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Panjwaii, Afghanistan — Tracer rounds and exploding rockets lit up the sky Tuesday as Taliban insurgents launched brazen, co-ordinated attacks on Canadian armoured vehicles, wounding five soldiers in a battlefield west of Kandahar.

A volley of eight to 10 rockets or mortars landed near a light armoured vehicle in the Panjwaii area, just north of the Arghandab River, where Canadians have fought dug-in Taliban insurgents.

The five injured soldiers were evacuated to Kandahar Airfield, hours after five colleagues who died in weekend fighting were loaded onto a cargo plane destined for Canada. [...]

The Canadians returned fire during the attack and NATO air strikes were called in. Several buildings were left in flames after the fighting. [...]

An Apache attack helicopter blasted away at their position. Eventually one dazed man wandered out of the building still brandishing his AK-47. Canadian soldiers gunned him down.

"We took him out of the equation," said Major Abthorpe, who was commanding one of the armoured vehicles in the counterattack.

The mortar or rocket attack came about an hour later.

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These Canadian invaders will never defeat the Afghan people, no matter how savage and brutal they become with passing days. Their morale is zero, because they have nothing to fight for. When interviewed and asked, they repeat the same nauseating mantra about being there to "make a difference". In the end, the earth of Afghanistan will embrace them, as it did all their predecessors, and beyond the innocent Afghans they will hurt for a short while yet, they will have made no difference at all.

As one of the comments to the Globe article poignantly put it (comment #17):

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A Guy from rural ontario, Canada writes: Every day we will have decisive victories against the Taliban - right up to the day we lose the war.

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[ 08 September 2006: Message edited by: unionist ]

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Originally posted by 500_Apples:
Has Romeo Dallaire spoken about Afghanistan? I wonder how he would feel about the mainstream view we should offer no assistance in fighting a genocidal force (the Taliban).

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The way you throw around the word "genocide" - making it meaningless - gives me the creeps.

My summary notes of Dallaire's ravings about Afghanistan on Sunday were already posted in another thread.

Dallaire - bought and paid Liberal senator - still making money off the Rwanda slaughter which he blamed everyone for not stopping except the commander of the U.N. troop contingent (a certain Romeo Dallaire) - and public supporter of Michael Ignatieff - said we should be prepared to pay the price of "blood" as White countries to save the lives of non-Whites. This military man turned world genius has interesting opinions.

Montreal writer Robin Philpot questioned Dallaire's role in the Rwanda catastrophe:

I suspect you don't care, but for the record, they are called the Hazaras. They were descedents of the Mongols and they live in Afghanistan. The Taliban don't like them. Under Taliban rule (when found) they would be rounded up and executed. http://www.rawa.org/mazar6.htm

There also used to be Sikhs and Hundus in Afghanistan. The Taliban didn't try to kill them right away. As in Rwanda and Nazi Germany they first set them apart, forcing them to wear distinctive yellow turbans (for Sikhs) and salwar kameez (the tunic thing and baggy pants for Hindus). What they had in mind for them can be deduced from their past actions and the past actions of other peoples who followed similar policies. Which is to say that the Taliban were probably thinking up some kind of 'solution' for their infidel 'problem'.

Is this to say that there aren't other worse genocides? No.

Is this to say that we shouldn't do something about those genocides? No.

Is this to say that we shouldn't condemn any government that was complicit in any way with the Taliban's crimes(i.e. Pakistan and Saudi Arabia foremost, but also the Clinton regime)? No.

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"We took him out of the equation," said Major Abthorpe

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No doubt said with a steely squint as he lit a unfiltered Camel with his snap-opened Zippo emblazoned with the Harley Davidson logo.

What is it with these worthless officers that makes them talk only in hollywood tough-guy patois? Do they honestly think they are really Rambo?

Every goddamned one of them talks that way to the media. Check out their quotes. The more senior the officer, the bigger the douchebag.

What this says is that they can't be honest with themselves about what they are doing. They didn't just kill a man whose house had just been destroyed. Oh no, the took him out of the equation. Jeeezzzzuuuuussss.

I'm wondering if the reason for this is the usual media/military collusion in censoring what is reported. If a soldier actually said "we just wasted that fucking raghead. It was awesome", would that be reported? Somehow, I doubt it. After all, the CBC has a responsibility to sell this war, don't they? The Canadian Army are the real victims here. Oh, and make sure bagpipes are always in the background when reporting on the tearful farewell to fallen comrades. The rubes eat that shit up.

