have sacrificed in Afghanistan.”

The attention on Afghanistan by the new Harper government was intensified with his surprise visit in March 2006. The destination for a new prime minister’s first international visit is important. It highlights the key priority for Canada’s foreign policy. Most prime ministers select New York and Washington to show the importance of Canada-US bilateral relations. However, Harper went to Afghanistan. The symbolic values of this trip cannot be overstated.

In the midst of the heavy fighting, Harper both extended and expanded Canada’s mandate in Afghanistan. In the process, he made it clear that he was taking ownership of the operation. On May 17, 2006, Harper pushed a motion through the House of Commons to extend Canada’s participation in ISAF, which was due to expire in February 2007, until 2009.

Stephen Harper had very little international experience, or even interest, before becoming prime minister. In his previous political jobs within the Reform Party, National Citizens Coalition, and Canadian Alliance, his focus was on reforming Canadian federalism, reducing the size of government, cutting taxes, and eliminating the government’s deficit and debt.

The party platforms of the Reform Party, Canadian Alliance, and the merged Conservative Party, were weak on foreign policy. Nevertheless, starting with the formation of the Reform Party in 1987, its members were clear on two key foreign policy principles: better relations with the United States and a stronger Canadian military. These two themes cropped up over and over again in their attacks on the Liberals. An example of the intertwining of these two issues was a major speech delivered soon after Harper became leader of the Canadian Alliance. Harper argued that “for nine years the government has systematically neglected the Canadian forces and undermined our ability to contribute to peace enforcement and even peacekeeping operations, including recently our premature withdrawal from Afghanistan

Harper’s foreign policy ideas started to crystallize during the debate about Canadian participation in the US-Iraq War. Many of his comments on Iraq would foreshadow his actions in Afghanistan.

In his speeches on Iraq, Harper touched on a number of themes that would become important with respect to Afghanistan. First, Canada should support its allies. Canada went to Afghanistan in support of the United States, the United Nations, and NATO – its most important bilateral partner and its most important multilateral alliances.

And of course Harper was backed up in his war mongering by the DND and Chief of Defense Staff Hillier, another Republican in Conservative clothing.

In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, there was a debate over the precise military role of the Canadian Forces. While there were elements in DFAIT that wanted Canada to play a “traditional” peacekeeping role, the CF wanted “to get into the fight.”Eventually, the CF, in combination with the civilians in the DND, got what they wanted when the Chrétien government deployed the 3 PPCLI to Afghanistan in October 2001. That initial deployment did much for the morale of the CF. The Commander of Canadian ground troops in Afghanistan would later brag that Canadian participation in the war “established our credibility in the coalition. Canada had been tainted with an image of being blue-hatted peacekeepers, and I think…the aggressiveness and tenacity that the troops showed…dispelled the myth…we were like a pack of rabid pit bulls in satisfying the coalition’s end state.” Since then, the CF, especially under Chief of Defence Staff Rick Hillier, has consistently lobbied for greater combat responsibilities in Afghanistan. Kirton has identified a wing of the Canadian military that had trained with the Americans and wanted “to do some real war fighting.”They were led by Hillier who had served as the first Canadian Deputy Commanding General of III Corps, US Army in Fort Hood, Texas from 1998-2000.

I rest my case.

Conclusion
This paper has argued that the operation in Afghanistan has become Mr. Harper’s war. In part this was due to timing. Harper took over as prime minister at the same moment that Canada was taking on much more demanding tasks that would involve greater combat responsibilities. When ISAF launched Operation Medusa, its spring 2006 offensive against Taliban forces, Canadians naturally associated the fighting with the government of the day. However, Harper, through his rhetoric and his actions, made sure that there was no mistake; ownership of the mission was with him. He wanted Canadians to hold him responsible.

Unfortunately due to recent deaths of Quebec soldiers War Monger Harper was less than effusive about his war in a recent speech in La Belle Province. Le silence est d'or



See:

Harpers Body Count

Harpers Constituency

Harpers War

Heil Hillier, Maintiens le droit

Joined At The Hip

Harper War Monger

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Narco Politics

The British alternative is what? More civilian deaths from air strikes?

British diplomat opposes legalized Afghan poppy crop

Britain’s top diplomat in Canada has dismissed a poll, commissioned by the international think-tank that is championing the legalization of Afghanistan’s contentious opium poppy crop, which shows that Canadians overwhelmingly support for the use of Afghan opium for medicinal purposes.

Cary was responding to the release of an Ipsos Reid survey of 1,000 Canadians, conducted on behalf of the Senlis Council, which found that nearly eight in 10 Canadians (79 per cent) want Prime Minister Stephen Harper to get behind an international pilot project that would help transform Afghanistan’s illicit opium cultivation into a legal source for codeine, morphine and other legitimate pain medications for the international market.

