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Harper in Afghanistan on unannounced visit

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Harper in Afghanistan on unannounced visit
Updated Tue. May. 22 2007 6:31 AM ET Canadian Press
Article Link

Prime Minister Stephen Harper has responded to criticism of his government's handling of the mission in Afghanistan by making an unannounced visit to the war-ravaged country.
The surprise two-day trip comes after weeks of opposition attacks on his government's allegedly incompetent handling of the Afghan detainee controversy.

Harper arrived on a military flight Tuesday in the Afghan capital, where he visited a school for underprivileged children and met with President Hamid Karzai.

This is Harper's second visit to the war-torn country.

Barely one month after taking office last year, Harper made Afghanistan his destination for his first foreign trip as prime minister.

Unlike that last trip, this one is designed to emphasize Canada's non-military contribution to rebuilding of the country.

The prime minister handed out pencil cases to students at a local school for underprivileged children. He dropped in on painting, acting, woodworking, and music classes at the Aschiana School in a tightly guarded compound in the capital's downtown core.

The school received $39,500 in annual funding from the Canadian government and provides education to more than 10,000 Afghan children.

He also visited diplomats at the Canadian Embassy for a briefing on progress made in that country since the ouster of the Taliban in 2001.

In 2006, Harper spent almost the entirety of his three days in Afghanistan visiting military installations and camping out with soldiers. His current trip comes with public opinion polls suggesting support for his government has fallen amid opposition attacks of the last few weeks.
More on link
 
Hmmm, I wonder if the beer fuelled rumours upon which I reported last week have some foundation?

Are we going to make a highly visible shift away from combat actions (as much as the Taliban will allow, anyway) and focus, even more visibly, on reconstruction?

The argument can be, I suppose, that our previous combat operations (Op Medusa, etc) have set the table for development and reconstruction work.

If there s any truth in the rumours, the desired end effects are 100% domestic:

1. Shifting the narrative away from unpopular combat operations; and

2. Avoiding casualties to Québec soldiers.

See, also, the CTV poll thread.
 
As much as most here have seen it, I sure hope we don't shoot ourselves in the foot/feet, as we trip along trying to convince stupid people it is a good, viable mission with potential excellent results....
 
As I'm NOT in the military, I guess I can reply to this article, I'm not bound by the same rules as the military, I'm sure more responses will be forthcoming once the PM is safely back home.

I'm going to try a link for the first time, so be nice if it doesn't work.

Afghanistan wants Canada's help, Harper sayshttp://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20070522/harper_afghanistan_070522/20070522?hub=TopStories

Don't think it worked right, but hopefully you can copy and paste. 

The interesting thing in the article, is that after all the visiting in schools, and with aid workers,  Fife remarks on this very important point:

"The prime minister is going to chow down at breakfast with the troops. He's going to have greasy bacon and greasy eggs and stale bread," Robert Fife, CTV's Ottawa bureau chief, told MDL from Afghanistan.

So, do the troops really get forced to eat greasy bacon and greasy eggs and stale bread?  :eek:

I hope the chefs serve those greasy reporters that greasy food, and let the troops eat the healthy food I'm sure they usually eat. Well, I hate to admit it, but I like bacon and eggs.  ;D


 
First of, I think Harper did this to shut up Dion and Taliban Jack, My question is now that this has been put to bed and almost every other conceivable argument on the Afghanistan mission has been dealt with, what other antics will these two Einsteins come up with.

Well there's always the question of the quality of the food that we're feeding our troops.... Or maybe Tims isn't serving the coffee hot enough. Don't laugh, these two will probably try anything at this point.

"The prime minister is going to chow down at breakfast with the troops. He's going to have greasy bacon and greasy eggs and stale bread," Robert Fife, CTV's Ottawa bureau chief, told MDL from Afghanistan.


 
 
Some seriuos food for thought:

http://www.thestar.com/printArticle/216696

Visit's not just for our benefit
TheStar.com - News - Visit's not just for our benefit

May 23, 2007
Thomas Walkom

Prime Minister Stephen Harper's surprise trip to Kabul is not just a photo op for domestic Canadian consumption. It's part of a concerted effort by the U.S. and its NATO allies to stiffen the spine of President Hamid Karzai and forestall growing sentiment in Afghanistan for a political settlement with the Taliban.

That is the real significance of Harper's focus on development during yesterday's meeting with Karzai. "As Canadians we know that Afghanistan's future will not be secured through military means alone," the Prime Minister said, after handing out pencil cases to children at a local school.

It's true that development does play better in Canada than war – a fact not lost on the leader of the Conservative minority government.

But his reason for making that point in Afghanistan was to drive home the point there. He was signalling to his hosts that NATO understands it must do more than kill Taliban insurgents.

Harper's appearance in Kabul came as German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, visiting northern Afghanistan just three days after a suicide bomber killed three German soldiers, pledged that the attacks would not deter his country's commitment to help rebuild the nation.

