Time For Harper to Get Honest About Afghanistan

Our government isn't telling us a lot about what's going on in Afghanistan. What we do get tends to come via embedded reporters who are either overwhelmed with gushing patriotism or who depict looming battles that leave us underwhelmed when the true picture emerges afterward.

Yet there is a lot to tell about what's happening to Afghanistan and to "the mission." It's out there, you just have to do a little bit of looking. Unfortunately that usually means going beyond Canada's newspapers.

For example, how are the Brits doing in Helmand province, next door to our own folks in Kandahar? This is Britain we're talking about, a country with a real army and a whole bunch of other stuff, even nuclear subs. Well, it actually sounds like our "poor cousin" Canadian force is doing a lot better.

Mick Smith, writing in The Times, reports on a film compiled by Sean Langan despite the best efforts of Britain's Ministry of Defence to keep him out of the area.

"...a British officer admits that the entire area south of Garmsir, which is in central Helmand, more than 100 miles north of the Pakistani border, is controlled by the Taliban who have no problem resupplying and reinforcing their own men. 'The Taliban pretty much control everything south of us all the way down to the Pakistani border,' Capt Doug Beattie tells Langan. 'That’s their main supply route and they have pretty much free access of movement down there.'

"Intelligence reports show that while the British cannot get supplies or reinforcements, the Taliban had sent more fighters from Pakistan, Beattie says. Senior MoD officials were so anxious to stop Langan from reporting from Garmsir that they banned him from going with the British troops. But he hitched a lift with the Afghan police accompanying them.

"The footage also exposes MoD claims that Afghan and coalition forces have never lost the town, showing the Taliban clearly in control when the British troops arrive there."

You would never know it from listening to our government but large areas of Kandahar province are also reportedly under Taliban control and administration. That is almost inevitable from the understrength force we have deployed there.

The Harper government needs to be candid with the Canadian people about the true state of affairs confronting our soldiers in Afghanistan. Giving us the truth isn't going to help the Taliban. Everything he should be telling us they already know.

I suspect Harper is so focused on his minority problem and the possibility of a spring election that he won't risk telling us the real situation in Kandahar because it could cause a fatal loss of support for the Reform Conservatives.

Stephen Harper's much vaunted claims to transparency and honesty yield, every time, to his political opportunism. Canada said we needed real and meaningful support from our NATO allies in order to salvage Afghanistan. At the last NATO summit we begged and demanded and cajoled - and came up empty-handed. We told the other NATO members how bleak the situation was, so why haven't we done anything other than shipping a few tanks over to help them?

Oh, I'm sorry, I got it all wrong. Canadian Press just reported that Peter MacKay has arrived in Kandahar and he says Afghanistan isn't sliding into chaos and we're making real progress. Sorry, what was I thinking?