Canada must withdraw from ‘inhumane’ war: Taliban spokesman

A Taliban spokesman is urging Canadians to pressure their government to pull its troops out of war-torn Afghanistan.

In an interview with CBC News, Qari Yousef Ahmadi said Canadians are involved in the war only because the United States influenced them to join.

“I ask the Canadian people to ask their government to stop their destructive and inhumane mission and withdraw your troops,” said Ahmadi, speaking on his cellphone from an undisclosed location in Afghanistan.

“Our war will continue as long as your occupation forces are in our land.”

Ahmadi, considered by Western media outlets to be a legitimate representative of the Taliban central council, said the Taliban will continue to fight occupation forces until they are driven out of the country, just as the Afghan mujahedeen resistance continued to fight Russian troops until they withdrew in the 1980s.

Ahmadi said if the public knew the truth about the Afghan war, they would be horrified.

He said NATO countries are hiding the true number of casualties they’ve had since the mission began in 2001.

Killing more civilians

He also argued that while NATO accuses the Taliban of killing more civilians than soldiers with their suicide bombing, the United States is killing even more civilians when it bombs villages and towns.

“I invite you to contact these people in the villages; you can find out for yourself,” he said.

Independent Canadian military analyst Sunil Ram said some of Ahmadi’s points are not completely off base. Ram said independent studies show that the American military has underestimated the number of U.S. soldiers killed and wounded.

Ram said Canada’s tally of dead soldiers is accurate — a total of 85 soldiers have been killed since Canada first sent troops to Afghanistan in February, 2002.

But Ram noted that the number of wounded has never been made clear.

He also agrees that the U.S. has done widespread bombings during the mission.

“The Americans will come in and flatten a village,” he said. “It’s standard tactic.”

Eradication of poppies ’secondary’

Ahmadi also touched on the Afghan drug trade in his interview with CBC News, denying the allegations that the Taliban are funded by profits from poppy crops and the heroin trade.

He said that while the Taliban are against the drug trade, because they are Islamic, the organization is not focused on eradicating Afghanistan’s numerous poppy fields.

“Our priority is to expel the foreign soldiers who have invaded our countries,” he said. “At the moment, eradication of the poppies is a secondary issue.”

Canada’s military suicide rate doubled in a year, documents show

Last Updated: Saturday, April 19, 2008 | 5:54 PM ET Comments141Recommend162
CBC News
BY AMBER HILDEBRANDT — The suicide rate among Canada’s soldiers doubled from 2006 to 2007, rising to a rate triple that of the general population, according to data obtained through access to information requests.

Last year, the number of suicides among regular and reserve members of the Canadian Forces rose to 36, the highest in more than a decade, military police records obtained by Maj. Michel Sartori show.

Sartori, a Laval University doctoral student, has been gathering information about military suicides for years. It’s the subject of his thesis and a topic close to his heart, since five of his colleagues killed themselves after a tour of duty in Yugoslavia in 1994.

He believes the rise is linked to the intensification of Canada’s mission in Afghanistan when soldiers moved into the volatile southern region in 2006.

Sartori has been gathering information about military suicides since 1994.

Based on the military police reports, he found that the average suicide rate among Canadian Forces military members, both regular and reserve, between 1994 and 2007 was 16 per year.

Year Suicides Regular force & reserves Rate per 100,000
2003 14 86,937 16.1
2004

17 90,772 18.7
2005 17 91,285 18.6
2006 20 96,318 20.7
2007 36 87,000 41.4
But the number of suicides among members of the military rose to 20 in 2006 and then jumped even higher to 36 in 2007, or a rate of 41.4 suicides per 100,000 soldiers. That’s double the rate in the previous year.

Sartori says he was alarmed when he received the latest numbers.

“It was a shock, total shock,” said Sartori. “I almost fell out my chair.”

Starting in 2006, Sartori also noticed an abrupt change in the terms the military reports used to describe suicide in documents. The 36 suicides in 2007 were listed as sudden deaths, with 12 clearly marked suicide and 21 cases listed as “investigated.” National Defence officials did not dispute that the document is a suicide list, but did not respond to requests from CBC to explain the new categories.

