Sentenced To Death
Prime Minister Stephen Harper on the young Afghan who dared to read about women’s rights.
[audio:cricket.mp3]
A young man, a student of journalism, is sentenced to death by an Islamic court for downloading a report from the internet. The sentence is then upheld by the country’s rulers. This is Afghanistan – not in Taliban times but six years after “liberation” and under the democratic rule of the West’s ally Hamid Karzai.
Whooee! The US, France, Germany and the UN have all weighed in on this. Canada keeps quiet. Bill Doskoch has more details.
Maybe the HarpoonTossers are afraid if they mention this on top of the torurin’ thing, Canadians’ll start askin’ what the hell we’re doin’ sendin’ our kids to die for these mofo’s.
Oh that’s right… we ain’t dyin’ fer Karzai’s warlords, we’re dyin’ so’s Canada can stand tall on the world stage. Stand tall by standin’ alongside the torturin’ Taliban-lite Islamic Republic of Afghanistan.
JB
Isn’t it interesting how some people see this man’s fate as a reason to give up the struggle for human rights in Afghanistan and some see it as a reason to stay.
It sure would be nice if a few years of help could eliminate fundamentalism. It’s not enough, of course, and so the same fundamental question remains.
“Isn’t it interesting how some people see this man’s fate as a reason to give up the struggle for human rights in Afghanistan and some see it as a reason to stay.”
Rather a monstrous oversimplification, wouldn’t you say, Kevin? I haven’t actually read any commentators who “see this man’s fate as a reason to give up the struggle for human rights in Afghanistan” – have you?
I believe a more accurate formulation of the issue would be:
- to what extent are the goals for political, social and cultural transformation in Afghanistan achievable? In what timeframe? At what human and economic cost?
- what measurable evidence of progress toward those goals can we review? What we tend to get is anecdotal and cherry picked to illustrate either “progress” or “failure”, depending on the bias of the writer.
- and finally – do we accept the real human and financial cost?
Yeah, there, “Kevin”….
You’d think the leader of a country that has given 70 odd lives, and hundreds of millions in aid would have the balls to actually say something to prevent this man’s death at the hands of extremism, wouldn’t you?
The only “human rights” the con gongshow is interested in, is the one that greases their wheels. A true moral purpose to the so-called “mission” in Afghanistan is to dress the windows nicely for GWB. If we were supposed to be “helping” as you say, we’d be encouraging this country to stop the nutbar rulings such as this. Instead, we’re just shooting civilians and angering the locals while they continue to starve.
There would be no ‘fundamental question’ if there was any direction from above as to what the f**k they’re actually supposed to be accomplishing. Frankly I’m getting sick of the “pick-your-own objectives” they keep offering, one minute its to stop the taliban, the next its to give women rights, or no, its to build infrastructure…all of course with no measurable goals or defined performance…. We should be smart enough to spend our resources, and put lives at risk when we actually know what we are doing. Not to please the USofA.
Like them or not Kevin, the questions being asked are valid ones. Are you willing to accept or excuse executing someone under religious laws for reading forbidden materials?
This is a bi-partisan issue which has seen a good deal of traffic on the Blogging Tories. The feds should definitely voice their concerns over it. Fortunately it has nothing to do with the Kandahar province, or it would look much worse.
SL-
I agree entirely. The questions are entirely valid. I never said otherwise.
I don’t think we should accept it. The question is what should be done about it, how effective will it be and are we willing to do it.
Balb-
The comment prior to mine is an example.
I agree with the balance of your comment. That is the “fundamental question” I was referring to.
AR-
Perhaps the “pick-your-own-objectives” justification is a reflection of two things: (1) different people see different justifications and (2) there is more than one reason to be there.
Here’s the thing. Many supporters of the Afghan and Iraqi missions tend to see all human beings as larval Torontonians, waiting to blossom into joyful participants in democracy and secular governance and gender equality (but not to the extremes sought by our Western Feminazis, of course…no, a more genteel, feminine kind of equality.)
