Articles by dave

The good folks at rabble.ca have pulled together an impressive collection of progressive bloggers, many of whom will be known to Briarpatch readers (ahem), to share commentary and analysis on the slow-motion car crash — er, federal election — currently unfolding. Check it out at rabble.ca/election.

Check it out, weigh in on the issues, and consider making it your homepage for the duration. Strength in numbers, folks….

SUBJECT: REQUEST FOR URGENT BUSINESS RELATIONSHIP

DEAR AMERICAN:

I NEED TO ASK YOU TO SUPPORT AN URGENT SECRET BUSINESS RELATIONSHIP WITH A TRANSFER OF FUNDS OF GREAT MAGNITUDE.

I AM MINISTRY OF THE TREASURY OF THE REPUBLIC OF AMERICA. MY COUNTRY HAS HAD CRISIS THAT HAS CAUSED THE NEED FOR LARGE TRANSFER OF FUNDS OF 800 BILLION DOLLARS US. IF YOU WOULD ASSIST ME IN THIS TRANSFER, IT WOULD BE MOST PROFITABLE TO YOU.

I AM WORKING WITH MR. PHIL GRAM, LOBBYIST FOR UBS, WHO WILL BE MY REPLACEMENT AS MINISTRY OF THE TREASURY IN JANUARY. AS A SENATOR, YOU MAY KNOW HIM AS THE LEADER OF THE AMERICAN BANKING DEREGULATION MOVEMENT IN THE 1990S. THIS TRANSACTIN IS 100% SAFE.

THIS IS A MATTER OF GREAT URGENCY. WE NEED A BLANK CHECK. WE NEED THE FUNDS AS QUICKLY AS POSSIBLE. WE CANNOT DIRECTLY TRANSFER THESE FUNDS IN THE NAMES OF OUR CLOSE FRIENDS BECAUSE WE ARE CONSTANTLY UNDER SURVEILLANCE. MY FAMILY LAWYER ADVISED ME THAT I SHOULD LOOK FOR A RELIABLE AND TRUSTWORTHY PERSON WHO WILL ACT AS A NEXT OF KIN SO THE FUNDS CAN BE TRANSFERRED.

Continue reading

By Trish Elliott
ActUpInSask.org
Sept. 24, 2008

Canada’s left-centre political parties should form an alliance, author Naomi Klein told a packed house in Regina last night.

“A coalition has to be the goal…Stephen Harper will weaken everything in this country that we care about,” Klein said to an audience of 800 at the University of Regina’s Education Auditorium.

The lecture, a fundraiser for Briarpatch magazine, created a stir not seen in Regina for some time. Many people were turned away at the door, while those lucky enough to nab the last tickets sought out seats in the crowd, which swelled to a full house a half-hour before the event started. Organizers seemed surprised and pleased by the number of people waiting to hear Klein speak.

Klein has been a popular commentator lately, since the U.S. economic crisis served to highlight the key argument of her 2007 book, Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. In the book, Klein argued that right-wing authoritarian leaders use moments of crisis to expand their power and re-write the rules in favour of corporate capitalism.

“As you can imagine, I’ve had a busy few days,” Klein said, noting that major U.S. news outlets like CNN have suddenly picked up on a buzz surrounding her latest work.

Speaking of the proposed U.S. government bail-out of Wall Street, Klein said such a move is “wholly consistent” with the corporate class’s ongoing practice of using public wealth to shore up corporate interests. But she predicted this time it won’t be easy to pull the wool over people’s eyes.

“So much of the financial sector has revealed itself as an Enron-style shell game,” she said. “It’s not a bail-out, it’s a stick-up.”

People not fooled

Klein added that transferring the economic crisis from Wall Street to Washington will be “explosive,” precipitating a new round of cuts to a badly weakened public sphere. She said a planned protest march on Wall Street on Thursday, Sept. 25 signals that not everyone supports the bail-out.

There’s a lot at stake, according to Klein. Pointing to Hurricane Katrina as an example, she warned Americans face a future in which heavy weather caused by global warming intersects with crumbling infrastructure.

Klein noted Katrina had weakened to a tropical storm by the time it hit New Orleans, suggesting it was not an act of nature, but an act of government that left the population vulnerable to flooding and disorder.

