Operation Backfire

A quick survey of what is happening in Afghanistan puts the lie to every positive statement coming out of the government. First, the notion that we will still be doing development work and nation-building, once Afghanistan is "stabilized" is a cruel hoax. With the approximately 40,000 troops (half of whom are not allowed to fight) now stationed there, this simply will never happen. When the Soviet Union was finally driven out of this country, after 10 years of brutal conflict and 15,000 dead, it had 100,000 troops in the country, a functioning Afghan government working in co-operation with it, and an additional 100,000 Afghan troops fighting with it. Fatally flawed It is no wonder, as reported by CCPA defence analyst Stephen Staples, that Canadian soldiers are six times as likely to die in Afghanistan as American troops are in Iraq. No wonder, either, that the Senlis Council, a Brussels-based security and development policy group, assailed Canada's approach as continuing "to unquestioningly accept America's fundamentally flawed policy approach in southern Afghanistan, thereby jeopardising the success of military operations in the region and the stabilisation, reconstruction and development mission objectives." http://thetyee.ca/Views/2006/10/16/OperationBackfire/

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