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Big mistake to quit Afghan war, expert says
Vancouver lawyer now fact-finding in Kandahar
James McNulty, The Province, 5 Oct 07
Article link
When Norine MacDonald talks about the war in Afghanistan, Canadians should listen.
The Vancouver lawyer has spent most of the past three years on the ground in the war-ravaged country as president and lead field researcher for the Senlis Council.
In her work for the European-funded think tank, MacDonald ventures from a compound in Kandahar City with armed protectors, dresses like a man, and has packed her own Kalashnikov rifle.
It is a long way from her former life as a Queen's Counsel corporate lawyer in downtown Vancouver.
It also makes MacDonald one of the best-informed Canadians on Afghanistan -- she has vastly more experience there than any member of the House of Commons -- and she doesn't like what she sees.
In an interview at The Province this week before returning to Kandahar via Moscow, MacDonald says NATO is losing the hearts and minds of Afghan citizens with its military-heavy, aid-light approach.
Rather than "stay the course," she wants to change the course, but stay and finish the job.
She agrees with Stephen Harper that Canada should continue in a combat role after 2009, but has little time for his failures on almost every other war front.
She says the opposition parties make valuable points on the need for stronger development aid and a non-American approach to the poppy-crop issue, but has no time for troop-withdrawal demands.
"When the NDP says we should leave Afghanistan, what do they think is going to happen if the [Hamid] Karzai government falls, and al-Qaeda has a geo-political base again in southern Afghanistan?"
"We should stay until the job is done," MacDonald affirms, and that means "when the Karzai government is stabilized there . . .
"If we lose the Karzai government, if we lose southern Afghanistan, it will affect the security of all NATO countries for generations to come, and we don't know -- it's a lottery -- who's going to get hit."
With the war a sure part of any Canadian election, she says the debate should be around "measures of success, and how we're going to get there -- not to 'stay or go.'
"That's a legitimate debate that Canadians have never been given an opportunity to participate in with proper facts on the table."
MacDonald's fact-finding has determined that Canada is failing miserably on aid delivery through the "dysfunctional" Canadian International Development Agency.
"It was never fit for the purpose of doing development aid in a war zone . . . I'm fed up.
"We're saying CIDA, get out of Kandahar if you can't do it, and turn it all over to the military in the short term -- they can do it."
MacDonald notes the Canadian military base has a top-notch medical facility, then asks, "Why don't we have that in Kandahar City?
"In our military base we have a Burger King and a Tim Hortons; half an hour away there's a refugee camp with starving children."
She adds that "not once in two years" has the international community provided any food, shelter or medical aid to an informal, 1,000-family refugee camp on the new, NATO-built main road to the Panjwaii district.
MacDonald says "we had the hearts and minds" of Afghans when the mission began, but "we've eroded that through bad counter-narcotics, lack of development and aid, and bombing raids" by U.S. and British planes on Afghan villages -- some called in by Canadian troops.
The Senlis Council rejects the U.S. plan to eradicate poppy crops, which will leave farmers with no way to feed their families.
MacDonald instead promotes a "poppy for medicine" trial that would see poppy cultivation licensed for pain-relief medicines in poor countries. She calls the Harper regime's silence on the issue a "cop-out, because obviously it endangers the Canadian troops."
She backs Karzai's talks with "locals" who became Taliban to feed their families but could be won back.
Harper's ambivalence on "talks" and his inability to convince other NATO nations to bolster ranks in Kandahar are failures, she adds.
MacDonald is the first to admit this is not an easy file. But that is no reason, she says, to give up.
Big mistake to quit Afghan war, expert says
Vancouver lawyer now fact-finding in Kandahar
James McNulty, The Province, 5 Oct 07
Article link
When Norine MacDonald talks about the war in Afghanistan, Canadians should listen.
The Vancouver lawyer has spent most of the past three years on the ground in the war-ravaged country as president and lead field researcher for the Senlis Council.
In her work for the European-funded think tank, MacDonald ventures from a compound in Kandahar City with armed protectors, dresses like a man, and has packed her own Kalashnikov rifle.
It is a long way from her former life as a Queen's Counsel corporate lawyer in downtown Vancouver.
It also makes MacDonald one of the best-informed Canadians on Afghanistan -- she has vastly more experience there than any member of the House of Commons -- and she doesn't like what she sees.
In an interview at The Province this week before returning to Kandahar via Moscow, MacDonald says NATO is losing the hearts and minds of Afghan citizens with its military-heavy, aid-light approach.
Rather than "stay the course," she wants to change the course, but stay and finish the job.
She agrees with Stephen Harper that Canada should continue in a combat role after 2009, but has little time for his failures on almost every other war front.
She says the opposition parties make valuable points on the need for stronger development aid and a non-American approach to the poppy-crop issue, but has no time for troop-withdrawal demands.
"When the NDP says we should leave Afghanistan, what do they think is going to happen if the [Hamid] Karzai government falls, and al-Qaeda has a geo-political base again in southern Afghanistan?"
"We should stay until the job is done," MacDonald affirms, and that means "when the Karzai government is stabilized there . . .
"If we lose the Karzai government, if we lose southern Afghanistan, it will affect the security of all NATO countries for generations to come, and we don't know -- it's a lottery -- who's going to get hit."
With the war a sure part of any Canadian election, she says the debate should be around "measures of success, and how we're going to get there -- not to 'stay or go.'
"That's a legitimate debate that Canadians have never been given an opportunity to participate in with proper facts on the table."
MacDonald's fact-finding has determined that Canada is failing miserably on aid delivery through the "dysfunctional" Canadian International Development Agency.
"It was never fit for the purpose of doing development aid in a war zone . . . I'm fed up.
"We're saying CIDA, get out of Kandahar if you can't do it, and turn it all over to the military in the short term -- they can do it."
MacDonald notes the Canadian military base has a top-notch medical facility, then asks, "Why don't we have that in Kandahar City?
"In our military base we have a Burger King and a Tim Hortons; half an hour away there's a refugee camp with starving children."
She adds that "not once in two years" has the international community provided any food, shelter or medical aid to an informal, 1,000-family refugee camp on the new, NATO-built main road to the Panjwaii district.
MacDonald says "we had the hearts and minds" of Afghans when the mission began, but "we've eroded that through bad counter-narcotics, lack of development and aid, and bombing raids" by U.S. and British planes on Afghan villages -- some called in by Canadian troops.
The Senlis Council rejects the U.S. plan to eradicate poppy crops, which will leave farmers with no way to feed their families.
MacDonald instead promotes a "poppy for medicine" trial that would see poppy cultivation licensed for pain-relief medicines in poor countries. She calls the Harper regime's silence on the issue a "cop-out, because obviously it endangers the Canadian troops."
She backs Karzai's talks with "locals" who became Taliban to feed their families but could be won back.
Harper's ambivalence on "talks" and his inability to convince other NATO nations to bolster ranks in Kandahar are failures, she adds.
MacDonald is the first to admit this is not an easy file. But that is no reason, she says, to give up.
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