She described how the right wing then used the disaster as an opportunity to demolish public housing that stood in the way of land developers seeking access to downtown property. She also noted that the city’s only public hospital has yet to re-open.

Klein said she was struck by how many political and business leaders referred positively to Katrina as creating a ‘clean sheet,’ echoing early settlers who wrote that small pox was God’s way of clearing aboriginal peoples out of the way of development.

“Wary” of Harper

In Canada, Stephen Harper fits the archetype of the father-figure type leader who steps in during crises and reassures the population that all will be well as long as he is given more power, she said.

“I think we need to be extremely wary of how a new Harper government would fit in as this (U.S.) crisis migrates to Canada.”

“It’s an important time for 800 people to gather,” she said, referring to the overflowing hall. “We can fall apart and look to leaders to save us, or we can rise to the occasion. We can regress or we can grow up – and it’s time to grow the hell up.”

During the question period that followed, Klein defended her ideas and expanded on key points. Asked why the media isn’t working more aggressively during this federal election, Klein – herself a journalist – said news organizations have well-founded fears of retaliation, which may be cause them to stand back on tough issues.

“This government is so vindictive,” she said, using the experience of her partner Avi Lewis as a case in point. Lewis was cited by government officials as a reason to shut down a program that funded international marketing of Canadian arts and culture. A government memo referred to the award-winning journalist and filmmaker as a “general radical.”

Lewis hadn’t himself applied for funding, but was invited to an Australian conference that had received funds to bring in Canadian filmmakers, Klein explained. The result of the trip was a distribution deal in Australia, recouping the National Film Board’s investment in The Take, a Klein-Lewis film.

Strategic voting

The lecture ended with a film short about Shock Doctrine by Mexican filmmaker Alfonso Cuarón, director of Children of Men, Y tu mamá también and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. A longer film with another director is currently in the works, Klein said.

Afterwards, people remained in the hall to discuss strategic voting in the federal election. Klein recommended a national coalition called VotePair, which has set up a vote-coordinating web site.

The site includes a ‘vote exchange’ system where voters can ‘trade’ Green, NDP and Liberal votes across the country, according to which ridings a particular vote will have the most impact in turning back Conservatives.

A Saskatoon-based coalition called NotMyPrimeMinister has also set up a web site. The site features posters you can download and “plaster your town” with, a coalition organizer said.

Visit:

www.departmentofculture.ca

www.votepair.ca

All photos by Dave Oswald Mitchell. For reprint permission, please contact editor AT briarpatchmagazine DOT com.

Lorne Browne’s article on proportional representation and strategic voting from our February 2007 issue, reproduced below, is as timely as ever.

Dear Bedfellow: An open letter to New Democrats, Greens, and progressive Liberals

By George Monbiot
The Guardian
August 26, 2008

The world’s hungriest are the losers as an old colonialism returns to govern relations between wealthy and poor nations

In his book Late Victorian Holocausts, Mike Davis tells the story of the famines that sucked the guts out of India in the 1870s. The hunger began when a drought, caused by El Niño, killed the crops on the Deccan plateau. As starvation bit, the viceroy, Lord Lytton, oversaw the export to England of a record 6.4m hundredweight of wheat. While Lytton lived in imperial splendour and commissioned, among other extravagances, “the most colossal and expensive meal in world history”, between 12 million and 29 million people died. Only Stalin manufactured a comparable hunger.

Now a new Lord Lytton is seeking to engineer another brutal food grab. As Tony Blair’s favoured courtier, Peter Mandelson often created the impression that he would do anything to please his master. Today he is the European trade commissioner. From his sumptuous offices in Brussels and Strasbourg, he hopes to impose a treaty that will permit Europe to snatch food from the mouths of some of the world’s poorest people.

Seventy per cent of the protein eaten by the people of Senegal comes from fish. Traditionally cheaper than other animal products, it sustains a population that ranks close to the bottom of the human development index. One in six of the working population is employed in the fishing industry; about two-thirds of these workers are women. Over the past three decades, their means of subsistence has started to collapse as other nations have plundered Senegal’s stocks.

