[A-List] [Fwd: The real truth why Canada and NATO are in Afghanistan - A must read]

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---------------------------- Original Message ----------------------------
Subject: The real truth why Canada and NATO are in Afghanistan - A must
read From:    "Lawyers Against The War" <law@xxxxxxxxx>
Date:    Mon, June 23, 2008 9:29 pm
To:      Undisclosed-Recipient:;
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Canadian Workers Demand Immediate End to War in Afghanistan


Global Research, June 14, 2008
The Bullet

On 29 May 2009, the delegates at the national convention of the
Canadian Labour Congress (CLC), representing more than three million
workers from every region of Canada and Quebec, voted overwhelmingly to
demand that the Government of Canada immediately end its
participation in the illegal war in Afghanistan.

This CLC demand represents a significant consolidation of labour
power. Several national unions, notably the Canadian Union of Postal
Workers (CUPW) and the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) had
already adopted policies to oppose Canada's participation in the war in
Afghanistan. However, some powerful unions whose members work in the
rapidly expanding Canadian military and development industries could
profit from continuing the war. The women and men of these
unions made the difficult decision to stand in solidarity with the working
people of Afghanistan rather than act on self-interest.

 The Afghan War and the Canadian Military

The ongoing war in Afghanistan continues to kill uncounted thousands of
Afghan civilians and cause immeasurable suffering due to horrendous
injuries, the displacement of people from their homes and livelihoods,
home invasions, arbitrary arrests and torture, sexual abuse, and the
general humiliation of Afghans. This is an illegal war that cannot be
justified by a few extra jobs for Canadian workers.

Since the war in Afghanistan began, Canada has become the sixth
largest military exporter in the world, according to data collected by the
U.S. Congressional Research Service. Canada is now behind only the USA,
Russia, the UK, Germany, and China in export volume. The U.S. manufactures
more than all other military manufacturers combined, so comparing Canada's
military industrial complex to the American
mega-industry is ridiculous. But, Canada trails China -- number five on
the list -- by only a hundred million dollars worth of exports in an
industry that brings billions of dollars into Canada. No one knows exactly
how many billions of dollars military exports bring into
Canada though. Why not? Because, for the past four years, the Canadian
government, citing security concerns, has refused to release much of the
data regarding the export of military products to the U.S. -- our biggest
customer.

Canada's own military spending has risen considerably. Since the war began
in 2001, Canada rose from the position of 16th to 13th biggest military
spender in the world, and from 7th to 6th within NATO,
according to a Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives report.
Canada's defence budget projects a 37 percent increase in spending from
2001 to 2010.

The Canadian Association of Defence and Security Industries (CADSI)
represents more than five hundred companies. In an interview with a CBC
journalist, the CADSI president, Tim Page, claimed his industry represents
about 70,000 jobs in over 177 federal ridings. This may not seem like a
large number of workers, but it represents significant political power.
Many of these high-tech jobs are among the best in the country.

However, the workers who build the weapons and everything else needed for
warfare, as well as the service workers who make the Canadian
state function, recognise that it is the shareholders who profit most from
the rising fortunes of the companies in Canada's military
industrial complex. Corporations such as GM Canada, Bombardier, Bell
Helicopter, SNC-Lavalin, CAE Electronics, Pratt & Whitney Canada,
Canadian Marconi, and Colt Canada are only a few of the Canadian based
military suppliers profiting from the war in Afghanistan.

Canadian Development Aid in Afghanistan

The Canadian development industry also profits from the war and
occupation. The one billion dollars Canada has "pledged" to spend on
development in Afghanistan, from 2001 to 2011, pales in comparison to the
7.2 billion dollars already spent on the military mission.
Nonetheless, a billion dollars is a significant sum. However, most
development spending returns to Canada as salaries and expenses.
Manufacturers as well as service providers such as construction
contractors and airlines profit significantly from the development
industry -- while the little development spending that actually does reach
Afghanistan benefits few Afghans.

When our research group toured five Afghan provinces in 2007, we were
appalled by the miserable conditions most Afghans must live in. Even in
the safest areas of the country, where there is no excuse for the
occupying forces failure to reconstruct essential infrastructure, many
Afghans do not have even the barest essentials of clean water and
adequate sanitation. In Kabul, where the international forces have
occupied the city since 2001, less than 29 percent of the people have
access to clean drinking water, according to reports by the
Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit.

