On the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, jihad—or the Islamists’ war against the West—arrived in North America.
Those responsible for terrorist strikes on that fateful morning, and since then in many other cities across continents, had made their strategic base in Afghanistan.
The lesson of Afghanistan is simple for the post-9/11 world: When the world turns its back on a failed state, the problems fester into monstrosity with unimaginable consequences.
In this instance, Afghanistan—to quote UN Security Council Resolution 1378 of Nov. 14, 2001—was “used as a base for the export of terrorism by the al-Qaida network and other terrorist groups and for providing safe haven to Osama bin Laden, al-Qaida and others associated with them.”
The recent history of Afghanistan is well documented. It is a poor country that became the last battleground of the Cold War between the communist power, former Soviet Union, and the free world.
At the end of that war the world looked away, leaving a terribly abused people with little resources to tend to their basic needs.
Instead of peace, Afghanis found their country turned into a hellish nightmare by local warlords, nd then later seized by Taliban warriors with their primitive mindset to grind the people deeper into misery.
Afghanistan deserves better, and has a legitimate moral claim on the free world for shedding blood in bringing about the final defeat of Soviet communism.
Since the need is immense, international contributions and efforts have to be commensurate.
Following the Rwandan genocide and ethnic wars in the Balkans, an International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty was put together with Canadian assistance. Its report, The Responsibility to Protect, submitted to the UN secretary general, sought to establish the following basic principles as a guide to UN action:
· “(a) State sovereignty implies responsibility, and the primary responsibility for the protection of its people lies with the state itself.
· “(b) Where a population is suffering serious harm, as a result of internal war, insurgency, repression or state failure, and the state in question is unwilling or unable to halt or avert it, the principle of non-intervention yields to the international responsibility to protect.”
These are the requirements of the post-9/11 world and these ideas are being tested in Afghanistan.
We have been through similar situations in the past. At the end of World War II, the free world found itself with new threats.
There was a divided Europe, the 1948 Berlin blockade, the former Soviet Union acquiring atomic weapons in 1949, the end of European colonialism, and the Korean war of 1950-53.
The free world, including Canada, responded prudently by establishing NATO, and launching the Colombo Plan of 1950 to provide technical assistance for the newly independent countries of the British Commonwealth.
Now we are faced with the challenge of broadening the concept of peacekeeping into peacemaking.
In Afghanistan and elsewhere, Canadian soldiers are once again beckoned by their government to serve the cause of peace by placing themselves at risk.
Canada’s Afghan mission is within the UN mandate of helping Afghanis rebuild their country in keeping with their democratic wishes, reflected in the constitution they adopted in January 2004.
Canada’s Afghan mission is also in keeping with the country’s tradition, tested through wars of the last century, when our best and bravest placed themselves in harm’s way to defend freedom and democracy—the values now enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations.
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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