New Media

The Canada-Afghanistan Solidarity Committee has released a report urging Canada to continue an active role in Afghanistan after the military mission ends next year. Committee co-founder Terry Glavin and Nasrine Gross, an Afghan-American writer at Kabul University, discuss the situation on the ground.

During the Vietnam war, American forces were obsessed with body counts. In a jungle war where the South Vietnamese and US forces were theoretically in control of all territory, while actual military control extended only to the nearest treeline, counting enemy deaths served as some kind of grotesque marker for military success. In the end, these metrics were utterly beside the point. The Americans bugged out under the cover of a peace deal that was promptly torn up as communist tanks crashed through the gates of the presidential palace in Saigon.

Americans and NATO forces like our own don’t publicize body counts anymore. It’s not just because Vietnam tainted the practice. Partly, this is because they work for politicians elected by populations that have only rarely been comfortable with the scale of carnage made possible by industrial methods. Body counts may have helped certain soldiers win promotions, but this sort of information doesn’t do much to win the hearts and minds of the home front. Instead, we focus today on the more traditional metrics of success on the battlefield — territory and the support of the people who dwell within it.

These days, it is the Taliban who are obsessed with body counts — as usual, without distinguishing combatants and civilians. In the heart of Kabul, seventeen Afghans and foreigners were murdered this morning by suicide attackers. The enemy boasts of their “glorious” victory over medical doctors, a documentary film-maker, government officials and three Afghan policemen. It was a brutal act, only slightly dulled in its effect by the parade of Taliban atrocities that have come before it.

While the Taliban are focused on the body counts of doctors, film makers, aid workers and ordinary Afghan civilians, ISAF and the Afghan National Army are concentrating on the end-game. It’s not about counting corpses — it’s about boots on the ground and ordinary Afghans having a chance to get on with their lives without worrying about getting their throats slit by barbarians.

We’re still early into this surge, as our own soldiers and our allies have finally been given the resources they need to do the job. But the early signs are promising. Finally, we can start looking at what comes after the thugs have been routed. By 2011, we may already be a good ways along this road.

Further Reading
On This Day, The Birthday Of The Prophet: A Taliban Atrocity In The Streets of Kabul
Turning the Tide Against the Taliban

What’s in store for Canada in Afghanistan post-2011?

The Canada-Afghanistan Solidarity Committee (CASC) will unveil its Vision for Canada’s Role in Afghanistan Post-2011 on March 9 at the National Archives Hall in Ottawa. The event, called “Canada and Afghanistan: Keeping Our Promises”, is hosted by the Free Thinking Film Society of Ottawa and is also a fundraiser for the Afghan School Project.

Tickets: $30 regular admission, $15 students
• Purchase tickets online:
Online at http://www.canilf.org/news/
• Purchase tickets in person:
Ottawa Folklore Centre (1111 Bank Street, Ottawa)
Compact Music (190 Bank; 7851 ½ Bank Street, Ottawa)

In light of polls that make me doubt whether many of my fellow Canadians truly understand what’s at stake in Afghanistan, I’d like to go over a few assumptions I have about my fellow citizens.

If you ask Canadians whether respect for human rights ought to be universal, everyone will agree.

If you ask them whether Canadians ought to care much about people who live beyond our borders, the vast majority will agree that we should (and the slim minority who oppose this can go rot).

If you ask them whether we should surrender to thugs who throw acid in the faces of schoolgirls, shoot humanitarian workers with automatic weapons, and use children as bomb delivery units, only a few cowardly and soulless Canucks would dare to say “aye” to that.

If you ask Canadians whether we should allow hundreds of thousands of people, or even millions, to fall victim to such thugs and the violence they bring, when as a rich and developed nation we have the capacity to stop this evil, I cannot believe that most would agree to that.

If you ask under what circumstances Canadians might use their military to fight such threats far beyond our borders, certainly most would agree that it must be a multilateral, international effort given sanction by the United Nations.

When it comes to Afghanistan, I think most Canadians support this mission. The pollsters just need to start asking the right questions.

I was given the opportunity to answer some questions for CNN on the issue of Canada’s involvement in Afghanistan from the perspective of the Canada-Afghanistan Solidarity Committee. The essence of my remarks: “We’re for a robust involvement, and if [Afghanistan] is going to get back on its feet after decades of war, it’s only going to do so with huge international involvement. So, more, not less.”

See the full story at In Canada, Afghanistan not ‘forgotten’

This rally by Toronto’s Pashtun community is an encouraging and inspiring effort by friends of the Canada-Afghanistan Solidarity Committee and supporters of human rights in Afghanistan:

TORONTO – Pashtun-Canadians of Pakistan and Afghanistan origin are organizing an anti-Taliban rally to protest the ongoing massacre of Pashtun people in Northern Pakistan by the Taliban. In our first ever anti-Taliban rally in Canada we are protesting outside Queen’s Park to highlight the unreported “Genocide of 52 million Pashtuns” by the Taliban and militants.

