For the past few days NATO has been gloating over Sunday’s massacre of 72 Taliban fighters. According to a NATO spokesperson, the weekend battle may have liquidated up to 10% of the Taliban fighters in southern Afghanistan. It was a “big blow”, they said. But yesterday, another Canadian soldier was killed and three others wounded after a suicide bomber slammed into a Canadian supply convoy in Kandahar City. These two events are ugly and depressing, but they make sense, I suppose. You kill us. We kill you.

But this does not make sense: after securing the area, the Canadians fired at a motorcycle that refused to stop at a checkpoint. The single round wounded the 17-year-old driver and killed a 10-year-old boy who was riding with him. Given our distance from this chaos and a lack of direct knowledge of what it is really like on the ground, how are we to process these facts? Was it a language problem? A failure to communicate? Whatever caused this tragedy, it suggests that it is time to end the charade that Canada — or any western country — can make a significant difference in Afghanistan right now. Here’s why:

• Other factions. Even if the Taliban are eventually killed off, the miasma of warlords, drug lords and tribal factions operating in the country guarantees continued bloodshed and instability. Much of this squabbling is over heroin — Afghanistan’s most important economic activity — which brings in about half of the country’s foreign currency.
  
  
• Drugs. Apart from a few minor interruptions (such as the Taliban’s brief reign), the Afghani poppy crop has been increasing for decades. Destroying the crop does nothing but foment rage and sympathy for anti-western factions. The solution is to decimate the heroin market which exists outside of the country — not the poppy crop.
  
  
• Corruption. The conciliatory attitude of President Hamid Karzai toward various factions has helped create a climate of widespread corruption among Afghani police, judges and government officials. Does this mean that we are fighting and dying so that a corrupt regime can extract even more from a desperate population that has nothing. Some argue that this dynamic is driving many Afghani’s to support the Taliban.

If Sunday’s battle really took out 10% of the Taliban in the southern half of the country, then one wonders why a country of 30-million people can’t work together to get rid of the remaining 650 fighters. Even with out guns, enterprising Afghani’s should be able to sneak up behind unsuspecting Taliban in order to brain them with axes. As painful as it is to watch a country like Afghanistan lurch toward modernity, our presence there is only making things worse.

Canada has sacrificed eight soldiers in that country so far this August. All this spilled blood is trying to teach us a lesson. Perhaps it’s time we learned it.

Another Canadian dead in Afghanistan from a suicide bomber. Let’s just get the hell out of there. If NATO has to be there, let them put a ring around the goddam place. Don’t let any weapons in. Don’t any let heroin out. Whatever. Trying to impose democracy at the point of a gun either does not work or is just not worth it. There I said it — maybe with more rage than reason. But I said it.

When it comes to public relations and spin management, the Canadian government, under Harper’s watch, is extremely proactive. This is obvious from the DND media relations archive. The Canadian Forces PR group went into high gear yesterday when Master Corporal Jeffery Scott Walsh was killed after a fellow soldier’s gun “discharged”. On the same day six other Canadians were also hurt when their armoured vehicle hit a truck 30km south of Kandahar. Yesterday’s terse announcement does not say much about Scott’s death, however, the military released an additional statement to selected media. This included a short statement from the fallen soldier’s parents: “Jeff believed in his job and felt he could make a change in Afghanistan… We, his parents support Jeff and all the Force’s members in Afghanistan and all our peacekeepers.” According to the Toronto Star, the family also thanked Canadian Forces staff, neighbours, family and friends for their support “at this difficult time”.

I feel for the Scott family and hope they truly believe in the Canadian Force’s role in Afghanistan (though I have my own reservations about the whole project). But, it is a little galling that the DND appears to have pounced on Scott’s family to extract the above statement so soon after their son’s death. Perhaps it is just me, but I would need more than a day to process such tragic news before I could make comments to the media. What was the rush? I would still be seething with anger and would be asking why? and how did this happen? And I sure as hell would not let the Canadian Army filter anything I wanted to say.

Update: The UN has extended UNIFIL’s mandate for one month to August 31, 2006. This was done “pending consideration of other options for future arrangements in South Lebanon.” Kofi Annan pushed for a one month extension instead of six for obvious reasons. Although some Israeli groups question the very neutrality of UNIFIL, since they are still in the region, they have the power to do more good than harm.