Peter McKay, Canada's Minister of Defence, frequently claims that over six
million Afghan children -- one third of them girls -- have been enrolled
in school. However, his claim is not substantiated by Afghan researchers.
Girls represent only 3 percent of students, according to the Afghanistan
Independent Human Rights Commission. The children of poor families cannot
afford school; they must work to survive. The Afghanistan Research and
Evaluation Unit claims this fact especially inhibits girls from going to
school.

When we interviewed people in Afghanistan, their experiences of
development sounded very much like what Michael Ignatieff had
described in his book "Empire Lite" in 2003. Ignatieff stated:

The rhetoric about helping Afghanistan stand on its own two feet does not
square with the hard interest that each Western government has in
financing, not the Afghans, but its own national relief organisations.
...These fly a nation's flag over some road or school that a
politician back home can take credit for. ... the international's
first priority is building their own capacity -- increasing their
budgets and giving themselves good jobs (Michael Ignatieff. Empire Lite.
2003).

Since becoming a politician, Ignatieff no longer talks about these issues,
but Afghans see this reality every day.

Commercial Exploitation

Despite the fact there is no systemic development of the basic
infrastructure necessary for human survival in Afghanistan, massive
commercial developments proceed at a rapid pace.

The biggest development to date is the Aynak copper mine just a few
kilometres from Kabul. This rich mine site was auctioned, in late
2007, to the Chinese metallurgical corporation MCC for a price of more
than 3 billion American dollars. The Aynak deposit is the first of more
than 1,400 state owned mineral deposits in Afghanistan slated for
privatisation in the near future.

A Soviet geological survey in the 1970s found -- and American and
British surveys since 2001 have confirmed -- massive deposits of
almost every kind of mineral wealth exist in Afghanistan, such as
gold, iron, uranium, and copper, as well as hydrocarbons, especially coal.
Afghanistan is also one of few locations on Earth where the rare element
tantalum, also known as coltan, is found. Tantalum is
essential in the manufacture of cell phones and laptop computers. The
largest previously known source is in the Democratic Republic of
Congo, where tantalum mining played a part in the most destructive war, in
terms of human casualties, since WWII.

Canadian mining giants are competing with American, British, Russian, and
Chinese companies in a scramble for the rich mineral prizes found in
Afghanistan. Financial predictions for the Afghan mining industry are in
the unfathomable hundreds of billions to trillions of dollars. But, as an
article by Antony Benham in the October 2007 issue of
"Nature" notes, it is unlikely much of this wealth will benefit many Afghans.

Development of the transportation and energy infrastructure needed by the
mining industry is rapidly proceeding, while ordi
nary Afghans
suffer without the most basic necessities of life. Some sceptics claim
that even the electricity to be transported by a transmission network
currently under construction funded by the Asian Development Bank, is not
likely destined for the millions of Afghans without electricity, but will
instead be sucked up by electricity hungry ore processing plants.

Whether it is here in Canada, in Latin America, in Africa, throughout
Asia, as it is now in Afghanistan, the Aboriginal Peoples who live on the
land are perceived to stand in the way of what we in the so-called
developed world call development. The environmental devastation that can
be caused by resource extraction is well known, but this is a fact known
better by those people directly affected who rely on their land for their
livelihood than by anyone else. However, the disciplinary power of the
modern state is being used to counter any protest,
eliminate all resistance, and clear the land of Aboriginal Peoples
wherever it is deemed necessary.

 The New Afghan Theocratic State

The destruction of the Taliban regime by American armed forces in 2001
effectively silenced opposition and effectively re-instituted a
theocratic regime. A theocratic state was first imposed on Afghans in 1992
when the U.S. helped the mujaheddin gain power by financing their war with
billions of dollars against the secular Soviet-backed
government. American President Jimmy Carter initially began providing
military and other support for the mujaheddin Islamic revolutionaries on 3
July 1979, which then drew the Soviet military into Afghanistan 25
December 1979. In coming to power, the mujaheddin declared
Afghanistan an Islamic republic. The ouster of the mujaheddin by the
Taliban in 1996 brought an even greater degree of social and political
repression for Afghanis, and intensified the theocratic features of the
Afghanistan state, often through brutal means.