Oh so you could do it just that after six years you don't have the infrastructure.....right-o that's why Harper sent our troops into the Opium Fields. The effectiveness of the Provincial Reconstruction Teams can be measured in opium production.

Cary noted that while opium production has been licensed in such places as Thailand and Turkey, it took 15 years to achieve such a system. Afghanistan simply lacks the infrastructure and regulatory framework to cultivate opium legally and to keep it out of the hands of drug dealers, he said.

And for the British who created this problem in the 19th Century in order to expand their Empire to be telling us they oppose legalization, well that is a bit rich isn't it. They have a history of creating infrastructure and regulations for opium production.

It was not until the British Empire started organizing and commercializing opium production in the 19th century that the opium poppy became entrenched in the world economy. The opium produced in British India was the first drug to become integrated into the then emerging globalization.

Tea, which was then only grown in China, was bought by British merchants with silver extracted from South American mines.

This triangular trade went on at least until the British Empire, together with the East India Company it had set up, created a thriving opium market in China, first through illegal smuggling and then through forced imports.

The two so-called “opium wars” (1839-1842 and 1856-1860) waged by the British to impose their opium trade onto China resulted in “unfair treaties” that not only made Hong Kong a British colony but also provoked, in China, the biggest addiction ever to happen in world history.

Chickens, home, roost.

And after all this is a British problem, which they created back then and again today in Afghanistan.

Britain is stoned at home and sold out in Helmand

The vast increase in opium poppy farming in Afghanistan is indicative of an inability to grasp a basic law of economics

The British government for sure knows how to do one thing. It knows how to help farmers in need. Since it arrived in Afghanistan in 2001 and was put in charge of the staple poppy crop, ministers have spent hundreds of millions of pounds on promoting it. On Monday the United Nations announced the result. Poppy production in Afghanistan has soared since the invasion, this year alone by 34%. The harvest in the British-occupied protectorate of Helmand rose by 50% in 12 months. This is a dazzling triumph for agricultural intervention.

Ministers may deny this was their policy, but they cannot be that inept. They faced a heroin epidemic at home. Suddenly finding themselves charged with controlling almost all the world's opium production, they must have known what they were doing. By alienating farmers and forcing them into the arms of the Taliban, they would drive up illicit production and encourage oversupply. While that would increase heroin consumption in Britain in the short term, as it has done, oversupply would eventually cause prices to collapse. At that point, the British policy of "poppy substitution" with wheat and other crops would start to bite and supply would be stifled. What happened when that stifling drove prices back up again was someone else's concern.

I cannot think of any less daft explanation for a policy that otherwise defies every law of economics. Kim Howells, the Foreign Office minister responsible for flooding British streets with cheap heroin, may squabble with his American colleagues over whether poppy eradication is better than substitution, but one thing is certain. Since Nato arrived in Afghanistan, opium has become to the local economy what oil is to a Gulf state. It is roughly 60% of the domestic product and 90% of exports, with productivity per hectare rising by the year.

Those into conspiracy theories might be forgiven for thinking this might also be a policy of the CIA to destabilize Iran by increasing the number of heroin addicts in that country.

Despite US suspicions, Iran - which has one of the world's highest drug addiction rates - argues that it has legitimate interests in combating the influx of heroin and opiates from the poppy fields of Afghanistan. More than 3,000 Iranian police and security personnel have been killed in clashes with drug smugglers along the Afghan border since 1979.

Legalization would of course cure this problem by recognizing drug addiction as a medical problem, a curse of capitalism, rather than a crime.

The year 2009 will mark the centennial of the Shanghai Opium Conference, the first world-wide agreement on the reduction of opium use and production. China, then still an extremely poor feudal nation, was spending most of its foreign exchange on opium it imported through British traders. The British sold their cheap Indian Opium for pure silver to the Chinese, and had almost two centuries of opium fortune-making behind them. The fledgling United States of America tried to conquer a share of the profits in this lavish market, at a time when prohibitionist ideas about alcohol and opium control were expanding all over the globe. It was time for the American Disease to be born.

But don't expect support for that from Bush or Harper. They represent the traditional prohibitionist culture of social conservative Christians. The folks who oppose heroin legalization used to oppose the 'demon rum'.

In later analyses of the history of drug and alcohol controls other names for the American Disease have been coined. The most appropriate one, not tied to any nationality per se, is the 'Temperance Movement'. It was comprised of a collective of local movements prevalent in a group of nations. Later these nine nations would be identified as a special group, the nations where the temperance culture would endorse far reaching control policies in the attempt to regulate medical and recreational drugs. The global impact of these temperance cultures has varied from almost nothing to considerable.

