Canada’s friendship with Pakistan is killing us in Afghanistan
Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan are part of the joint NATO-ISAF mission to assist returning a war-torn failed state to some normalcy where the central government can then secure the country by its own resources from external and internal enemies. This is what peacemaking requires in the post-9/11 world: active intervention on behalf of people in a failed state-an intervention that at every moment runs the risk of turning lethal as it did when the life of Capt. Nichola Goodard was taken by enemy forces bent on defeating international effort to secure the well-being of Afghanistan.
Goddard’s death should mark the end of the pretend innocence of Canadians or, more particularly, politicians regarding the situation in which the world finds itself held hostage with terrorism as an instrument of asymmetrical warfare by radical Islamists. Goddard died to keep Canada secure, and in the post-9/11 world securing Canada has meant going far as is the mission in Afghanistan.
We were fortunate Ahmed Ressam, the Algerian terrorist-bomber residing in Canada and headed for Los Angeles, was arrested at the border by alert U.S. officials. But that incidence showed, if we ever needed proof, the extent to which Canada is enmeshed, irrespective of its wishes, in a global war unleashed by Islamists, which has claimed victims in four continents and cities from New York and London to Baghdad and Bali.
The intensity of the fighting in Afghanistan with Taliban insurgents in recent weeks indicates why that country is unstable. The insurgency is effective since its base remains secure in camps located along the borders inside Pakistan.
Canadian officers and soldiers know the dilemma of the Kabul government. They have the intelligence of where Taliban fighters are coming from, and they understand best the mission cannot succeed without effective co-operation of the Pakistani government, most particularly its army. But Pakistan under Gen. Pervez Musharraf continues ingeniously to pose as an ally of the United States and its coalition partners in the war against terrorism, while exporting instability into Afghanistan by doing only the minimum in checking Taliban fighters.
Afghanistan is not the only failed state in the region. The Failed States Index compiled by the Fund for Peace and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and published in Foreign Policy (May/June 2006), mentions Pakistan in the Top 10 of the list, ahead of Afghanistan. It is a failed state armed with nuclear weapons.
The Pakistani military has driven the country to ruins, and holds it together with guns and funds provided by donor countries, including Canada. The military is also intimately bound with and supported by Islamist political parties unable to win in free and open elections. In a recent Wall Street Journal column, Chris Patten, former EU commissioner for external relations and the last British governor in Hong Kong, posed this question about Pakistan: “The military has no interest in democracy at home, so why does the outside world expect it to help build democracy next door?”
Indeed a stable Afghanistan under a constitution approved by its people and run by an elected government would be a stark contrast with Pakistan as a rogue state run by armed men. Moreover, the Taliban is a creature of this rogue state’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), and without its support, the Taliban could not function. Ahmed Rashid, journalist and author, is Pakistan’s foremost expert on the Taliban. He writes: “Taliban’s social, economic and political links to Pakistan’s Pashtun borderlands were immense, forged through two decades of war and life as refugees in Pakistan. The Taliban were born in Pakistani refugee camps, educated in Pakistani madrassas [religious schools] and learnt their fighting skills from Mujaheddin parties based in Pakistan. Their families carried Pakistani identity cards.”
Nearly five year since the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, the Taliban chief Mullah Omar and al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden remain in hiding somewhere in the borderlands of the two countries. It is unlikely without some support of the Pakistani military these modern day bandits could have remained loose for so long. While they hide, their fighters, with a regular supply of fresh recruits, continue their insurgency operations and suicide-bombings de-stabilizing President Hamid Karzai’s Afghan government. The strategic goal of Taliban and their Islamist allies in Pakistan and the surrounding area is preventing a successful, democratically based government leaning toward making society more open, equitable between genders, respectful of human rights and friendly to the West, becoming a robust model for other countries in the region.
It is Ottawa’s responsibility to address this matter openly, acknowledging that Canadians will withdraw support for the Afghan mission once they recognize its futility if the source of Afghanistan’s instability remains unaddressed. The question will soon emerge whether Canadians have been asked to support a mission bound to fail if Taliban fighters coming from their sanctuaries in Pakistan cannot be contained and defeated. Ottawa needs to think about how to deal with this problem, and it might begin this by reviewing Canada’s bilateral aid to Pakistan. Canadians should not be asked, nor will they accede, to give developmental assistance to a country that readily acts as a strategic depth for Taliban warriors fighting coalition soldiers, Canadians included, on a humanitarian mission to help build a democratic society in Afghanistan.
He is a member of the Board of Directors for the Center for Islamic Pluralism based in Washington, D.C., a Senior Fellow with the Canadian Coalition for Democracies, and an academic-consultant with the Center for Security Policy in Washington, D.C. He has been a consultant with CIDA on development issues and has published widely in academic journals on foreign policy matters and area studies of the Middle East and South Asia.
Mansur is featured on the documentary Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West produced by the David Horowitz Freedom Center. He also unsuccessfully ran for the Canadian Alliance party in 2000.
Mansur has been accused by Canadian Islamic Congress of using "provocative, self-serving rhetoric", and for "promoting an anti-Arab and anti-Muslim agenda".
He is an Ismaili Muslim.
At a press conference on October 2, 2008, Mansur stated that "Islam is my private life, my conscience...[but] my faith does not take precedence over my duties...to Canada and its constitution, which I embrace freely;" "I am first and most importantly a Canadian;" "only in a free society will you find Islam as a faith and not a political religion." Mansur also criticized New Democratic Party Leader Jack Layton, whom Mansur said "has gone to bed with Islamists", because he is running candidates in Ontario and Quebec who are closely identified with the push for Sharia law.
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