Secular Afghans, those of other faiths, and Muslims who believe in a
separation of state and religion have been profoundly disenfranchised by
the theocratic state that first gained support from the Western powers in
the 1990s. They have remained so by the new theocratic state
re-established, under the puppet leadership of President Karzai, by a
handful of Western leaders in the Bonn Agreement of 2001. The Bonn
Agreement was instituted despite a UN Security Council recommendation
issued several weeks earlier that urged that "the new Afghan
government should respect the human rights of all Afghan people,
regardless of gender, ethnicity or religion."

The Bonn Agreement accomplished, among others, three objectives with
profoundly adverse consequences for many Afghans. First, it rewarded the
mujaheddin warlords for their decades of services to the USA.
Second, it promised the mujaheddin impunity for the many horrendous war
crimes they had committed since 1979, which continue to this day during
the American-led occupation. Third, it re-instituted the
theocratic state as a means of social control.

The U.S. State Department reports: "The government requires all
citizens to profess a religious affiliation and assumes all Afghans to be
Muslim. According to Islamic law, conversion from Islam is
punishable by death." The U.S. State Department also reports that
socialism is illegal in the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, because
socialists are atheists.

Afghan political opponents of many progressive stripes must remain
underground fearing retribution from both the Taliban insurgents and the
ruling mujaheddin regime. In essence, the only substantive
difference between the Taliban and mujaheddin regimes is that one is an
intolerant authoritarian theocratic regime bent on resistance to the new
world order and the other is an intolerant authoritarian
theocratic regime willing and well prepared to profit from engagement with
the new world order.

Now that the workers of Canada and Quebec have officially declared our
solidarity with Afghan workers, it is time to begin building bridges to
join our struggles against the new authoritarianism and theocracy in
Afghanistan and Western and Canadian imperialism.

Michael Skinner is a Researcher at the York Centre for International and
Security Studies and a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of
Political Science, York University. He is also a member of CUPE Local 3903
and the Toronto Local CUPW.

In 2007, Skinner and Afghan-Canadian researcher Hamayon Rastgar,
representing the Afghanistan Canada Research Group, travelled
throughout much of Afghanistan. They listened to Afghan intellectuals,
opposition politicians, and particularly the ordinary Afghan workers and
peasant farmers whose views are not represented in the Canadian media
(read dispatches on TUAW website -
http://www.tuaw.ca/other/dispatch0.html ).

You can see a short video of this research, "Searching for Development in
Afghanistan"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Re6dJtplTUo . Contact: skinnerm@xxxxxxxxx

It is to exploit the rich untapped resources at the expense of the Afghan
people, dummy!

Canadian Workers Demand Immediate End to War in Afghanistan


Global Research, June 14, 2008
The Bullet

On 29 May 2009, the delegates at the national convention of the
Canadian Labour Congress (CLC), representing more than three million
workers from every region of Canada and Quebec, voted overwhelmingly
to demand that the Government of Canada immediately end its
participation in the illegal war in Afghanistan.

This CLC demand represents a significant consolidation of labour
power. Several national unions, notably the Canadian Union of Postal
Workers (CUPW) and the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) had
already adopted policies to oppose Canada's participation in the war
in Afghanistan. However, some powerful unions whose members work in
the rapidly expanding Canadian military and development industries
could profit from continuing the war. The women and men of these
unions made the difficult decision to stand in solidarity with the
working people of Afghanistan rather than act on self-interest.

 The Afghan War and the Canadian Military

The ongoing war in Afghanistan continues to kill uncounted thousands
of Afghan civilians and cause immeasurable suffering due to horrendous
injuries, the displacement of people from their homes and livelihoods,
home invasions, arbitrary arrests and torture, sexual abuse, and the
general humiliation of Afghans. This is an illegal war that cannot be
justified by a few extra jobs for Canadian workers.

Since the war in Afghanistan began, Canada has become the sixth
largest military exporter in the world, according to data collected by
the U.S. Congressional Research Service. Canada is now behind only the
USA, Russia, the UK, Germany, and China in export volume. The U.S.
manufactures more than all other military manufacturers combined, so
comparing Canada's military industrial complex to the American
mega-industry is ridiculous. But, Canada trails China -- number five
on the list -- by only a hundred million dollars worth of exports in
an industry that brings billions of dollars into Canada. No one knows
exactly how many billions of dollars military exports bring into
Canada though. Why not? Because, for the past four years, the Canadian
government, citing security concerns, has refused to release much of
the data regarding the export of military products to the U.S. -- our
biggest customer.

