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What Are We Fighting For? This?
8 March 2010By Dave Lindorff
The stated goal of the US-led War in Afghanistan,
according to the Obama Administration, is to defeat
the Taliban and establish a stable democratic
government over the entire country. Critical to that
goal is establishing a professional Afghan army and
police force that is not corrupt, and that has the
respect of the Afghan people.
But reports out of Canada suggest that far from
creating such a military and police force, the
so-called International Security and Assistance Force
(ISAF) is turning a blind eye to the thuggish
criminality of those organizations, both to avoid
growing opposition in ISAF member countries, and to
avoid offending those organizations in Afghanistan.
The issue in question is routine rape and sodomy of
children by Afghan soldiers and police operating on
Canadian-run bases in the Kandahar region.
As reported last fall in the Ottawa Citizen newspaper,
Canadian military chaplins and some soldiers have been
complaining as far back as 2006 that Afghan security
forces have been sodomizing young boys on their base.
These military whistle-blowers charge that the
military brass has been ignoring or burying their
complaints, fearing the bad publicity they could
generate.
The paper reports that Canadian military police have
also complained, as reported by Brig.-Gen. J.C.
Collin, commander of Land Force Central Area, that
they were being told “not to interfere in incidents in
which Afghan forces were having sex with children.”
According to the paper, the Canadian military command
has argued that, even though sex with children is
against the law in Afghanistan, the practice is
culturally accepted and that the Canadian forces
“should not get involved in what should be seen as a
‘cultural’ issue.”
Makes you wonder what other “cultural” issues
involving Afghan security forces that the Western
occupiers might not want to get involved in. Perhaps
the oppression of women? That’s certainly part of the
culture. How about bribery and extortion? Based on the
evidence--that the police in Afghanistan are a wholly
corrupt entity, and that the army is not much
better--arguing that corruption is “culturally
acceptable” would be easy to do. How about drug
dealing? Again, that appears to be quite the culture
in Afghanistan.
Kudos to the Canadian grunts, MPs and chaplins who
found the sexual abuse of children more than they
could stomach, and who brought their concerns to
public attention at home in Canada when their own
commanders sought to cover it up.
It makes me wonder, though, why here in the
hyper-moralizing US, we haven’t heard a peep from our
troops or their chaplins about similar behavior by
Afghan forces on US-run bases. Remember, we're talking
about a US military that still says if you admit to
being homosexual, you have to quit the service or be
tossed out, and yet nobody's raising a fuss about
Afghan troops routinely raping young boys behind the
barracks?
It’s hard, after all, to believe that a practice so
common on a Canadian base that it provoked such
outrage among Canadian soldiers is not also occurring
elsewhere.
This leaves us with two possiblities:
1. US soldiers and marines are just not as willing to
go outside the chain of command and go public with
their complaints, or
2. The US media are not interested in investigating
this kind of story. It involves only Afghans, and who
cares about Afghans? What American journalism covers
is Americans. (Remember the big spate of stories about
the sex escapades of guards at the US embassy in
Kabul?)
I’d say it’s probably a combination of the two.
At any rate, the picture painted of Afghanistan’s army
and police in the Ottawa Citizen article does not bode
well for any plan that hinges on their taking over
from US and ISAF troops any time soon...or for the
fate of young children of Afghanistan, if and when
they do.
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