[ 05 September 2006: Message edited by: Jingles ]

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Originally posted by 1ago:
Unionist - you wrote something to the effect that there was no genocide under the Taliban.

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No I did not, because I know nothing about the subject. I said the way 500_Apples was throwing the word around made it meaningless and gave me the creeps.

If the Taliban committed genocide, and I haven't yet looked at more than the article you pointed me to, then they should be prosecuted and condemned for it like any other crimes against humanity. Are you aware of such a finding or declaration by an international body?

In any case, what is the relevance of your statement? My interest is in getting Canada out of that country, regardless of who killed whom or who will ethnically cleanse whom.

IIRC, Ahmed Rashid and others have written of the savage vengeance wreaked upon Hazaras in Mazar-e-Sharif by the Taliban in 1998, as a sort of cruel 'payback' for the several thousand of their fellows killed by an uprising against them the previous year.

I haven't got Rashid's book in front of me at the moment, but this article speaks of the awful tactics used by the Taliban during their revenge attacks in 1998:

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In 1997, after the Taliban first held Mazar-i-Sharif, an uprising in the city left 3,000 of their men dead killed and 3,600 taken prisoner. Many prisoners were later packed into containers and left to suffocate or were thrown into deep wells.

In 1998, the Taliban took Mazar-i-Sharif again and went on a rampage against the Hazara minority, shooting people in the streets and packing others in containers to die. The atrocities and counter-atrocities manifest the bitterness of the animosity between Pashtun and non-Pashtun minorities.

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Even as I acknowledge the brutality of the Taliban's actions against the Hazara, however, I have to say that our forces' recent decision to exploit that history of cruelty and counter-cruelty (and counter-counter-cruelty) to serve their strategic military objectives is one of the things that most clearly solidified my opposition to the mission in Afghanistan.

I'm referring here to Operation Mountain Thrust, one of the aims of which was to drive the Taliban against a Hazara 'tribal backstop' in order to destroy them:

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Maj. Geoff Catlett, an operational planner for the offensive, said coalition and Afghan forces would pressure Taliban militants in western Uruzgan and northeast Helmand.

Just north, the Hazara people — a rival tribe to the ethnic Pashtuns, from which the Taliban draws its fighters — will provide a "tribal backstop" for the coalition, he said.

Mountain Thrust aims at establishing a permanent Afghan army presence in the south, providing security for aid groups and boosting Afghan troop development, said Col. Michael Coss, chief of military operations at Bagram.

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People who talk like that, it seemed to me, have no real interest in the people they claim to be helping: Hazaras--in fact, no human--deserves to be defined as a 'backstop' in some military planner's scheme.

Didn't the U.S. kill 3000 Taliban in exactly that fashion in 2002? Was that genocide, or just robust enforcement techniques?

CBC Disclosure: Convoy of Death

[Search the page for "convoy of death", about 1/2 way down - there are many links to information about this horrendous massacre.]

The international force is not some homogeneous entity. It's a collection of thousands of individuals who have a wide variety of differing values and backgrounds. As an anthropologist, its my duty to mind you that nation-states are just organizational concepts. In Afghanistan there is no such wholesale uprsing of "Afghani" people against the democratic government and the international force. There are factions that are fighting against our forces... the Taliban though is a brutal despotic regime that's trying to regain power so that it can reinstitute the brutal laws and customs it previously practiced. I'm usually quite culturally relativistic, but I'd need to really go out on a limb if I wanted to see either that a majority of Afghanis were interested in seeing them return to power, or that their behavior could be simply explained away as "culture". They can't be allowed to regain power. For straightforward moral reasons. Why are we there? Why is it our problem? Because we have the power to stop them. And as you should have learned from Spiderman "with great power comes great responsibility!"

Despite the fact that we like to think of a "Canadian Force" in Aghanistan, in truth it is collection of individuals being forced to make difficult choices every single day under the abstract notion of representing an entire nation-state that wishes to accomplish certain goals. The way in which things are done is questionable as is the results gained. But I think that there is nothing questionable about their goal. An Afghanistan free from the Taliban: democratic, tolerant and liberal.