UNIFIL — the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon — has been getting a bad rap lately. In addition to losing four observers to Israeli shells last week, today we learn that two Indian UNIFIL members were wounded during an air strike in the border village of Adaisseh. In total, the 2000-strong UNIFIL group has lost 249 troops since it was first deployed in March of 1978.

To add insult to injury, UNIFIL has been called a weak and ineffectual force by countless media outlets and analysts. Maybe so. But UNIFIL’s ineffectiveness does not mean they have failed. Rather, it is Hezbollah and Israel (and their respective backers and arms dealers) that have failed to keep the peace. UNIFIL’s own press releases tell the story. Depressing statements such as these:

Heavy exchanges of fire continued along the length of the Blue Line in the last 24 hours, with a major concentration in the western sector. Hezbollah fired rockets from various locations, and the IDF continued the shelling and aerial bombardment.

have become a boilerplate paragraphs that appear in daily UNIFIL announcements. The UN group has struggled to resupply its posts with water and provisions while at the same time escorting hundreds of trapped Lebanese civilians to safer ground. It will be interesting to see what happens on July 31 2006 when UNIFIL’s mandate expires. Given the ferocity of this war, and both side’s willingness to inflict collateral damage, UNIFIL has already saved thousands of innocent lives. While the U.S. and Israel dither over when conditions will be right for a cease fire, let us hope UNIFIL’s mandate is extended and even expanded. “Ineffectual” they may be, yet they appear to be the only force in the region doing any good at all.

Last night a CNN Mideast expert confessed that the term “Mideast expert” is an oxymoron. If so, then it’s no wonder people like me are baffled by the shifting ironies and contradictions in this conflict. Consider: the Israeli army has a large number of Russian-born soldiers using American-made weapons to attack and occupy southern Lebanon in order to defend Israel. So far they have managed to kill a large number of civilians (a 10-story apartment building in Tyre was demolished last night). They have killed foreign tourists (including 8 Canadians). They have killed UNIFIL peacekeepers (including another Canadian).

All of this killing is supposed to be an act of “defense” against Hezbollah, who (stupidly) stirred up this mess by capturing 2 Israeli soldiers. I watched a British BBC correspondent tour the carnage in Beirut, while bloodied women screamed out the names of missing children. Then I watched a British-born Israeli soldier explain how the bombing was done with pinpoint accuracy — just surgical strikes. In another report we see Israeli intelligence analysts sporting 3D visors as they explain how they use a system akin to Google Earth to virtually “fly” through Lebanese streets to define targets. Maybe their data points are just a few metres to the left of pinpoint accurate?

Then we have the world’s only remaining superpower pretending to feel “concern” for the Lebanese people, while declaring that conditions are not yet “conducive” for a ceasefire. In order to prove that conditions are not yet right, the U.S. agrees to expedite a shipment of bunker buster bombs. Can someone help me out here? According to the rules of geopolitical etiquette, when a country ships weapons to Israel and humanitarian aid to Lebanon, is it OK to ship everything on the same airplane?

To further confuse the issue, Israel announces they will not seek to “expand the offensive” (I thought this was defense?) but that they are calling up an additional 30,000 troops.

I can not imagine the political machinations that must be taking place in Washington (while my country’s dopey PM tags along as best he can). Does they Bush administration seriously think all of this death will do anything but guarantee another decade of terrorism? Are they trying to divert attention from Iraq? By hammering Hezbollah do they think they are somehow fighting Iran by proxy?

At the same time, Hamas and Hezbollah would do better to disarm and put their resources into a coordinated publicity campaign to raise awareness of Israel’s border incursions and shameful treatment of Palestinians as others are already doing. Of course, such a campaign could only work if Hamas and Hezbollah refrained from suicide bombings and other terror activities. Oh yes — and they would have to recognize Israel’s right to exist.

Or why not just keep on fighting. Keep pouring more money, weapons and blood into the region so that U.S. arms makers can keep their stockholders happy. War hasn’t solved anything in the past and the only thing certain in the region is war not solve any problems in the future. But that is no reason to stop fighting, is it? Not in an area of the world where conditions are not conducive to reason.