The EU has two big fish problems. One is that, partly as a result of its failure to manage them properly, its own fisheries can no longer meet European demand. The other is that its governments won’t confront their fishing lobbies and decommission all the surplus boats. The EU has tried to solve both problems by sending its fishermen to west Africa. Since 1979 it has struck agreements with the government of Senegal, granting our fleets access to its waters. As a result, Senegal’s marine ecosystem has started to go the same way as ours. Between 1994 and 2005, the weight of fish taken from the country’s waters fell from 95,000 tonnes to 45,000 tonnes. Muscled out by European trawlers, the indigenous fishery is crumpling: the number of boats run by local people has fallen by 48% since 1997.

In a recent report on this pillage, ActionAid shows that fishing families that once ate three times a day are now eating only once or twice. As the price of fish rises, their customers also go hungry. The same thing has happened in all the west African countries with which the EU has maintained fisheries agreements. In return for wretched amounts of foreign exchange, their primary source of protein has been looted.

The government of Senegal knows this, and in 2006 it refused to renew its fishing agreement with the EU. But European fishermen - mostly from Spain and France - have found ways round the ban. They have been registering their boats as Senegalese, buying up quotas from local fishermen and transferring catches at sea from local boats. These practices mean that they can continue to take the country’s fish, and have no obligation to land them in Senegal. Their profits are kept on ice until the catch arrives in Europe.

Mandelson’s office is trying to negotiate economic partnership agreements with African countries. They were supposed to have been concluded by the end of last year, but many countries, including Senegal, have refused to sign. The agreements insist that European companies have the right both to establish themselves freely on African soil, and to receive national treatment. This means that the host country is not allowed to discriminate between its own businesses and European companies. Senegal would be forbidden to ensure that its fish are used to sustain its own industry and to feed its own people. The dodges used by European trawlers would be legalised.

The UN’s Economic Commission for Africa has described the EU’s negotiations as “not sufficiently inclusive”. They suffer from a “lack of transparency” and from the African countries’ lack of capacity to handle the legal complexities. ActionAid shows that Mandelson’s office has ignored these problems, raised the pressure on reluctant countries and “moved ahead in the negotiations at a pace much faster than the [African nations] could handle”. If these agreements are forced on west Africa, Lord Mandelson will be responsible for another imperial famine.

This is one instance of the food colonialism that is again coming to govern the relations between rich and poor counties. FULL ARTICLE.

“It may be the politics of food that has the greatest capacity for self-organization — more than resistance to surveillance, resistance to oppression, and struggles for better wages or health care. Nothing connects everything like food.”
-Stan Goff

From the outbreak of listeriosis in Canada to the eruption of food riots across the Global South, from the eating of mud cakes in Haiti to stave off hunger pangs to the growing of corn in Idaho to fuel our vehicles, there’s perhaps no more politically charged issue today than food - how it’s grown, who controls its processing and distribution, and who gets to eat it.

Briarpatch Magazine invites contributions to our February 2009 issue on the politics of food. We are looking for feature articles, provocative essays, investigative reportage, news briefs, reviews, interviews, profiles, poetry, humour, and artwork that explores issues related to the global food system and collective efforts to resist or escape it, both here in Canada and around the world.

In particular, we are looking to showcase highlights from the global movement for food sovereignty, which the International NGO Planning Committee defines as “the right of peoples, communities and countries to define their own agricultural, labour, fishing, food and land policies which are ecologically, socially, economically and culturally appropriate to their unique circumstances.”

Possible topics could include (but are by no means limited to):

• the work of progressive farmers’ movements such as the Landless Workers’ Movement, Via Campesina, the National Farmers’ Union, or others;
• emerging grassroots alternatives such as agroecological farming, guerrilla gardening, the 100-mile diet, Community Shared Agriculture, urban farms and gardens, farmers’ markets, and community kitchens;
• the state of food safety in Canada in the wake of the listeriosis outbreak;
• the fight to preserve the Canadian Wheat Board;
• the global food emergency - causes, prospects, responses;
• the intersection of gender and food production;
• the ethanol boondoggle.

Queries are due by September 30, 2008. If your query is accepted; first drafts are due by October 31, 2008. Your query should outline what ground your contribution will cover, give an estimated word count, and indicate your relevant experience or background in writing about the issue. Please provide a brief writing sample.