I think are methods that are occasionally quite horrid, but at the same time, we must realize that there are reasons for the less than perfect, unbloodied way in which things have played out. These definetly need to be improved upon. Concurrent with our troops turns for the worse, the results are not always as we would like... but this should all be improved upon because preventing the Taliban from regaining power is worth fighting for.

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Originally posted by 1ago:
Is this to say that you're an ignorant holocaust denier who spits on the graves of Hazaras, Kurds, Marsh Arabs and Sephardim Jews in order to bolster your prejudiced arguments against the war? That's for you to decide.

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Your same sham moralistic and pseudo-intellectual arguments could easily be invoked by some monsters to invade Canada, destroy your country, kill you and your neighbours, and impose a quisling regime - why? 1. Because it is consistent with their values; and 2. Because they have the power to do so.

Colonialism and imperialism have always had their hired intellectual and religious quacks ready to spew out high-sounding toxic sophistry to justify their murderous and marauding nature. Are you trying out for such a position?

Colonialism, imperialism, communism-they are all just a bunch of isms that have not much to do with reality but just with theory, demagogy and speculation-that is my opinion anyway.

[ 08 September 2006: Message edited by: venus_man ]

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Originally posted by venus_man:
Cut and run attitude from the first sign of trouble is not for a strong nation not for a strong person, unless you are a looser or in need of reinforcement.

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I think you have a point. I only said "cut and run" in the title because I wanted to show my contempt for opinions like Harper's (and yours).

I think the more appropriate and honourable course would be an act of surrender. Since there is no legitimate government in place which could accept such a surrender, perhaps Canada could request the convening of a "loya jirga" and submit its letter to that body, unless someone has a better proposal.

ETA: I have amended the thread title in light of your comments.

[ 08 September 2006: Message edited by: unionist ]

This operation medusa (plus the last 3 offensive operations, each labled as 'The biggest offensive yet' suggesting that the offensives progressively got bigger and bigger) is a complete sham. We are winning the Taliban allies by forcing what could/should have been neutral forces (and possibly, through opiate legitimization/licensing, allies) and turning them into Taliban 'allies of convienence'. If you're going to fight an enemy, you don't actively win them allies for them. The declaration used within the Panjwaii province (if you are there, you'ra terrorist and we'll kill you) is horrid at best.

[ 08 September 2006: Message edited by: Noise ]

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Is there still a role for Canadian arm forces within Afghanistan? I would suggest absolutely

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I would argue not until such time as Afghanis have control of their own country,

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Originally posted by eco-robot:
As an anthropologist, its my duty to mind you...They can't be allowed to regain power. For straightforward moral reasons. Why are we there? Why is it our problem? Because we have the power to stop them. And as you should have learned from Spiderman "with great power comes great responsibility!"... preventing the Taliban from regaining power is worth fighting for.

I'm rather saddened to see so many people saying otherwise on these boards. Think of all the values that make you vote NDP. Respect for human dignity, the rights of women, GLBT, for multiculturalism, democracy... if we have the power to stop them and despite that we allow the Taliban to regain power, these are the values that will be trampled in Afghanistan.

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Who said it was your duty other than you?

Moreover, I have never heard an an antropologist advocate interference in another country and peoples by the use of force, or indeed any other way either.

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Originally posted by eco-robot:
Read my first sentance. Would you find this to be right or wrong?

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I think the Ku Klux Klan and right-wing militia groups are wrong in the U.S. But if a former superpower in Asia were to have aided and abetted their rise to power and tearing the U.S. apart over the course of several years, and that Asian superpower was still pulling dirty tricks around the world in subverting democracy, then I'd say that going after the KKK and whacko militia groups could be a waste of time and Canadian lives, especially if its a proxy war waged from an adjacent country harboring proxy fighters and militia groups who will attack Canadian troops with suicide bombers, sophisticated weaponry and superior numbers.

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Originally posted by 1ago:
http://www.rawa.org/mazar6.htm

There also used to be Sikhs and Hundus in Afghanistan. The Taliban didn't try to kill them right away. As in Rwanda and Nazi Germany they first set them apart, forcing them to wear distinctive yellow turbans (for Sikhs) and salwar kameez (the tunic thing and baggy pants for Hindus). What they had in mind for them can be deduced from their past actions and the past actions of other peoples who followed similar policies. Which is to say that the Taliban were probably thinking up some kind of 'solution' for their infidel 'problem'.

