Canada's first Afghan war resister
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IEN: Twenty-four hundred Canadian men and women are serving in Afghanistan. They deliver aid, and they fight Taliban insurgents. That part of the mission, taking lives, upset one army reservist so much that he went from volunteering for the mission to becoming Canada's first Afghan war resister.
Francisco Juarez joins me now from Victoria.
Good morning to you, sir.
JUAREZ: Good morning.
IEN: So, I want to go through your military career to start here, okay? You went into the regular navy in 2002, correct?
JUAREZ: Correct, yeah.
IEN: March 2006, you transferred to army reserves and volunteered to serve in Afghanistan?
JUAREZ: I was actively going to be seeking a place on rotation, hopefully by 2009. And I was definitely hoping to go to Afghanistan, yes.
IEN: And then in August 2006, in the middle of officer training, you quit?
JUAREZ: I did, yeah.
IEN: Why is that?
JUAREZ: Well, after many months of discussing the possibility of my going to Afghanistan with my family, which is a process that Canadian Forces members go through when they're getting prepared to go on a mission, I began to talk to my family about -- and argue with them and debate with them certainly -- the nature of the mission and began to consider some information that my family presented with me.
Also, speaking with my partner over some months about what I saw as my participation and what I could do. But that conversation just developed.
But, most importantly, for me it was the change in Canada's foreign policy that the newly elected Conservatives at the time were implementing. And I really --
IEN: What specifically, sir, were you concerned about with that policy?
JUAREZ: Well, certainly the change to more of a war-making policy was one that I thought was not in the long term benefit of the Afghan people -- and certainly not in the long-term benefit of Canadian security here at home. So I felt that I needed to release from the Canadian Forces so that I could be part of a dialogue as a private citizen.
IEN: What should be done, in your opinion?
JUAREZ: Well, I think certainly by actively pursuing a war-making policy we are radicalizing the people of southern Afghanistan to the side of the Taliban.
There's a word in Arabic which is "umma", and it's a sense of Islamic community. And certainly, by radicalizing the people of southern Afghanistan against us essentially they are allying themselves with other Islamic people -- in this case the Taliban.
And, as we can see by the American experience in Iraq where you have the increase in sectarian violence and also the augmentation of al-Qaeda's role, the growth of al-Qaeda, we can see that that experiment went wrong. And in many ways we're following just a couple of years behind in the timeline essentially in terms of what the operation was like for the Americans in Iraq and how that translates to how it is for us in Afghanistan.
IEN: Mr. Juarez, 42 Canadian soldiers, one diplomat, have died in Afghanistan. Their family members could be watching this show this morning and watching you, listening to what you have to say. Are you saying that they died in vain?
JUAREZ: What I'm saying is that we owe Canadian Forces members, if we're going to send them to any place in the world, we owe them a proper debate within this country.
Certainly there was not enough debate in the House of Commons about the nature of the mission and the objectives of the mission. And I think that many people in the region realize -- and especially the Americans -- that the form of direct military confrontation in these circumstances does not work and indeed exacerbates the problem, and that we need to as a society, as Canadians, discuss these issues to a greater extent. And we owe it to our Canadian Forces members to have a full dialogue, because they represent our country and our national will through our foreign policy.
IEN: Mr. Juarez, I have ten seconds left. But have you contacted Prime Minister Harper about your concerns and how you see democracy being achieved in Afghanistan?
JUAREZ: Well, I've certainly considered writing a letter. But I would like to think about ways of making it more, I guess, advocating for military families in a way that's more beneficial in the long term, I believe. But I indeed would like to have that contact certainly.
IEN: Francisco Juarez, thank you so much.
JUAREZ: Thank you.
Francisco Juarez, Canadian Forces Reservist