Please review our submission guidelines before submitting. Send your queries/submissions to editor AT briarpatchmagazine D0T com.

We reserve the right to edit your work (with your active involvement), and cannot guarantee publication.

This issue is to be produced in cooperation with the Saskatchewan Council for International Cooperation.

By Dave Oswald Mitchell
Briarpatch Magazine
September/October 2008

In our most recent reader survey, we asked readers how they first learned about Briarpatch. Whether it is a sign of the loyalty of our readership or the advanced age of the magazine I don’t know, but a whopping 26 per cent checked the box “It’s been so long I can’t remember.”

I’m young enough that I happen to be among the 74 per cent of Briarpatch readers who does remember his first encounter with the magazine. It was a softball tournament, of all places, circa 1985. I don’t remember anyone reading Briarpatch in the stands, but the magazine (and its need for cash) was the reason we’d all gathered that summer day; the tournament was organized as a fundraiser for Briarpatch. My dad’s workplace had entered a team - the Churchill Park Green Thumbs - and I’d tagged along to cheer them on.

I was seven years old - you could say I was thrown into the briarpatch at an early age. Growing up, the magazine was a familiar presence around the house. Five years its junior and admittedly not the most attentive reader for the first several years, I must say I’m poorly equipped to reflect on 35 years of Briarpatch Magazine in this, the 35^th anniversary issue. But it’s a story that bears retelling, so I’ll try to do it justice in the limited space available, cautioning that many important details have been left out.

Briarpatch launched in 1973 as a newsletter of the Saskatchewan Coalition of Anti-Poverty Organizations (allegedly derived its name from a grudge with a social services director named Brierley). It was a grassroots effort, constantly on the verge of bankruptcy, and driven by a fierce commitment to popular empowerment. “In those early years, we were mostly concerned with helping people gain self-confidence and become articulate in print and to become conscious of organizing and supporting each other in challenging the status quo,” reminisced founding editor Maria Fischer in a 20^th anniversary retrospective. “We would hold back an article written by us if it meant we would have no space for an article that a group needed to circulate on a particular struggle.” The newsletter was born from, and thrived on, the “commitment that the Briar Patch belongs to everyone who struggles against oppression,” said Fischer.

By the late 1970s, Briarpatch had evolved from a “stapled-in-the-corner anti-poverty newsletter” into the independent, subscription-based, insufferably cheeky magazine it is today. Here’s how former editor Marian Gilmour (1977-79) tells it: “We had a vision of an activist publication - one that provided critical, alternative, topical information in a friendly, accessible yet irreverent format.” Billing itself variously as “the voice of Saskatchewan people,” “Saskatchewan’s independent newsmagazine” and - my favourite - “a champagne magazine on a beer budget,” the raging little rag grew to play a vital (albeit marginal) role in Saskatchewan’s social fabric, producing investigative, muckraking, risk-taking journalism and analysis, both reporting on and participating in Saskatchewan’s social movements of the day.

The magazine hit its stride not a moment too soon. When Grant Devine’s Conservatives swept to power provincially in 1982 and launched into their programme of social spending cutbacks and privatization, Briarpatch was there as both a watchdog and a rallying cry, documenting the excesses and galvanizing a grassroots opposition to the assault.

Briarpatch was vital to the growing opposition, playing an important role in the larger movement. But don’t take my word for it. As conservative pundits Paul Jackson and Don Baron would have it, writing in their now-laughably inflammatory 1991 book Battleground: The Socialist Assault on Grant Devine’s Canadian Dream:

“Saskatchewan is home of Brierpatch [sic], one of Canada’s more curious publications, a monthly magazine published as a sort of heartbeat of the socialist cause. . . .

“Anyone who thinks Brierpatch [sic] is simply an aimless outpouring by a few dreamers doesn’t understand today’s world of ideas and the deadly earnest business of influencing the public agenda. This is a flag-ship paper. Its thrust is masterminded and orchestrated for greatest possible effect.”

From the sounds of it, mighty Briarpatch had the poor capitalists quaking in their proverbial loafers.