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First of all I have read acres and acres of material on the Taliban, most of it highly unfavourable, and none talked about making Sikh's wear yello turbans. Secondly the fact that persons engae in similar activity does not indicate that they will pursue the same course of action, ala Adolph Hitler used to shit, all human beings shit, therefore all human beings are genociders.

ETA: Ok the Turban story appears to be true, however your conclusions hard to support, as:

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"The Taliban never bothered us. We were always okay. The Taliban did not close the gurdwara, they let us be," Gurdyal explains as two Muslim women clad in blue burqas enter the gurdwara grounds, removing their shoes at the gate, to seek blessings to heal their sick children.

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Sikhs quitting Afghanistan

More...

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''During the Taliban, we were first put in jail and then forced to wear yellow turbans and brown skullcaps, but at least we had law and order,'' said Bajan Singh, 27, a Sikh. A few months ago, he said, his land and house were confiscated by a local commander in this eastern city near the Pakistani border. ''After the Taliban left, it's turmoil in this city,'' said Bajan Singh, who like many Sikh men uses the last name Singh, as many women use the last name Kaur. ''By night, burglars rob our houses. By day, thieves steal from us. The police station closest to us harasses us. ''One of my brothers was kidnapped by security guards from this area, and we had to pay ransom,'' he said, lowering his voice to a whisper. ''We are stopped everywhere, and many don't dare to go out of the house.''

[SNIP]

Singh considers the Taliban's discriminatory dress code ''a minor problem'' compared to his current woes. Like many Afghan Sikhs, he wears a Muslim-style skullcap and ignores his religion's prohibition against haircutting. A local commander has seized land and houses, even cemetery plots, of Hindus and Sikhs for his personal use, according to community elders. They say that guards at a nearby checkpoint did nothing when a car was stolen and its driver beaten in front of the compound where Hindus and Sikhs now live. A dozen Hindus and Sikhs who opened video and music shops to capitalize on the renewed popularity of Indian movies after the fall of the Taliban keep their shutters half-closed since two bombings targeted their businesses. Unsigned pamphlets spread before the February attacks warned that those who sell or use ''things prohibited by Islam will face the consequences.''

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Afghanhindi.com

[ 08 September 2006: Message edited by: Cueball ]

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mimeguy:

Canada should be out of Afghanistan because it shouldn't have been there in the first place.... The NATO mission has nothing to do with Human Rights or atrocities committed by the Taliban....

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Right on the button. And its main connection to 911 is that the US needed someone to beat up on to distract attention from domestic issues around said event.

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eco-robot:

Think of all the values that make you vote NDP. Respect for human dignity, the rights of women, GLBT, for multiculturalism, democracy... if we have the power to stop them and despite that we allow the Taliban to regain power, these are the values that will be trampled in Afghanistan.

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Changes to Afghan values have to come from within. The power that we have through military intervention is to drive people with those values into an alliance with the Taliban and others to kick out invaders. In reality we may be setting back the development of progressive values in Afghan society.

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Before 9/11, the behavior of the Taliban was one of the major international issues that was discussed by the left in Canada. Now that something has been done about them, I see far too many folks saying that it was wrong to do the right thing solely because it was done poorly.

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Worse than being done poorly, what is being done has little or nothing to do with the Taliban except that they are opposing foreign occupation.

Many of the odious values that were enforced by the Taliban are an inherent part of the culture for many in Afghanistan, and are still being practiced in areas not controlled by the Taliban.

What the US and its toadies have done is the wrong thing if changing the social values of Afghanistan was/is the goal.

All of the money being wasted on military endeavours would be better spent feeding Afghans and bringing out as many of the young as possible for educational opportunities where they can learn things way beyond what they would at home.

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Originally posted by 500_Apples:
Unionist I'm very surprised you weren't familiar with the atrocities of the Taliban. I didn't bother referencing because I considered it to be common sense. Analogously, if in a discussion of north korea I were to say that Kim Jung Il is eating very well as his people starve, I wouldn't reference that either, because it is common sense. I'll thank 1ago and sgm for doing the service while I was gone.

Interestingly, in the months leading up to 9/11, Iran came very close to invading Afghanistan because of how Afghan shiites were being discriminated.

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When Bush invaded Iraq and couldn't find WMD, he changed the reason to liberation from Saddam Hussein. After Saddam Hussein's regime fell, it became to wipe out "terrorism" (which is what he called all the varied forces fighting U.S. occupation).