The 2007 numbers put the military suicide rate at triple that of the general Canadian public. Over the past two decades Canada’s overall rate has ranged from 11.6 to 14 suicides per 100,000, though recent numbers are not available.

Dr. Greg Passey, a former military psychiatrist and head of a post-traumatic stress disorder clinic in Vancouver, says the spike in military suicides is “disturbing” but not surprising. He says he believes it’s related to what he calls the “increased tempo” of the Afghanistan mission, which began in 2002.

“We’re now a number of years into that mission and the frontline, the combat soldiers, and even the support staff are having to do multiple tours,” he said.

The psychological stress of those missions is cumulative, he said, and Sartori’s discovery may be the wake-up call the military needs to deal with the issue.

Veterans Affairs says that the number of vets experiencing some kind of operational stress injury, such as PTSD, has tripled in the past five years, and they expect it to continue rising with Canada’s mission in Afghanistan likely to last until 2011.

Roughly 2,500 Canadian soldiers are serving in and around Afghanistan’s Kandahar region, where they are battling Taliban insurgents.

UN criticizes Canada Twice in One Day (Oct. 22, 2007)

UN Criticizes Canada Twice in One Day

A good rep gone bad.

By Rob Annandale
Published: October 22, 2007
TheTyee.ca

Canada’s treasured self-image as a land of wealth and justice took a hit on Monday when two UN officials separately blasted the country’s recent social and human rights record.

UN Human Rights Commissioner Louise Arbour said Canada’s decision last month not to support a declaration on indigenous rights suggested her compatriots had an “unduly romantic” view of their country. And UN housing envoy Miloon Kothari wrapped up a two-week Canadian tour by releasing a highly critical preliminary report.

But the international organization has not soured entirely on the country that used to top its lists of the world’s best places to live. On the heels of last week’s survey suggesting the majority of Afghans approve of a continued foreign presence on their territory, UN humanitarian chief John Holmes praised Canada’s role in Afghanistan and expressed hope its troops would stay as long as necessary.

A new study puts Canada’s military budget at around $18 billion annually, its highest since World War II and more than 100 times higher than federal spending to combat homelessness. And while two out of three UN officials may disapprove, it doesn’t take a political scientist to know which of these issues – Afghanistan, aboriginal rights or homelessness – is most likely to be a major election issue next time around. No wonder Arbour aimed her barbs not at Stephen Harper, but at all Canadians.

Sign an email petition to tell Harper to shape up in Bali UN Summit on climate change

Dear friends,

Right now, a major UN summit in Bali has just a few days left to hammer out an agreement on stopping catastrophic climate change. But instead of helping out, Canada is actually sabotaging the UN talks! On Saturday, experts gave us the global “fossil” award for being the worst country in the world on climate change.

There’s still a few days left to save Canada’s reputation — and the climate — but we need a massive democratic roar to remind our Prime Minister what Canada is all about, and stop him from blocking the world at Bali. Click below to sign the petition and we’ll advertize the number of signatures we get in an ad campaign across Canada this week. Our goal is to get 25,000 people to sign in just 3 days before the ads run. Click below, then forward this email to all your friends and family right away:

http://www.avaaz.org/en/another_canadian_climate_crime/4.php

Enough is enough. Prime Minister Harper’s short-sighted, undemocratic and big oil-driven policy on climate change is damaging the world and destroying our image as a good country. We’re supposed to be the nice guys, who try to do the right thing in the world.

The vast majority of Canadians are hopping mad on this issue — we can win this. We just need to show Harper how serious we are that he change course. Sign up now and forward this email to everyone you know – we’ve got just 3 days to hit 25,000 signatures!

With much respect and hope,

Ricken Patel,
Avaaz.org

PS – Here are links to some more info on this:

David Suzuki (the Nature of Things) calls the government’s spin on climate change “humiliating” and “ludicrous”
http://www.thestar.com/News/article/283829

The former editor-in-chief of CBC news discusses the damage done by Canada’s climate policy to our international reputation:
http://www.cbc.ca/news/viewpoint/vp_burman/2007/12/canada_flounders_on_issue_of_c.html

The Fossil of the Day Award site:
http://www.avaaz.org/fossils

Don’t want to be a War Criminal

AWOL U.S. soldier seeks refugee status

American finds hope in NDP MP Libby Davies’ lobbying efforts

Andy Ivens

The Province

Monday, December 03, 2007

CREDIT: Nick Procaylo, The Province American soldier Brad McCall, 20, arrived in Vancouver in early October as a conscientious objector.