Whatever modicum of influence the magazine may have had while the “socialists” were in opposition, Briarpatch was soon cast adrift in a sea of compromise after Devine and his cronies were thrown overboard in 1991. When the third-way NDP of Roy Romanow returned to power and further slashed spending to deal with the deficit they’d inherited, the provincial Left quietly split into two camps - the work-with-the-NDP crowd and the work-outside-the-NDP’ers.

Without the unifying power of a common enemy from which to draw energy and purpose, Briarpatch increasingly began to extend its focus and its readership beyond Saskatchewan’s ruler-straight borders, joining other left-leaning magazines like This and Canadian Dimension in providing an alternative perspective on national and international issues to Canadians from coast to coast, while still endeavouring to speak for, and from, Canada’s wheat heart.

By 2004, the transition was complete: for the first time, there were more Briarpatch readers in B.C. and Ontario combined than in Saskatchewan, a shift that presented a new challenge for the magazine as it spoke increasingly to its national readership while still trying to serve the media needs of its long-time Saskatchewan supporters.

This challenge has grown more pressing since the right-wing Saskatchewan Party defeated the somewhat less right-wing NDP in last November’s provincial election and launched an all-out assault on the rights of workers. In some ways it feels like a return to the climate of the Devine years; Briarpatch’s staff and board are presently exploring how best to harness the organization’s legacy and assets to fill the role it once filled while continuing to serve the magazine’s nationwide readership. Rumours abound that a sister publication to the magazine is in the works - a news tabloid focussed on Saskatchewan politics. In many ways, this would be a much-needed resurrection of Briarpatch’s one-time role as “Saskatchewan’s independent newsmagazine.”

For now, suffice it to say that the next 35 years should prove at least as dynamic and interesting for Briarpatch as the last 35 have been. I hope you’ll stick around for the journey.

In closing, would you indulge me a moment and pour yourself a glass of champagne, beer or whatever you’ve got handy? (I’ll wait…. Okay, ready?) Readers, please raise your glasses to Briarpatch at 35. In the words of that traditional Scottish toast:

May the best you’ve ever seenBe the worst you’ll ever see;
May a mouse ne’er leave yer girnal
Wi’ a teardrop in his e’e.
May ye aye keep hale and hearty
Till ye’re auld enough tae dee,
May ye aye be just as happy
As I wish ye aye tae be.

Cheers,

-Dave Oswald Mitchell, editor
editor [at] briarpatchmagazine [dot] com

Order this issue.

Subscribe to Briarpatch.

In this, our 35th anniversary issue, Briarpatch tackles stories ranging from an in-depth look at the outrages of the Omar Khadr case to the politics of immigration in France & Canada, from an assessment of the alternatives for Canada in Afghanistan to an exploration of the culture of youth gun violence in Canada’s capital.

To subscribe or order a copy of this issue, call 1-866-431-5777 or visit our secure online shop. Read the rest of this entry »

By John W. Warnock
Briarpatch Magazine
September/October 2008

“No nation can donate liberation to another nation. Liberation should be achieved in a country by the people themselves.”

Malalai Joya, Member, Afghan House of the People

The U.S. imperial project in Afghanistan has faltered. The government created by the United States lacks credibility and legitimacy. The vast majority of the people remain poor. The drug economy is dominant. Despite an increase in NATO military forces, the armed resistance led by the Taliban is increasing in strength. So what should Canada’s response be?

The public debate on Afghanistan has had a very narrow focus in this country. The primary concern has been the role of the Canadian Forces in the counter-insurgency war: How many more Canadians will be killed? How long will our forces remain in Kandahar province? What will the United States think if Canada withdraws from the southern conflict zone? If Canada pulls its forces out of Afghanistan, will there be chaos? Meanwhile, the occupation grinds on and the hopes for peace in Afghanistan recede into the distance.

It is time for Canadians to ask what the Afghan people want. At the top of the list would certainly be an end to the death, destruction and despair of the current occupation (the real “three Ds” that Afghans have inherited from Canada’s “development, diplomacy and defence” state-building strategy). The polls all show that a large majority of Afghans want a negotiated settlement and an end to the war. The majority do not want to see the return of the Taliban to government. The fact that the Afghan public supports negotiation with the Taliban insurgents is an indication of how far they are willing to go to end the violence. The current U.S.-NATO policy, supported by the Canadian government, however, only perpetuates the war.