Your game is just as feeble. No one invaded Afghanistan because of Taliban atrocities, nor (as I stated and repeat) am I aware of any recognized international ruling or decision in that regard. The pretext was Al Qaeda - even though the Taliban offered to hand over Bin Laden upon submission of evidence.

Now that no one can find Bin Laden or Al Qaeda (whatever that is) after 5 long years, the reason is the nasty Taliban. And security. And reconstruction. And supporting a fledgling democracy (listen to Malali Joya at the NDP convention about how fledgling that democracy is).

Every scoundrel in history wanting to justify invasion of a sovereign country has told horror stories -- false, partially true, or true -- about the target of his invasion. North American aboriginals loved to rape, scalp and murder white women - did you know that? Saddam Hussein personally pulled the plug on baby incubators in Kuwait City - did you know that? Jews kidnapped and killed Christian children and baked their blood in Passover matzah - were you aware of that? Communists used to just eat their babies whole.

[ 08 September 2006: Message edited by: Cueball ]

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We should have known better. From time immemorial, invading a country has been a sure way to turn the people against the invaders.

It's only Western arrogance that leads us to imagine our invasions will be received differently. The Daily Show with Jon Stewart captured the absurdity of this notion with a spoof on Condoleezza Rice's blithe dismissal of the recent suffering in Lebanon as just part of the "birth pangs of a new Middle East." In the spoof, an Arab commentator suggests that Middle Easterners willingly accept these birth pangs, just as Americans accept 9/11 as the "birth pangs of a new America."

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A Defence Department report concludes the military is too lax about preventing foreign insects and weeds from hitching rides to Canada on vehicles, ships and equipment returning from missions abroad.

Afghanistan, in particular, harbours at least 28 troublesome species that have already invaded that war-torn country and could threaten Canada if inadvertently carried back home in a soldier's backpack or in the mud caked on a Jeep chassis.

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‘We’ve pretty well screwed up the whole ecology," said U.S. Rep. Wayne Gilchrest, a Maryland Republican who has struggled to persuade Congress to take the problem seriously.

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[ 10 September 2006: Message edited by: Fidel ]

The West is Running Out of Time in Afghanistan

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From all observables, the Taliban insurgency is spreading from its deeply rooted base in southern and southeastern Afghanistan to provinces in the west and east. In addition, several Islamist insurgent organizations active during the 1979-89 jihad against the Soviet Union's occupation of Afghanistan — the "old mujahideen" — have allied themselves with the Taliban. Among the more important and militarily powerful of these long-established groups are Gulbuddin Hekmatyar's Hezb-e-Islami and the forces of Maulana Jalaluddin Haqqani, which belong to the Hezb-e-Islami-Khalis organization. Historically, both groups have been able to deploy substantial forces in the strategically vital corridors from the Khyber Pass through Jalalabad to Kabul, and along the only major highway running from Kabul to the southern provinces. Prior to the 2001 U.S.-led invasion, the first of these organizations was hostile to the Taliban, while the second was at best neutral toward it (Asia Times, October 5).

Also noticeable in 2006 has been the strongly Afghan-centric nature of the insurgency. As in the jihad against the Red Army, the most important insurgent forces are made up of the Afghans themselves. Since Western leaders and the media focus so much attention on Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda, the Afghans' dominant role in the war is often lost sight of. While al-Qaeda fighters and other so-called foreign fighters are active in Afghanistan — London's al-Hayat reports that more and more Saudi men are going to fight there since the Taliban assumed the military initiative this year — they are important but secondary contributors to the war effort (al-Hayat, October 3). As in the 1980s, the Afghans publicly and correctly point out that the U.S.-led coalition is increasingly facing a "nation in arms." On this question, for example, Taliban spokesman Abdul-Hai Mutamen highlighted the always intense nationalism and xenophobia of his countrymen when he said that while Afghans and foreign fighters "have spiritual sympathy with each other...Our resistance is a pure Afghan resistance" (Pakistan Observer, October 8).
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Overall, the increasing pace of the Taliban-led insurgency in Afghanistan suggests it is only a matter of time until the commanders of the U.S.-led coalition are faced with telling their political leaders that a decision must be made to either heavily reinforce coalition forces — it appears that more than the 120,000 men Moscow deployed to Afghanistan in the 1980s would be necessary — or begin preparations to cut and run withdraw from the country

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