Another side to Afghanistan story

By MERV UNGER

Jul 23 2007
Guns blazing, bombs bursting and body bags make good headlines, but they ignore the fact that there’s another side to the story.

The Canadian military engagement in Afghanistan is a good example – there is more than the combat with Taliban fighters.

Canada’s Chief of Defence Staff Gen. Rick Hillier spoke recently to elected municipal officials from across Canada, describing the humanitarian side of the Canadian mission in Afghanistan.

The people of Afghanistan don’t want a hand-out, they just want short-term help, Gen. Hillier said. They are proud and dignified; they want to rebuild their country, but they need help.

When Canadian soldiers go on missions around the world kids come with their hands out wanting candy. In Afghanistan they hold out their hands wanting pencils, pens or paper. They want to go to school.

These children understand an education is the way out of the desperate circumstances in which they find themselves.

They need our help because there is a group of extremists who refuse to come into the political process and are armed to the teeth, and don’t want this kind of progress to continue. The chaos those people have created has led to things like fields of poppies because it allows people to make a living. Afghanistan produces somewhere over 3,500 tons of raw opium per year. This is a weapon of mass destruction, says Hillier.

Canadian soldiers are there because the Afghans have asked us to help them. Canadians are there to give them a helping hand – a hand up, not a hand out.

We’re there to help those families, moms and dads who want to rebuild their families, their communities, they would like to have enough medical care so their children won’t die by the age of five. They would like to have a guarantee that when they go shop for food, they are not going to be blown up by a suicide bomber, and they would like to have a guarantee that life next year, or the year after may be somewhat better.

Canadians do a variety of things including providing direct security in southern Afghanistan with combat operations. Canada’s young men and women are doing a great job. They understand what the risks are, they all want to be there because they believe it is important, and that in the shorter term those direct actions are absolutely essential, removing the Taliban, keeping them at bay long enough for the Afghan capacity to rebuild itself.

C-130 aircraft drop humanitarian supplies, food and water, to people who are stranded in regions where we can’t get food and water to them by land.

Gen. Hillier pointed to outreach clinics in the villages. Canadians also take the people who have some education or some capability to help start educate and train so that they can provide sustaining capabilities long after we are gone.

Canadian soldiers help them organize community councils, and youth.

Afghan children were never inoculated until two years ago, five million kids have now been inoculated against all the basic diseases.

Canada’s military builds roads and provides security, changing the dynamics of an area of about 50,000 and allowing them to turn their lives around. We provided the security, we provided a lot of the impetus to build that road, and we provided a lot of the blood from our soldiers in securing that road while it was being build. It has changed the lives of the people in the area.

Canada’s soldiers are digging wells – 1,000 wells in the last 10 months. Access to clean, potable water changes the life of a village, and that’s quite incredible.

We train the Afghan National Army. We also train the police. We are farther behind with the police who are in a dismal state but we believe that is sustainable security. They are corrupt and not well trained, they have not been well selected and not well prepared, but there have been some successes.

We also rebuild things like soccer fields. The soccer stadium in Kandahar City was pretty much rubble, but Canadians rebuilt it. This is a positive thing and we are enabling that to occur.

That’s the other side of the story, one worth repeating.

Merv Unger is a retired publisher/editor with Black Press, Vancouver Island and the director of media relations for the United Services Institute of Nanaimo and North Island.