Canada's own military spending has risen considerably. Since the war
began in 2001, Canada rose from the position of 16th to 13th biggest
military spender in the world, and from 7th to 6th within NATO,
according to a Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives report.
Canada's defence budget projects a 37 percent increase in spending
from 2001 to 2010.

The Canadian Association of Defence and Security Industries (CADSI)
represents more than five hundred companies. In an interview with a
CBC journalist, the CADSI president, Tim Page, claimed his industry
represents about 70,000 jobs in over 177 federal ridings. This may not
seem like a large number of workers, but it represents significant
political power. Many of these high-tech jobs are among the best in
the country.

However, the workers who build the weapons and everything else needed
for warfare, as well as the service workers who make the Canadian
state function, recognise that it is the shareholders who profit most
from the rising fortunes of the companies in Canada's military
industrial complex. Corporations such as GM Canada, Bombardier, Bell
Helicopter, SNC-Lavalin, CAE Electronics, Pratt & Whitney Canada,
Canadian Marconi, and Colt Canada are only a few of the Canadian based
military suppliers profiting from the war in Afghanistan.

Canadian Development Aid in Afghanistan

The Canadian development industry also profits from the war and
occupation. The one billion dollars Canada has "pledged" to spend on
development in Afghanistan, from 2001 to 2011, pales in comparison to
the 7.2 billion dollars already spent on the military mission.
Nonetheless, a billion dollars is a significant sum. However, most
development spending returns to Canada as salaries and expenses.
Manufacturers as well as service providers such as construction
contractors and airlines profit significantly from the development
industry -- while the little development spending that actually does
reach Afghanistan benefits few Afghans.

When our research group toured five Afghan provinces in 2007, we were
appalled by the miserable conditions most Afghans must live in. Even
in the safest areas of the country, where there is no excuse for the
occupying forces failure to reconstruct essential infrastructure, many
Afghans do not have even the barest essentials of clean water and
adequate sanitation. In Kabul, where the international forces have
occupied the city since 2001, less than 29 percent of the people have
access to clean drinking water, according to reports by the
Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit.

Peter McKay, Canada's Minister of Defence, frequently claims that over
six million Afghan children -- one third of them girls -- have been
enrolled in school. However, his claim is not substantiated by Afghan
researchers. Girls represent only 3 percent of students, according to
the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission. The children of
poor families cannot afford school; they must work to survive. The
Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit claims this fact especially
inhibits girls from going to school.

When we interviewed people in Afghanistan, their experiences of
development sounded very much like what Michael Ignatieff had
described in his book "Empire Lite" in 2003. Ignatieff stated:

The rhetoric about helping Afghanistan stand on its own two feet does
not square with the hard interest that each Western government has in
financing, not the Afghans, but its own national relief organisations.
...These fly a nation's flag over some road or school that a
politician back home can take credit for. ... the international's
first priority is building their own capacity -- increasing their
budgets and giving themselves good jobs (Michael Ignatieff. Empire
Lite. 2003).

Since becoming a politician, Ignatieff no longer talks about these
issues, but Afghans see this reality every day.

Commercial Exploitation

Despite the fact there is no systemic development of the basic
infrastructure necessary for human survival in Afghanistan, massive
commercial developments proceed at a rapid pace.

The biggest development to date is the Aynak copper mine just a few
kilometres from Kabul. This rich mine site was auctioned, in late
2007, to the Chinese metallurgical corporation MCC for a price of more
than 3 billion American dollars. The Aynak deposit is the first of
more than 1,400 state owned mineral deposits in Afghanistan slated for
privatisation in the near future.

A Soviet geological survey in the 1970s found -- and American and
British surveys since 2001 have confirmed -- massive deposits of
almost every kind of mineral wealth exist in Afghanistan, such as
gold, iron, uranium, and copper, as well as hydrocarbons, especially
coal. Afghanistan is also one of few locations on Earth where the rare
element tantalum, also known as coltan, is found. Tantalum is
essential in the manufacture of cell phones and laptop computers. The
largest previously known source is in the Democratic Republic of
Congo, where tantalum mining played a part in the most destructive
war, in terms of human casualties, since WWII.

Canadian mining giants are competing with American, British, Russian,
and Chinese companies in a scramble for the rich mineral prizes found
in Afghanistan. Financial predictions for the Afghan mining industry
are in the unfathomable hundreds of billions to trillions of dollars.
But, as an article by Antony Benham in the October 2007 issue of
"Nature" notes, it is unlikely much of this wealth will benefit many
Afghans.

