Canadians in Afghanistan

My friend Christie Blatchford's illuminating stories about her past three weeks in Afghanistan, embedded with the Princes Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry have caused me to think about what Canada is doing there. The PPCLI is Canada's most famous and rightly distinguished regiment, having an outstanding battle record from the First and Second World Wars, and Korea. We have put our best soldiers out there, so if anyone can succeed, they can. But have they? Will they?

Many other Canadians also question our presence there, and the politicians of the left are attempting to make political hay from these doubts.

In her story in the Globe today, Christie recounts how a school in Kandahar was closed for some time as a result of a "night letter" posted on the door by the Taliban, threatening the students and teachers with death if they attended the school. It remained closed until an Afghan National Police post was established next door, at which point the students and teachers felt safe enough to return.

This story makes it clear that Taliban terrorists are still able to operate with impunity in the second largest city in Afghanistan. They have not been eliminated despite years of occupation by a variety of forces, including ours.

My first reservation about our role in Afghanistan has to do with the government we are supporting. The media reports have been filled in the past week with the case of Abdul Rahman, on trial for his life before the official courts of Afghanistan, for the crime of converting to Christianity. It now appears that due to international outrage at his case, Rahman will be found to be insane, and released. We can expect to hear of his murder at private hands soon after, unless he flees the country.

The biggest source of revenue of the Afghan government is heroin. Afghanistan is one of the major world sources of opium, the product from which heroin is made. Should we be supporting a government that kills Christians and supplies the world with heroin?

When I was prosecuting narcotics dealers in Vancouver I thought it made more sense to simply purchase the entire crop of opium poppies in Afghanistan and Burma, and burn it each year. It would be cheaper than all the police and court effort to interdict the heroin supply around the world, and would provide the impoverished countries with the revenue they needed. I still think this is a good idea.

My second reservation relates to the approach being taken to destroy the Taliban.

There is no doubt that the Taliban should be destroyed. Its members cut off the fingers of women wearing nail polish, kill children for attending school, oppress women savagely, and commit numerous murderous crimes against the people. The Taliban is barbaric, primitive, vicious, and fundamentally evil. It and all its members should be destroyed, or the people of Afghanistan will live forever in abject terror as slaves to a psychotic cult.

It should not be forgotten though, that one of the most successful revolutionaries in history, Mao Tse Tung, said that the revolutionary (read terrorist) should be a fish in the sea, swimming invisibly in the school of fish. That is what the Taliban does. Its members live in the Afghan population, and the chances of a PPCLI patrol finding them is poor indeed.

It is only the Afghan people who can eliminate the Taliban. They must rat them out to the occupying forces, who must in turn deal effectively with the information, and protect the informers. In addition, the Afghan government must develop a trained, indigenous Afghan anti-terrorist force to go after the Taliban.

If our role there is to assist the Afghan government to develop its own anti-terrorist forces, then I think we are doing the right thing. If our role is to occupy the country and chase the Taliban with our own forces, I think we are engaged in a futile and never ending task.

If our role is to protect the Afghan population to the end that the people have the confidence to inform on the Taliban, we are doing the right thing. If our role is simple protection, without encouraging the people to get involved in anti-Taliban measures, then we are not doing much that is useful.

I do not support the current clamour for a Parliamentary debate on our mission in Afghanistan. That would be nothing more than a pointless opportunity for the loud Left to cast doubt and demoralization on our efforts. The mission is the government's responsibility. It behooves the government to think about what we are doing in a clear headed way, and to ensure that we are giving the right direction to our military mission.

I hope that the Harper government will remove my doubts.