Meanwhile it is telling that not only are Afhgani's the largest producers of opium they are also its victims.

Afghanistan is hooked on opium. The drugs trade has become the largest employer, its biggest export and the main source of income in a land devastated by decades of war. Opium is grown on 10 per cent of the farmland and employs 13 per cent of the population as labourers, guards and transport workers.

The ubiquity of the drug has now created the world's worst domestic drug problem, a crisis threatening to engulf any hope of economic revival. The first nationwide survey on drug use, by the Afghan Ministry of Counter-Narcotics and the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, estimated that one million in this nation of 30 million were addicts, including 100,000 women and 60,000 children.

Defending the rights of Afghani women and children, the mantra of the Harpocrites used to justify their warmongering. And their war efforts have resulted in increased addictions amongst women and children. That surely is a measure of success of this mission.




SEE:

Two Canadians In Afghanistan

Say It Ain't So

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Le silence est d'or

Silence is Golden.

At his first Quebec appearance since two Quebec-based soldiers died in Afghanistan, Prime Minister Stephen Harper nearly completely refrained from commenting on the mission in the war-ravaged country. Harper, who didn't use the word "Afghanistan" in the speech, wouldn't answer reporters' questions afterwards.

The Right Honorable War Monger is embarrassed by pointed questions. And he should be. He can't answer this one.

The wife of slain Vandoo Mario Mercier has said she hopes
he's the last Canadian soldier to die in Afghanistan.

SEE:

Kandahar

Afghanistan

War





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Clarification

 Christian was on afghan ground for a little over a month,
when his light armoured vehicle struck a land mine. 

The fact he is dead, and how he died, his vehicle hit a land mine (not and IED, not a Taliban roadside bomb, not a suicide bomber) is less important than getting his regimental colours right.

Final Van Doos soldiers head to Afghanistan
Funerals for Master Cpl. Christian Duchesne and Master Warrant Officer Mario Mercier will be held Friday, near Valcartier.

Department of National Defence

Aug 24, 2007 17:00 ET

DND: Not Only Vandoos

MONTREAL, QUEBEC--(Marketwire - Aug. 24, 2007) - To show respect to the majority of the military personnel currently deployed in Afghanistan, who work in collaboration, but are not part of the Royal 22e Regiment, we want to specify this fact and ask the media's cooperation regarding the diffusion of complete and fair information.

Master Corporal Christian Duchesne belonged to the 5th Field Ambulance, part of the 4th Health Service Group.

The Joint Task Force - Afghanistan (JTF-Afg) Rotation 4 deployed in the summer of 2007 is comprised of approximately 2300 soldiers representing many different professions in the Canadian Forces. The majority of those troops come from over fifty different units and regiments in Canada. A third of them actually belong to the Royal 22e Regiment. Even if the core of these men and women come from Valcartier, many also come from other regions of Quebec and the rest of Canada.

For the complete list of regiments and units comprised in the JTF-Afg, you may consult the following website: http://www.5gbmc.ca/spip.php?article557

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Opiate Of The Masses

Iran suffers from being the conduit for Afghanistan opium and heroin. It more than any other country is directly affected by the increased narcotic production in Afghanistan.

While the Canadian media hyped the latest UN Drug Report on the increased opium production in Afghanistan quoting the RCMP claim that we are getting more heroin from there than from the old Golden Triangle.

The Golden Triangle; Myanmar, Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, etc. was the result of the CIA's involvement with black ops there during the Viet Nam war as Afghanistan production is a result of CIA involvement during the anti-Soviet offensive. The fact remains that NATO and American operations against opium production in Afghanistan have been a failure because they have no real alternative to the value of this agricultural product a historic crop in the region. A product first used by British Imperialism to spread its power through out Asia in the 19th Century.

However, in Afghanistan as in other parts of the world, in Burma for example, opium has long been at stake in armed conflicts as its trade has allowed these conflicts to be prolonged. As the complex history of opium in Asia demonstrates, opium production and trade have been central to world politics and geopolitics for centuries and the role of the opium economy in Afghanistan does not represent a new trend. In many ways, history reinvents itself.

