Focusing on the truth, Afghan journalists are under assault by Karzai's cabinet

It’s one of the soldier’s greatest fears:  abandonment by his or her political masters. The creeping suspicion that they’ve been sent to the battlefield to give their all, while the suits back home recline or posture, talking the talk of “supporting our troops,” but failing to walk the walk of tough diplomacy. Because aggressive political strategies are as vital to results-oriented war fighting as beans and bullets.

So consider the plight of some NATO units in Afghanistan. American troops grapple with the Taliban, while back home the Justice Department undermines the Drug Enforcement Agency’s attempts to choke down on Afghanistan’s heroin trade - the very industry that contributes so much cash to the Taliban’s efforts to kill American troops. (See The American Connection in skyreporter.com’s archives.)

Canadian soldiers, too, are fighting – and, tragically, dying – while Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his government remain idle on two key fronts of the conflict. First, Pakistan, where the Taliban and al Qaeda continue to enjoy sanctuary and support. Command and control of the Taliban fighters whose landmine killed six Canadian troops on Sunday comes from the militia's top leadership residing in Quetta, Pakistan. (And don’t take my word for it. Last year, former NATO commander, America’s Gen. James Jones, told a congressional committee he knew Taliban leader Mullah Omar’s Quetta address.)

Second, Kabul. In the Afghan capital, Canadian diplomats are constrained to taking a softly-softly approach with some of Afghanistan’s most ruthless old warlords – those who currently wield arbitrary powers from within President Karzai’s cabinet. This goes far beyond the Kabul Airport heroin scandal, set off by Attorney General Abdul Jabar Sabet (see skyreporter.com’s AFGHAN HEROIN series).

In his latest exploit, Sabet – who is also a resident of Montreal, Canada – has teamed up with Information Minister Karim Khurram to retaliate against Afghanistan’s leading TV channel, Tolo, for its frank and courageous coverage of the country’s struggling institutions of government.

This past Tuesday, Khurram and Sabet ordered Tolo to remove English language programming produced by Al-Jazeera. According to Al-Jazeera’s spokespeople, this has nothing to do with content. Media sources in Kabul agree, citing instead another motive: to inflict a high cost in lost viewers and revenue on Tolo's Lemar channel.

Khurram is currently writing a media controls law that is expected to severely restrict reporters’ and editors’ freedoms. With the Al-Jazeera move, he and Sabet sidestep the expected firestorm of protest the bill will provoke, while still inflicting damage on a leading media critic of government misdeeds and failures. Tolo’s managers have responded by placing an appeal before the supreme court.

Predictably, this is not the first time Khurram and Sabet have conspired together against civil liberties in Afghanistan. Both men are former long-time aides to warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. Hekmatyar boasted earlier this year that it was he who helped Osama bin Laden escape U.S. bombing at Tora Bora in autumn, 2001. Today he is one of Afghanistan’s and the west’s most-wanted terrorists.

Khurram was a group commander for Hekmatyar’s Hizbe Islami during the civil war of the early 1990’s (when Hekmatyar held office in the ill-fated interim government, becoming the world’s only Prime Minister, at the time, to rain artillery shells on his own capital city). Khurram had responsibility for the area where Afghan journalist Mirwais Jalil was abducted and murdered by alleged Hekmatyar gunmen in July, 1994.

Certainly these are not the kind of leaders or policies that Canadian Forces personnel believe they are fighting for. Equally, Afghan citizens and parliamentarians lament the many anti-democratic stooges and flunkies who blight the Karzia cabinet - and whose presence precludes honest elected officials from promotion.

Skyreporter.com has addressed these matters to the office of Prime Minister Stephen Harper. Thus far, the silence is deafening.

As Canada’s brave young men and women endure Taliban and al Qaeda attacks, working faithfully for stability and reconstruction in Afghanistan, they have every right to demand a commensurate effort by their political masters.

But they are, in my experience, far too polite and professional a breed of soldier to put their concerns bluntly to their Prime Minister. So permit me:  Steve – just how risky is it to get Hamid Karzai on the phone and tell him enough is enough?

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