Many of the folks who pitch that view know better, and more ought to. But I think a lot of folks buy it in good faith.
The thing is, the political institutions that govern a country have their roots in culture and history that run much, much deeper than the institutions and infrastructure themselves. Changing government in a substantive, meaningful and sustainable way is a process that takes generations. . Karzai and his American backers have assembled an uneasy coalition of opportunists who will support the existing governance structure for exactly as long as it reinforces their power or wealth. The Taliban are gone, which is great for poppy production and opium trade; but there has been no transformation to real democracy, and there is little or no real interest among the current leadership in promoting it.
So let’s not be astonished when the brutal thugs who ruled before the Soviets, many of whom turned into brutal thugs called Taliban, remain brutal thugs today. Little has changed fundamentally, but the profits are better.
I disagree with the straw man ( supporters of the Afghan and Iraqi missions tend to see all human beings as larval Torontonian … ) but I agree with your main point: we should not be astonished that brutal thugs are not instantly transformed. We should expect as much.
We should expect the time frame of real change to be measured in generations not months or years and along the way we should expect many incidents that are inconsistent with where most hope the Afghanis will get to. We should also expect that along with the setbacks there will a long list of successes. They’ll probably be less dramatic than this poor fellow but they’ll be successes ( queue footage of little girls going to school ).
If we accept that instant transformation won’t happen then it seems to follow that short of killing everyone who’s deemed a bad guy or buying into the status-quo, an “uneasy coalition” is the only starting point available.
That doesn’t mean that Canada will be in the same position for decades. The mix of assistance they need will change over time and so will the balance of Canada’s contributions to that mix.
You (no doubt accidentally) omitted the rather crucial adjective “many” from that sentence.
I guess here I return to my previous point.
I want to be able to make an informed decision about precisely the kind of change we are hoping to achieve, and the commitment of lives, time and and money required to achieve it.
I want to review the strategy we propose, and the links between that strategy and the milestones by which we propose to measure our progress. By strategy, I don’t mean details of troop deployment: I mean our long term strategy for achieving a sustainable government, economy, and indigenous capacity to maintain security.
Given that information, I/we’ll be able to decide whether I/we favour ongoing commitment, immediate withdrawal, or adoption of some other approach.
That’s not happening in the debate now. It’s ironic that we claim to be supporting the growth of “democracy”, but almost none of the argument supporting our involvement is based on that kind of informed analysis, the kind of discussion that would enable our electorate to make a meaningful decision and direct our government.
Well, that is the oddest thing. I did a cut and paste from your comment into mine and I had to change Supporters to supporters. As a matter of fact, it’s still like that in my clipboard. Weird.
I agree with the rest of your comment. There is too little information available and too little open debate.
Damn. Well, what good is it if you’re going to get all civil and reasonable?
What we should expect is that PMSH says something – either Canada is in Afghanistan to make it a better place, which would include byw people not being executed by the state for downloading forbidden texts, or Canada is there for some other reason….. which is it?
Whooee! Looks like our troubles just got worse. Now, we’ve learned that in April 2007 there were credible allegations of torture against the Governor of Kandahar. PMSH no longer met with Gov Khalid after that. The ICRC was apprised of the allegations. An investigation was promised but not results from any investigation ever materialized.
Yet, we continue to work closely with Gov Khalid. In November, months after learning of Khalid’s possible personal involvement in electrocutions and beatings, MacKay took complaints of detainee abuse to this same Governor Khalid.
The Afghan Senate has upheld Kambaksh’s death sentence. Governor Khalid has assured MacKay that there won’t be any more torture. The monitoring agency AIHRC is calling for a resumption of transfers. The locals, they contend, have lumped Canada in with the Gitmo-AbuGhraib Americans and they think we’re holding the detainees so we can torture them. AIHRC is playing along and wants us to start giving them to the Afghanis.
Secrets and lies. War crimes and cover ups.
JB