Harper’s Gagging Kandahar Now

It seems Harper has put the war on Kandahar on hold so it doesn’t spoil his election campaign.

The CBC’s Melissa Fung says, even as the insurgency picks up steam, Kandahar has sort of fallen quiet – and mute:

The last time I was here, in June and July 2007, field operations were going out every week. And there were offers from the military to get the reporters who are embedded here with them out on those missions.
This time, for the first few weeks anyway, there wasn’t a single mission leaving the base.

Kandahar Airfield hasn’t been completely quiet either, despite the Ramadan and Eid al-Fitr period, which traditionally sees a drop in insurgent activity. To the surprise of the military, there was actually an increase this year — including a spike in the number of rocket attacks at KAF — at the beginning of Ramadan. There were 80 incidents involving Canadian troops in the holy month’s first 18 days.

The first indication that things were going to be different here during the campaign came with a new directive out of Ottawa.
The public affairs officers who work with the reporters here at Kandahar Airfield told us that they cannot grant interviews for the duration of the campaign. They said they were told that all interview requests with forces members must be cleared through the Privy Council Office in Ottawa. And it could take days before we get an answer to our requests.

It’s all been rather frustrating for some of the troops who are here. Several soldiers I’ve talked with say the politicians — and the public — at home need to be addressing Canada’s mission here as a real election issue.

If Canada is indeed pulling out in 2011, what’s the point, they ask. If Afghanistan is not ready by then — as the new governor of Kandahar province has said may be the case — will every Canadian soldier lost between now and then have died in vain?”

This is the way Harper “supports the troops,” by putting his PMO Commissars in charge to stifle their voices, to make them disappear from public view, to keep them out of the minds of voters. And all those rightwing nutjobs will pour into the Legion and salute Harper for the great job he’s doing for the Canadian Forces!

 

Harper & Hillier’s Disgrace

The honour of Canada’s military mission to Afghanistan has been sullied, perhaps irreparably.

The story in today’s Toronto Star says it all. Canadian soldiers being ordered to look the other way and shut up about sexual assaults on civilians by their Afghan army comrades.

“Canadian soldiers serving in Afghanistan have been ordered by commanding officers “to ignore” incidents of sexual assault among the civilian population, says a military chaplain who counsels troops returning home with post-traumatic stress disorder.

The chaplain, Jean Johns, says she recently counselled a Canadian soldier who said he witnessed a boy being raped by an Afghan soldier, then wrote a report on the allegation for her brigade chaplain.

In her March report, which she says should have been advanced “up the chain of command,” Johns says the corporal told her that Canadian troops have been ordered by commanding officers “to ignore” incidents of sexual assault. Johns hasn’t received a reply to the report.

While several Canadian Forces chaplains say other soldiers have made similar claims, Department of National Defence lawyers have argued Canada isn’t obliged to investigate because none of the soldiers has made a formal complaint, says a senior Canadian officer familiar with the matter.”

Great. We’re over in Afghanistan training a corps of armed sodomite pedophiles. Best of all, we’re making sure to keep a lid on it.

Fight with the Canadian Armed Forces! Indeed. Maybe we could start by shooting a few of the peds we’re allied with. Maybe, as described in this 2002 account from the New York Times, we should just hand our Afghan army comrades over to the Taliban:

“Though the puritanical Taliban tried hard to erase pedophilia from male-dominated Pashtun culture, now that the Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice is gone, some people here are indulging in it once again.

”During the Taliban, being with a friend was difficult, but now it is easy again,” said Ahmed Fareed, a 19-year-old man with a white shawl covering his face except for a dark shock of hair and piercing kohl-lined eyes. Mr. Fareed should know. A shopkeeper took him as a lover when he was just 12, he said.

An interest in relationships with young boys among warlords and their militia commanders played a part in the Taliban’s rise in Afghanistan. In 1994, the Taliban, then a small army of idealistic students of the Koran, were called to rescue a boy over whom two commanders had fought. They freed the boy and the people responded with gratitude and support.

”At that time boys couldn’t come to the market because the commanders would come and take away any that they liked,” said Amin Ullah, a money changer, gesturing to his two teenage sons hunched over wads of afghani bank notes at Kandahar’s currency bazaar. “

 

Harper Screws the Messenger

It’s up to the Canadian Forces to decide what they will and won’t tell us about their actions in Afghanistan. That came from Blockhead himself, our Furious Leader, Stephen Harper, as he lovingly greased himself up to slip to safety from the detainee controversy. From the Globe & Mail:

“The military is free to release information about Afghan detainees if it chooses, Prime Minister Stephen Harper said yesterday, as he was criticized for excessive secrecy on how Canadian troops handle their prisoners.

“These are operational matters of the Canadian military. If the Canadian military chooses to reveal that information, that’s their decision. But the government certainly isn’t going to release it on their behalf,” Mr. Harper said in the House of Commons.”

There you have it, hands off from the Cons. Canadian Forces will say what they like, when they like and to whom they like, so don’t blame the Harpies if they’re not up front, blame the military. Wait a second, that doesn’t sound quite right, does it?

It’s not, that is unless Lardo has repealed the gag order he slapped on the Canadian Forces that came to light just two weeks before Christmas. That’s when word got out that the Forces had been told that requests for information and interviews had to be pre-cleared with their political commisars, senior officials from the prime minister’s office.

“The Privy Council directive applies to all matters of “national importance” but is primarily focused on shaping information relating to the war in Afghanistan.”

Oh my goodness, Harper appears to be – lying. Worse, he seems to be hanging the Armed Forces out to dry to give himself political cover. Not Harper, he wouldn’t do that, would he?

(the original story was posted on 10 December, 2007)

 

One Bad Apple

This is no slur on Canadian soldiers. They’re a good bunch and a lot better than the calibre of some we took in the 60s. But, just the same.

The National Spot has a story that indicates the Department of National Defence needs to keep a sharper eye on just who is signing up.

Private Stephen Cox had been at the Canadian Forces Leadership and Recruit School in Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu for all of 10 days when the complaints began.

In handwritten statements to a Military Police corporal, a dozen platoon members said Pte. Cox had claimed to be the Son of Man and the Second Coming of Christ.

He said God had chosen him to cleanse the world of evil and that he was going to kill the Jews, Catholics, blacks, aboriginals, gays and lesbians, they wrote.

“I heard Private Cox talk of mass genocide of all humans who do not share his beliefs,” one complaint read. Said another, “It was revealed to him that he was the second Christ and it was his duty to join the Canadian Army and get into JTF-2 [the special forces] so that he would be in place for the apocalypse in 2012.”

It turns out that Private Cox was known to police as a pot trafficker and that he once boasted about killing a B.C. couple but he says he revealed all to recruiters in Vancouver. They don’t quite see it that way.

The good part of this story is that Cox’ fellow recruits did the right thing in promptly informing their superiors about him. It wasn’t just one or two but a dozen of his platoon mates acted and that’s very good to know. Still, Peter MacKay and Rick Hillier need to make sure people like Cox don’t get through the front door.