Remembering Afghanistan

The year is 1978 and the future looks bright.

Reforms are being passed to separate the church from the state. Land reforms - such as the banning of usury and debt peonage - take place to ensure rural citizens a better quality of life. For the first time in the history of the country, women are given the right to vote, they must also receive an equal education, the same job security and the same health benefits as men.(1) Aide is being secured to modernize the country’s infrastructure; new roads are constructed, new schools and hospitals are built, and new water wells are drilled. Forced marriages were banned. Men were obliged to cut their beards and women were forbidden from wearing a burqa. This was the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan, and it lasted less than a year.

At the time, it was called an attack on Afghan culture – an attempt to forcibly “Westernize” the country, but is that really what was happening? Is that what’s happening in Afghanistan now? Since then, Afghanistan has known only war. They’ve endured three decades of conflict; severely impeding any efforts to improve education, health care, or generally progress with the rest of the world, as a modern society.

Could the current conflict have been avoided? Perhaps. With the Cold War still ongoing at the time, any Communist government was perceived as a threat by the United States. The situation in Afghanistan was a chance to draw the Soviets into the Afghan trap. It became an “opportunity [to give] the USSR its Vietnam War.”(2) In the years to come the Islamic mujahideen movement, opposing the new government - and the Soviet occupation - was given billions of dollars to fund its purpose. They were lauded in the Western media as “freedom fighters.”(3) Among their ranks were Abdullah Azzam and Osama bin Laden.

The country’s right to self-determination was effectively quashed, and would remain so up-to-and-including the time of writing this article. The current war in Afghanistan is simply an extension of the last. It’s a bi-product of Western short-sightedness and interference; what economists call a negative externality. US aide to the Afghan freedom fighters unwittingly contributed - in no small part - to today’s most well known pan-Islamic Jihadist organization – al Qaeda. The rest is international history.

Our predicament now is, how – and when – do we bring our troops home?

“After the US-led coalition successfully toppled the Taliban regime, an international conference was held under the auspices of the United Nations in Bonn, Germany, in December 2001. Canada actively participated in the conference, which led to the signing of the Bonn Agreement. The agreement provided for Afghanistan’s transition to democracy through the establishment of an interim administration committed to peaceful coexistence, reconstruction, democratic elections and gender equality. Canada and the international community agreed to support the new interim administration, as well as the Bonn process, by contributing to the establishment of peace and stability in Afghanistan. Canada then formalized its support for the interim government by resuming full diplomatic relations with Afghanistan in January 2002.”(4)

Unfortunately these objectives are only slowly being realized. The problems created during the Afghan-Soviet war (and prior) are interconnected and multi-dimensional. Three decades of war have left the country with some of the lowest literacy rates in the world(5); “The [Afghan National Army]’s tactical skills are developing well. They are well aware of how to deal with Improvised Explosive Devices (IED) and react well to contact with the enemy. However … the large lack of literacy amongst the ANA impedes everything from complex logistics issues to reading the nightly guard duty shift log.”(6) This single problem poses an immense hurdle. Without an effective, self-sufficient military presence, the country will once again be overrun by the Taliban. Furthermore, with a deficit of professionals and educators, how will the country progress?

All ambivalent moral or ethical considerations aside – whether you support the war or not – these people deserve peace. They’ve raised a generation of children in an active warzone. Although we may be far removed from the original conflict, the current conflict and the consequences of our actions (or complacency, as the case may be,) we have a duty to assist where we can in the development and positive progression of any nation that requires it. And we owe all of our soldiers a debt for their sacrifices. At the very least, we ought to remember what Afghanistan could have been, in 1978.

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References:
1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anahita_Ratebzad
2. http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/BRZ110A.html
3. http://www.reagan.utexas.edu/archives/speeches/1983/32183d.htm
4. http://www.parl.gc.ca/information/library/PRBpubs/prb0738-e.pdf
5. http://www.unicef.org/infobycountry/afghanistan_statistics.html#56
6. http://www.comfec-cefcom.forces.gc.ca/pa-ap/fs-ev/2009/10/27-eng.asp

Misc.
http://www.forces.gc.ca/site/focus/fallen-disparus/index-eng.asp