John W. Warnock, Creating a Failed State: The US and Canada in Afghanistan.(Book review)

John W. Warnock, Creating a Failed State: The US and Canada in Afghanistan (Toronto: Fernwood 2008)

WHILE CANADIAN social scientists and humanists on the Left have developed parallel critical universes to their American counterparts in most areas, a peculiar exception is the area of foreign policy. For the most part, the literature on Canadian foreign policy is produced by Dr. Strangeloves for whom any suggestion that Canada is an imperialist or subimperialist power is taboo; instead we are peacemakers, defenders of democracy, supporters of good works, slayers of terrorists. We are truest to ourselves when we back the Americans in their various wars, defences of the free world, and craven and inward-looking when we do not. Though a few books on Canada's role in the Vietnam War challenge this social construction, there is little or no critical literature on our role in the world wars, the Boer War, the Korean War, the Middle East, Latin America, Haiti, the first Iraq war, or much else.

Jack Warnock's latest book is therefore welcome as at least a partial effort to view Canadian foreign policy from a Marxist perspective. "[his study of imperialism in Afghanistan is not primarily a book on Canadian foreign policy. There is only one chapter devoted to Canada's role in Afghanistan plus the odd mention here and there in other chapters of Canada's role. But, in Afghanistan, as in many other areas of the world, having a critical perspective on Canadian foreign policy begins with understanding American interests and American actions. Warnock's intention is to provide such a perspective on the Afghanistan file. But he is also concerned with looking to the future, to the positive roles that Canada, or at least progressive Canadians, might play in helping Afghanis to free themselves of foreign control and establish a future that he argues most of them want: one without rule by some combination of religious nutcases, warlords, and foreign powers motivated by economic interest.

Warnock observes that the us invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, often presented by supporters and opponents alike Of the invasion as an emotional response to 9/11, had been planned before that event. The us had been the foreign backer of the post-Communist, pre-Taliban mujahideen regime led by the Northern Alliance from 1992 to 1996. Having happily armed and encouraged the mujahideen as they fought the Soviet-backed Communists, whose efforts to liberate women were met by mujahideen murders of women who took part in public life, the Americans showed little concern about Northern Alliance misogyny, brutality, or venality. While they were unhappy with the country's takeover by the rival Islamic crazy group, the Taliban, their concerns centred on the new government's unwillingness to be as cooperative regarding energy pipeline projects as the previous regime. In the months before 9/11, the us and its allies, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, prepared for an invasion of a recalcitrant Afghanistan. (11)

With 9/11, the Americans had the opportunity to find another reason for invading Afghanistan, however questionable it may have seemed to invade a country, wipe out its existing government and impose a new one to avenge a tragedy in one's home country that mostly involved individuals of Saudi origin living in the us. The Taliban's insistence that it could hand Osama bin Laden to the Americans only after the latter provided its evidence that the al Qaeda leader was responsible for the 9/11 attacks became sufficient provocation for the Americans to impose their own agenda on Afghanistan. The Americans claimed that they were acting in self-defence and therefore within the principles of Article 51 of the United Nations charter. As Warnock makes clear several times, this use of Article 51 was fatuous--among other things, the Article does not allow for pure retaliation; retaliation is allowed only when the nation that has conducted an assault has not ended its aggression (in this case, it may never have even begun one). But the false claim that the UN had endorsed the American-led invasion of Afghanistan and the overthrow of the Taliban became part of the rhetoric of NATO'S justification for other countries' involvement in Afghanistan on the American side. Canadian governments, in particular, mythologized their complicity with American imperialism as a contribution to a non-existent UN mission. The UN did sanction the International Security Assistance Force to provide security around Kabul and to train a new national army and national police force for Afghanistan. But this occurred only after the Americans had overthrown the Taliban, and the ISAF quickly came under American and NATO control, receiving not a penny Of UN funds or a shred of UN supervision.

Warnock suggests that the UN'S role was only one of several myths regarding Canadian participation. Canada's official position is that it is supporting the creation of a civil-rights culture in Afghanistan. But, in practice, Canada, like the United States, practices torture, rendition, and highly intrusive surveillance in Afghanistan. All of this is chalked up as necessary evils to give Afghanis a future that is more secular and peaceful than the one offered by the Taliban. But Canada has ignored Afghani public opinion which calls for military commanders and war criminals to be banned from public office, and has supported the American-favoured constitution which makes Shariah law, with its anti-women bias, the basic law. It has also treated as legitimate the government of President Hamid Karzai, "a cIA asset in Pakistan...[who] channeled $2 billion in us humanitarian aid to various organizations that backed the mujahideen." (84) Warnock notes that the Americans foisted Karzai on the Constitutional Loya Jirga, and then carried out a sham election, marked by unending irregularities, to make him president and give him a parliament friendly to American economic and political interests.

Warnock ably documents the devastation that Western interference, in which Canada has played such a large role, has had on Afghanistan. Our vaunted reconstruction programs barely exist. And he. makes clear that the failure of other NATO powers to participate in Afghanistan is a response to widespread public opposition throughout Europe to American imperialism in Afghanistan.

Unfortunately, Warnock has chosen to shear this book from the usual academic apparatus of footnotes, limiting himself to a "select bibliography." Though he has made use of primary materials, there is no evidence within the text that this is the case. This weakens the credibility of a book which makes one claim after another that is the opposite of what we read daily in the bourgeois media. When sources for very particular claims, such as the American plan to invade Afghanistan in the months preceding 9/11, are simply not provided in a clear way, a book of this kind is only of interest to the already converted. The book's apparent embrace of some of the "Truther" theories that the Bush government was involved in the 9/11 attacks makes it all the more important for Warnock to cite sources. His materials about 9/11 lack either detail or documentation, and give the impression of an easy acceptance of conspiracy theories. A problem with the book's Canadian materials is that they provide no examination of Canada's aims in supporting the us in Afghanistan, and not, for example, in Iraq. Does Canada have imperialist interests of its own? Or is it just sucking up to Big Brother? What role do pro-military interests play in Canada? How effective are their opponents?

ALVIN FINKEL

Athabasca University

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