Development of the transportation and energy infrastructure needed by
the mining industry is rapidly proceeding, while ordinary Afghans
suffer without the most basic necessities of life. Some sceptics claim
that even the electricity to be transported by a transmission network
currently under construction funded by the Asian Development Bank, is
not likely destined for the millions of Afghans without electricity,
but will instead be sucked up by electricity hungry ore processing
plants.

Whether it is here in Canada, in Latin America, in Africa, throughout
Asia, as it is now in Afghanistan, the Aboriginal Peoples who live on
the land are perceived to stand in the way of what we in the so-called
developed world call development. The environmental devastation that
can be caused by resource extraction is well known, but this is a fact
known better by those people directly affected who rely on their land
for their livelihood than by anyone else. However, the disciplinary
power of the modern state is being used to counter any protest,
eliminate all resistance, and clear the land of Aboriginal Peoples
wherever it is deemed necessary.

 The New Afghan Theocratic State

The destruction of the Taliban regime by American armed forces in 2001
effectively silenced opposition and effectively re-instituted a
theocratic regime. A theocratic state was first imposed on Afghans in
1992 when the U.S. helped the mujaheddin gain power by financing their
war with billions of dollars against the secular Soviet-backed
government. American President Jimmy Carter initially began providing
military and other support for the mujaheddin Islamic revolutionaries
on 3 July 1979, which then drew the Soviet military into Afghanistan
25 December 1979. In coming to power, the mujaheddin declared
Afghanistan an Islamic republic. The ouster of the mujaheddin by the
Taliban in 1996 brought an even greater degree of social and political
repression for Afghanis, and intensified the theocratic features of
the Afghanistan state, often through brutal means.

Secular Afghans, those of other faiths, and Muslims who believe in a
separation of state and religion have been profoundly disenfranchised
by the theocratic state that first gained support from the Western
powers in the 1990s. They have remained so by the new theocratic state
re-established, under the puppet leadership of President Karzai, by a
handful of Western leaders in the Bonn Agreement of 2001. The Bonn
Agreement was instituted despite a UN Security Council recommendation
issued several weeks earlier that urged that "the new Afghan
government should respect the human rights of all Afghan people,
regardless of gender, ethnicity or religion."

The Bonn Agreement accomplished, among others, three objectives with
profoundly adverse consequences for many Afghans. First, it rewarded
the mujaheddin warlords for their decades of services to the USA.
Second, it promised the mujaheddin impunity for the many horrendous
war crimes they had committed since 1979, which continue to this day
during the American-led occupation. Third, it re-instituted the
theocratic state as a means of social control.

The U.S. State Department reports: "The government requires all
citizens to profess a religious affiliation and assumes all Afghans to
be Muslim. According to Islamic law, conversion from Islam is
punishable by death." The U.S. State Department also reports that
socialism is illegal in the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, because
socialists are atheists.

Afghan political opponents of many progressive stripes must remain
underground fearing retribution from both the Taliban insurgents and
the ruling mujaheddin regime. In essence, the only substantive
difference between the Taliban and mujaheddin regimes is that one is
an intolerant authoritarian theocratic regime bent on resistance to
the new world order and the other is an intolerant authoritarian
theocratic regime willing and well prepared to profit from engagement
with the new world order.

Now that the workers of Canada and Quebec have officially declared our
solidarity with Afghan workers, it is time to begin building bridges
to join our struggles against the new authoritarianism and theocracy
in Afghanistan and Western and Canadian imperialism.

Michael Skinner is a Researcher at the York Centre for International
and Security Studies and a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of
Political Science, York University. He is also a member of CUPE Local
3903 and the Toronto Local CUPW.

In 2007, Skinner and Afghan-Canadian researcher Hamayon Rastgar,
representing the Afghanistan Canada Research Group, travelled
throughout much of Afghanistan. They listened to Afghan intellectuals,
opposition politicians, and particularly the ordinary Afghan workers
and peasant farmers whose views are not represented in the Canadian
media (read dispatches on TUAW website -
http://www.tuaw.ca/other/dispatch0.html ).

You can see a short video of this research, "Searching for Development
in Afghanistan"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Re6dJtplTUo . Contact: skinnerm@xxxxxxxx.

It is to exploit the rich untapped resources at the expense of the Afghan people, dummy!