Uncle Sam wants Brad McCall.

The U.S. Army wants the AWOL private from Kentucky to go to Iraq to fight George W. Bush’s “war on terror,” but McCall’s conscience won’t allow it.

He applied to be a conscientious objector, but as his date to ship out approached, McCall realized that, like many other “COs,” he’d be in the war zone before a decision came down.

So, in early October, the six-foot-two GI followed the route of an estimated 50,000 previous American war resisters to Vancouver and applied for refugee status, which at least delays his possible extradition to the U.S., where he’d likely be tried for desertion.

“I don’t want to go to Iraq because I don’t want to be a war criminal,” McCall, 20, said yesterday.

“Any participation in the war in Iraq can be punishable as a war crime. The war is a criminal act, in my opinion and many countries’ opinion.”

McCall thinks the army recruiters who convinced him to sign up last year stretched the truth.

“We were told we probably wouldn’t be going to Iraq because [the war] was ending,” he said.

While posted at Fort Carson, Colo., “I heard the atrocities being committed on innocent people and soldiers laughing about that.”

That prompted him to apply for conscientious-objector status.

“They just laughed at me,” he said. “So I took the necessary steps and took off.”

His family has virtually disowned him, but he has found an esprit de corps in Vancouver.

“My parents and I don’t really communicate much,” he said. “I’ve met a lot of people here who have given me a lot of support.”

He’s been put up in the east Vancouver home of Colleen Fuller.

“I called the War Resisters Support Campaign [www.resisters.ca] and she volunteered her house for [an AWOL] soldier. I’ve been here ever since,” he said.

If he returned to the U.S., McCall figures he’d face a court martial and be ordered to serve “a few years” in the military prison in Fort Leavenworth, Kan.

Asked what he would like the Canadian government to do with the growing number of war resisters in Canada, McCall said: “Take us in. Do what Canada used to do in ’70s. Be a haven from militarism.”

Last month, the first two American military deserters to ask Canadian courts to allow them to stay in this country — Jeremy Hinzman and Brandon Hughey — received bad news from the Supreme Court of Canada.

The high court declined them leave to appeal a decision by the Federal Court of Appeal on their application for refugee status.

One crucial difference between the deserters who fled north during the Vietnam War and today’s resisters appears to be the evolution of the U.S. Army from a conscript force to today’s all-volunteer service, the court noted in its reasons.

“I was shocked,” said McCall, who remains “optimistic” that Canadians will convince their federal politicians to amend the refugee provisions of the law.

He has Vancouver East NDP MP Libby Davies in his corner.

“With their legal avenues pretty well exhausted, that’s absolutely the right direction to take — lobbying for change to the law to allow resisters to apply for landed-

immigrant status,” said Davies.

“We [New Democrat MPs] have a motion right now before the Citizenship and Immigration Committee that, if approved, would create a special category for war resisters that would allow them to stay in Canada.”

The motion — “to allow conscientious objectors and their immediate family members . . . who have refused or left military service related to the war in Iraq, to apply to remain and work in Canada and be eligible for permanent resident status” — will go before the committee later this week.

If the committee endorses the motion, said Davies, “we would then get that into the House [of Commons] and get the House to adopt it. There are many, many well-known Canadians who have made amazing contributions to this country who came here as war resisters.”

She suggested people write Citizenship and Immigration Minister Diane Finlay, Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day and their own MPs to voice support for the motion.

Colleen Fuller urged others to join the war-resisters campaign.

“The [Hinzman and Hughey] decision is bad for anybody, not just Americans,” she said. “Normally, Canada goes by the United Nations. That’s why we didn’t go to Iraq — because the UN didn’t see that as a legal way to go.”

The U.S. Pentagon refused to comment on McCall’s case.

aivens@png.canwest.com