The once peaceful and serene Swat Valley in northern Pakistan has now being transformed into another Afghanistan by the Taliban. While hundreds of innocent people have been beheaded and butchered, 300 educational institutions have been bombed and destroyed, people on ground perceive that the Pakistan ISI/military is supporting Taliban because of the infectivity of the operation and intentionally fanning extremist religious thought in the region. Out of the 1.7 million local population about 700,000 people have already forced to migrate to other areas by the war.

We want to educate and apprise fellow Canadians, the Canadian media and journalists of this unreported genocide by the Taliban, who are massacring Pashtuns in the name of Islam. We are urging Canadian newspapers and TV networks to send photographers, videographers and reporters to talk to hundreds of Pashtun women, children and men whose family members are being killed in Pakistan’s Pashtun areas on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.

Date: Sunday February 15, 2009 Time: 1:00 PM to 3:00 PM Location: Ontario Legislative Building , Queen’s Park, Toronto.

For information call Inayat Khan Kakar (905) 277 2854 – (647) 895-6566
Canadian Pashtun Community 315 Elgin St N, Cambridge, ON, N1R 8C9

In 2008 Currents has garnered a steadily-growing readership for its coverage of a range of topics, from current events and politics to the environment social media and tech trends — all things that I have a deep interest in, even if I don’t always have the time to give each topic the attention it deserves every week. I’m grateful for all of your comments and looking forward to an even better 2009

Here’s are some of the highlights of the year gone by:

January. For no particular reason, I set out to become the most searchable Vancouver blogger and come pretty close to achieving it before setting off the Vancouver Blogger Nerd Fight, in which I choose not to run.

February: At Vancouver’s premier blogging conference, Northern Voice, I meet the guy who makes this blog possible.

March. One Thousand Stories, a documentary about my friend and gifted Vancouver-based writer Kevin Spenst’s literary adventure wins the Paul and Ben Film Festival for best short film. Here’s an interview I did with Kevin after his victory.

April. On the political front, the Canada-Afghanistan Solidarity Committee starts enjoying some success in its goal of helping Canadians understand why we need to be involved in Afghanistan.

Meanwhile, on the social media scene, Hummingbird604 (then known at the time as a Student of the Environment) provides a blog-inspiring mantra and social media consultant Monica Hamburg gives me a lesson in crowdsourcing.

May. I wander around the world-class UBC Museum of Anthropology and make a video. Also, some people do actually pay me to write for them, and I finally cobbled together some tips for copywriters on my WRITEIMAGE blog.

June. I write about the Great Firewall of China and ponder Vancouver’s success in creating a more environmentally sustainable transportation model.

July. I explore whether us bloggers can and should attempt to provide better web security for our readers when large corporations and public organizations are falling down on that job. Also, Omar Khadr gives me an ethical conundrum and a very bad headache.

August. My preference for more discrete breast-feeding habits for mothers in public spaces makes me a bit of a caveman. On the plus side, I’m told I can now pick my nose and scratch my scrotum in public with no social consequences. I have yet to test out this theory.

September. Dedicated and hard-hitting journalist and author Terry Glavin reminds us again why we must stick to the mission in Afghanistan and ignore the heckles of so-called “peaceniks” who would abandon millions of Afghans to the predations of murderous thugs.

October. A little teaser for the present Israeli-Palestinian conflict plays out on video outside a Vancouver liquor store. Also, I celebrate that it’s time for change in Obama’s adopted hometown (well, before he moved into the White House).

November. Vancouver’s new mayor Gregor Robertson takes on homelessness, just in time, before the cold weather really hits. I have a Super Cool Weekend in Vancouver. Jihadi terrorists bring tragedy to Mumbai, though getting a certain local blogger to express solidarity with the victims against the barbarians is a little like pulling teeth.

December. Currents wins a runner-up award for Best Politics Site or Blog from Miss604’s Best of 604 Awards after a hard, bare-knuckles blogging campaign. A cold winter snap descends on Vancouver. Meanwhile, there’s a political crisis in Ottawa. Vancouver’s indie media tries to work with the Olympics, sparked by Dave Olson and Raincity Studios’ open letter to VANOC, with some excellent commentary on the situation by the OlyBLOG. And just as the year is about to end, I protest for democracy and peace for the Israelis and Palestinians against a bunch of Canadians who don’t seem to really understand what it’s going to take for both sides to get there.

Those are the highlights. Looking forward to a great 2009.