The Afghan people also want their sovereignty, their right to self-determination and their democratic rights. Since October 2001 the United States, its allies and United Nations agencies have directed political, military and economic policy in the country. Afghanistan has been treated like a 19th-century colony.

Beginning with the Bonn conference in 2001, the U.S. government has imposed a political structure of its own making on Afghanistan. They installed Hamid Karzai, their key agent from the 1979-92 anti-Soviet proxy war, as president. They dictated the basic structure of the new constitution. The Afghan people had wanted to restore the democratically instated 1964 constitution after the removal of the Taliban government. Instead, the U.S. government and its allies, including Canada, manipulated the process to impose an Islamist constitution on them. This Islamist constitution, demanded by the jihadist allies of the U.S. government, has proven to be a major barrier to the development of democratic parties and movements in Afghanistan. Many parties and political groups did not want a highly centralized government with enormous powers given to the president, but rather a federal system with a balance of powers and election by proportional representation. Given the democratic freedom of choice, the Afghan people would most likely choose a political system different from the one imposed upon them.

All surveys of Afghan public opinion indicate that a strong majority wants warlords, commanders and criminals banned from the government and legislature. This demand was blocked by the U.S. government and its allies, including Canada.

Public opinion polls also show a large majority wants to see war criminals brought before war crimes tribunals. But the U.S. government and its allies have systematically blocked this process. Most of these war criminals were supported by the U.S. government at one time or another over the past three decades; some hold prominent positions in the Karzai government and many are in the legislature.

A very narrow, neo-liberal economic development policy has been imposed on the Afghan people by the U.S. government, their allies who are providing economic assistance and international aid agencies like the World Bank, the UN Development Programme and the Asian Development Bank. The Afghan people and even their government have had no say in this matter. The neo-liberal model represents a repudiation of the policy direction developed by Afghan governments throughout the 20th century. There is no indication that this model has the support of the Afghan population.

Indeed, the imposition of neo-liberalism is only exacerbating the problems that average Afghans face. Almost every analysis of the situation in Afghanistan today reports the persistence of poverty: there are food shortages, unemployment, a lack of housing, electricity, heating and medical care, and a weak educational system. A major part of the problem is the fact that international assistance is largely outside the control of the Afghan government, provided by international lending institutions, foreign governments and a myriad of non-governmental organizations. Even the Karzai government has asked that international aid be funnelled through the Afghan government.

The present government, widely denounced by the Afghan people for its corruption and ineffectiveness, is weak because it has no legitimacy. Defenders of U.S. policy often state that Afghans today are better off than they were under the Taliban. That is a vast misconception. The large majority of Afghans are far worse off today than they were in the 1970s.

Beyond the Manley report: Real alternatives for Canada

The Independent Panel on Canada’s Future Role in Afghanistan, headed by John Manley, released its report in January 2008. This report summarized the position of the Canadian political and military establishment and the economic ruling classes. There is no alternative, the panel argued, to supporting the U.S. position in Afghanistan. There is no alternative to participation in a long counter-insurgency war.

At the same time there were two major studies released in the United States that contrast strikingly with the Manley report. The Atlantic Council of the United States, chaired by retired General James L. Jones, former commander of NATO, concluded, “Make no mistake, NATO is not winning in Afghanistan.” The January 2008 report by the Afghanistan Study Group reached a similar conclusion and stressed the “growing lack of confidence on the part of the Afghan people about the future direction of their country.” Both identified the “stark poverty” faced by most Afghans and the steady increase in violence.

Meanwhile, the panel headed by John Manley recommended the assignment of more NATO forces to Kandahar province and more equipment for the Canadian Forces. But this is no solution. Extending the war into Pakistan, as proposed by some U.S. and Canadian politicians, and hinted at in the Manley report, will only make the situation worse.

Looking at possible alternatives, the Manley panel argued that if the Canadian Forces were to move to another province to reduce exposure to conflict and loss of life it “would inevitably waste a large part of Canada’s human and financial investment in Kandahar.” They also argued that “Canadian interests and values, and Canadian lives, are now invested in Afghanistan.” Echoing the “support our troops” faction in the Canadian public, the panel stated that “[t]he sacrifices made there, by Canadians and their families, must be respected.” This suggests that in order to honour those who have lost their lives, Canada must keep fighting and lose even more lives. This is a ridiculous argument. All wars eventually come to an end, usually by a negotiated agreement. What the Manley panel seems to be saying is that not enough people have yet been killed to warrant an end to this war.