It was not until the British Empire started organizing and commercializing opium production in the 19th century that the opium poppy became entrenched in the world economy. The opium produced in British India was the first drug to become integrated into the then emerging globalization. Tea, which was then only grown in China, was bought by British merchants with silver extracted from South American mines. This triangular trade went on at least until the British Empire, together with the East India Company it had set up, created a thriving opium market in China, first through illegal smuggling and then through forced imports. The two so-called “opium wars” (1839-1842 and 1856-1860) waged by the British to impose their opium trade onto China resulted in “unfair treaties” that not only made Hong Kong a British colony but also provoked, in China, the biggest addiction ever to happen in world history. Eventually, opium consumption and addiction also spurred tremendous opium production in China. In response to the Chinese national consumption that drained its silver reserves, China became the world’s foremost opium producer.

This trend emerged first in Laos and in Burma, then in Afghanistan in what came to be known as the Golden Crescent. In both Southeast and Southwest Asia, the Central Intelligence Agency’s anti-Communist covert operations and secret wars benefited from the participation of some drug-related combat units or individual actors who, to finance their struggles, were directly involved in drug production and trade. To cite just two, the Hmong in Laos and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar in Afghanistan.

Today, Afghanistan’s opium production is the direct outcome of Cold War rivalries and conflicts waged by proxies who helped develop a thriving narcotic economy in the country. Afghanistan has been the world’s leading opium-producing country for years now, with Burma and Laos ranking second and third respectively.

And NATO has not engaged the Iranians in controlling the border and transit points used by the opium producers in Afghanistan. And they will continue to fail until they engage the Iranians as allies in the fight against opium.

The Islamic Republic of Iran is a major transit route for opiates smuggled from Afghanistan and through Pakistan to the Persian Gulf, Turkey, Russia, and Europe. The largest single share of opiates leaving Afghanistan (perhaps 60 percent) passes through Iran to consumers in Iran itself, Russia and Europe. There is no evidence that narcotics transiting Iran reach the United States in an amount sufficient to have a significant effect. There are some indications that opium poppy cultivation is making a comeback in Iran, after a long period during which poppy cultivation was negligible. There are an estimated 3 million opiate abusers in Iran, with 60 percent reported as addicted to various opiates and 40 percent reported as casual users. With record levels of opium production right next door in Afghanistan, the latest opiate seizure statistics from Iran continue to suggest Iran is experiencing an epidemic of drug abuse, especially among its youth.

And contrary to the RCMP reports in the press, the United States government report above states that NO Afghani opium is getting into North America. Now do ya think the RCMP may be doing a bit of PR for their pal the PM to justify his war in Afghanistan?

NATO has relied upon American forces practicing large scale opium field eradication supported by air strikes which has led to large scale civilian deaths and friendly fire deaths to NATO forces.

Joanna Nathan
International Crisis Group analyst

Aerial eradication of poppies is not the solution. While some ground-based manual eradication is important as a stick, to discourage particularly new growers, it hits the poorest hardest. Aerial eradication can be too indiscriminate and would enrage a large sector of the population possibly driving them into the arms of the insurgents. On the other hand the proposal to license opium for medicinal use is unfeasible at this stage. Most of the drugs grown in Afghanistan are in Helmand which they haven't been able to stop when it is completely illegal. How would you then insert a massive licensing bureaucracy there and stop those who continue to grow for the black market? The price differentials would be so large there would be no incentive to grow for a licensed market.

The American war on opium production, like the rest of its Afghanistan mission, has been a failure, since it is America's allies in Helmand Province that turn out to be the opium producers themselves.

Eradication in Helmand

This season, the governor of Helmand asked the AEF to eradicate in Helmand. Despite making progress due to the AEF's heavy use of mechanized eradication, insecurity and waning political will hindered the AEF's efforts. Helmand will likely continue to be Afghanistan's largest opium cultivating province. Any future eradication strategy for Helmand needs to first account for security and political will.

It should be noted that 75% of the opium poppy cultivation in Helmand is new cultivation that did not exist two years ago. By definition, then, at least 75% of the poppy in Helmand is not being grown by poor farmers who lack licit economic alternatives-two years ago these farmers were doing something else.

In other words, the vast majority of the poppy in Helmand is not being grown by poor farmers who have been growing poppy for generations and lack economic alternatives. The reality is that cultivation has expanded rapidly in the past two years as opportunists have scrambled to exploit Helmand's lawlessness for profit. Many of Helmand's poppy growers are wealthy land-owners, corrupt officials, and other opportunists. Helmand's land is fertile; infrastructure and access to markets is good, and alternatives to poppy are available. Moreover, if Helmand were a country, it would be the fifth largest recipient of U.S. development aid in the world, having received over $270 million in USAID funds in recent years. Opium poppy grown by wealthy land-owners and corrupt officials funds the insurgency. There is no reason to avoid eradicating their poppy fields aggressively.

SEE:

Two Canadians In Afghanistan

Say It Ain't So

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