One clear option for the Canadian government would be to withdraw our military forces from Afghanistan, propose a ceasefire and make a strong commitment to finding a peaceful solution. Contrary to the view of the Manley panel, Canada’s world reputation and influence is not a product of fighting counter-insurgency wars in support of U.S. policy but of our historical role in United Nations peacekeeping operations. Canada could take on a leadership position, constructed with those countries in the United Nations which are not committed to the U.S. war policy. This would necessitate bypassing the Security Council, where the U.S. and the U.K. have the veto, and going directly to the UN General Assembly. Of course, this would require Canada to pursue a foreign policy initiative independent of the U.S. government.

What is needed is a broad regional peace settlement that includes Afghanistan’s neighbouring countries. Such an approach has been formally proposed to NATO by the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), but was flatly rejected by the United States. The other NATO governments have remained silent. An SCO-brokered settlement would be based on the revival of the Six-Plus-Two negotiations on Afghanistan (1997-2001) which were hosted by the United Nations and which consisted of the six countries that border on Afghanistan, plus the United States and Russia. The SCO has recommended that NATO be formally added to this group. Afghanistan is already an official observer to the SCO and has sought full membership.

Following such an international settlement, the United Nations could create a real peacekeeping operation. It would have to be completely separate from the United States, NATO and the “coalition of the willing.” The largest contributors to UN peacekeeping forces today are Bangladesh, Pakistan, India, Jordan, Nepal and the Organization of African Unity.

Investing in Afghan-centred development

The Senlis Council (an NGO with many years experience operating in Afghanistan) and many others have criticized the Canadian government for allocating 90 per cent of its budget for Afghanistan to military forces and only 10 per cent to humanitarian assistance. They have called for a radical change that would put the bulk of our resources into economic and social development. This is an obvious policy alternative, in line with the Canadian public’s strong support for humanitarian assistance.

Canada could make a significant impact if it would concentrate its funding on health, housing, food and agriculture. As the Senlis Council has repeatedly stressed, there is a real need for emergency food assistance. The Canadian government could choose to bypass the international aid organizations like the World Bank and direct its spending to the most needy areas. This would have to be done with the support of the Afghan government.

The United States and international aid organizations have determined that the health system in Afghanistan shall be run on free-market principles. Canada could demonstrate that a public-health approach is better. Our government could begin by financing community health clinics open to all.

The Canadian government would also win a great deal of support in Afghanistan if it directly provided major funding to the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission and other human rights organizations. The legal system is hardly functioning in Afghanistan. Canada could provide significant help in this area, especially in the development of a legal aid program. The educational system is still in need of schools and teachers. Official Canadian aid could be funnelled to the Afghan government for this purpose.

What can we do in the area of food and agriculture? No poor, underdeveloped country can make progress towards social justice unless it can feed its people. Food security requires a rejection of the free-trade and free-market model of agricultural development.

The Afghan economy depends on food and agriculture; these account for over 50 per cent of the gross domestic product. Added to this is the poppy economy, which is estimated to be 35 per cent of the total GDP. Afghan agriculture is characterized by many small- and medium-sized farms with very few large operators. In this context Canada has a great deal to offer from our own history. Canadian farmers have expertise in the development of farm organizations, farmer-controlled co-operatives, credit unions and marketing agencies. Afghan farmers need help in developing transportation and marketing. As in many European countries, farmer co-operatives can expand into food processing, wholesaling and retailing.

Canada could readily provide assistance in this area. But it would mean rejecting the neo-liberal model imposed on Afghanistan that promotes the free market and foreign corporate agribusiness. The “Food First” model of self-reliance and egalitarian development as promoted by the Institute for Food and Development Policy, supported by many Canadian non-governmental and ethical organizations, is the obvious alternative.

Afghanistan has relied on two state-owned banks, but they are now being privatized. Through political mobilization Canadian farmers were able to establish the Farm Credit Corporation to provide long-term, low-interest mortgages. The People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan government of 1978-1992 was establishing similar credit programs. The Canadian model would be welcomed by Afghan farmers who are now victims of local money lenders and drug lords.

Afghanistan has very little industrial development; this is one of the main reasons why it is one of the poorest countries in the world. It has natural resources and good potential for mining, oil and natural gas. The current model for development, set by the United States with the support of the Canadian government, places emphasis on attracting investment from foreign-controlled transnational corporations. The previous state-owned enterprises are being abolished or privatized.

It is most important for Afghanistan to establish state ownership and control over natural resources, including the creation of state-owned enterprises. This is the only way that a less-developed country can capture high economic rents from natural resource extraction. In the Middle East all of the Muslim states maintain state-owned corporations for the development of the oil and gas industry. These states could provide the technical assistance to create this model. Assistance could also come from the central Asian countries who are members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. They are all developing oil, natural gas and other resource extraction through their own state-owned corporations, working in partnership with transnational corporations.

Of course, such a pronounced change in policy will be difficult for any Canadian government to realize. Since the 1980s our major political parties and federal and provincial governments have developed a commitment to the free market and foreign-ownership model of resource development. Prior to 2001, however, the Afghan government was developing its resource and energy sectors using state-owned enterprises. Canadian governments must recognize the right to self-determination and democracy. If the people of Afghanistan want to pursue a different road, we must accept that and provide assistance.

There are many policy options that are different from those being pursued by the U.S. and Canadian governments. If the alternative policy approaches outlined above were presented to the Canadian public there is a very good chance that they would receive majority support.

From counter-insurgency to peacemaking

The immediate goal of any Canadian movement for a new policy direction in Afghanistan must be to pressure the political parties in Parliament to respect the sovereignty and democratic rights of the people of Afghanistan. This would include an end to the Canadian government’s commitment to a large-scale deployment of military forces in Afghanistan in support of the U.S. counter-insurgency war. Instead, Canada should take on the role of peacemaker.

The second goal would be to convince the Canadian government there should be a major budget shift from the military role in Afghanistan to economic and social development. If the people of Afghanistan were given the right to self-determination and democracy, it is doubtful they would choose the neo-liberal agenda that is being imposed upon them.

Recent public-opinion polls indicate that around 50 per cent of the Canadian public want to see the government withdraw from the counter-insurgency war in Afghanistan. Over 60 per cent took the position that Canada should not continue a counter-insurgency military role beyond February 2009. Polls regularly show that 70 per cent choose UN peacekeeping over a combat role. Several polls report that a large majority, around 80 per cent, is pleased that Canada is not officially involved in the war in Iraq.

So what can those of us wanting to act on these sentiments do to directly aid Afghanistan? In the 1970s and 1980s Canadians formed local organizations across Canada to help the people of Guatemala and El Salvador resist and survive the horrors of their right-wing dictatorships, backed by the U.S. government. People mobilized in support of the Sandinista government in Nicaragua, under attack from the Contras who were backed by the Reagan administration and the CIA’s narco-empire. Canadians can do that again.

There are quite a few parties of the left in Afghanistan, constantly undergoing change. There is also a group of younger parties, referred to as “new democrats,” which have a strong commitment to human rights, secularism and broad-based democracy. In her visit to Canada in November 2007, Malalai Joya, the embattled and determined advocate from the Afghan parliament, urged Canadians to give direct support to the “freedom-loving democratic parties” that need so much support. She also urged organizations in Canada to give assistance to the established non-governmental organizations doing good work in her country that cannot complete their projects because of lack of funds. There is a great need for the formation of Canadian solidarity organizations to go to Afghanistan to build alliances with political and non-governmental groups. There is a need for Canada’s alternate media organizations to do the same thing.

In the past Canadians have undertaken international solidarity activities that were in direct opposition to the policy positions taken by their government. They were willing to stand up and defy the policies of the U.S. government. Because our government shares responsibility for the tragic situation that now exists in Afghanistan, it is even more important for Canadians to take action today.

John W. Warnock is the author of The Politics of Hunger: The Global Food System; Free Trade and the New Right Agenda; The Other Mexico: The North American Triangle Completed and most recently Creating a Failed State: The U.S. and Canada in Afghanistan (Fernwood Publishing), from which this article is excerpted.

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