And it came the day after U.S. President George W. Bush and NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer met in Texas to underscore the need for a united front against the Taliban that includes reconstruction as well as military action.

The context for these hurried high-level diplomatic meetings is a confluence of trends that threatens to derail the 5 1/2-year-old Western military mission in Afghanistan.

On the one hand, public opinion in Europe and Canada is increasingly skeptical about the value of a war that produces casualties but no definable benefits.

Germany is to review its commitment later this year. French President Nicolas Sarkozy has hinted that he might withdraw his country's troops. And in Ottawa, opposition parties have demanded that Canadian forces be withdrawn from the danger zones in Afghanistan's south by no later than February 2009.

On the other hand, Afghans themselves are increasingly restive about the presence of foreign troops in their country – especially when those troops kill civilians. Air strikes are particularly controversial, leading even Karzai to criticize the U.S. practice of large-scale aerial bombardments.

After recent air attacks, including one in Herat earlier this month that killed an estimated 50 civilians and left 2,000 homeless, protesters demanded that Karzai resign.

The flip side of this Afghan dissatisfaction with NATO is a growing movement for some form of political accommodation with the Taliban. Two weeks ago, the Afghan parliament's upper house voted to end offensive military operations and enter into direct talks with the hard-line Islamists.

The lower house has not yet decided whether to support this move. But in March, it passed another controversial bill promoting national reconciliation that would grant all warring factions, including the Taliban, immunity from prosecution.

As the Star's Rosie DiManno wrote this weekend from Kabul, even one of the Taliban's arch-enemies, former Herat governor and now Karzai minister Ismail Khan, is hinting at the need to make accommodation with the rebels.

None of this is entirely novel. Deal-making among warring factions is an Afghan tradition. In 2001, as U.S.-backed forces were sweeping the Taliban from power, an Afghan official close to Karzai negotiated an accommodation with Taliban chief Mullah Omar that would have allowed him to live freely in Kandahar in return for abandoning armed struggle.

The U.S. scotched that attempt. But Karzai has continued his back-channel relations with Taliban insurgents, a fact he acknowledged publicly last month.

Indeed, if NATO's days are limited in Afghanistan, then a political deal with the Taliban makes sense for the current Kabul regime. The alternative is continuation of war that those now in power might lose.

But a power-sharing deal with the Taliban is not something Washington would countenance. Such an arrangement, no matter how attractive to Afghan political factions, would undermine the entire rationale for invading that country.

It could also create what Bush's war on terror was designed to destroy – a sovereign state that is openly friendly to Al Qaeda.

So the capitals of the West are in a tizzy. Leaders like Harper have to convince their own electorates that Afghanistan is worth the candle. At the same time, they have to convince Afghans that their troops are more than ham-fisted foreign meddlers.

The alternative is a deal with the Taliban that ends the war and allows the country to rebuild. The U.S. and its friends want the war to end – but not that way.

 
And more on the same theme as the Star article:
http://tinyurl.com/2k4uvb

Musharraf backs talks with Taliban
Exclusive: Pakistan's President shrugs off increased militancy in border region

SONYA FATAH
From Wednesday's Globe and Mail


ISLAMABAD — Peace in Afghanistan will not come out of the barrel of a gun, Pakistan's besieged President, General Pervez Musharraf, said in a wide-ranging interview in which he suggested that talks with the Taliban and other opposition may be necessary to bring stability to the war-torn country.

“We have to have a multipronged strategy. In Afghanistan it is only the military strategy which is working now,” Gen. Musharraf said in an interview with The Globe and Mail.

“[The] political element is the negotiations between warring factions. Who are the warring factions? Warring factions are the Afghan government and the coalition forces on one side and the militant Taliban and even non-Taliban … so some form of negotiations between these two.”

“Maybe, there are groups who want to give up militancy and negotiate … so I can't lay down whether you negotiate with the Taliban, but [if] they want to go on fighting, you don't negotiate with them, take a military angle. You negotiate, you develop contacts with people who are not for fighting.”

Taking little responsibility for the growing sense of political instability in Pakistan and increased militancy along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, a defiant Gen. Musharraf insisted that Pakistan was the only country that had a military, political, developmental and administrative strategy to defeating extremism.

“I would tell everyone: Come and learn from us. We are sitting here knowing exactly what is happening on ground,” he said. “You sitting in the West don't know anything. So, don't teach me, come and learn from us. Come and understand the environment. And then decide on what has to be done and what doesn't have to be done. We are doing more than any other country in the world.”

The general also didn't back down from controversial comments made last year comparing the casualties suffered by Canadians and Pakistani military.

“Unfortunately the people in the West think that their lives are more important than our lives … they think the gun fodder should be from these countries like Pakistan and developing countries. If their soldiers, one soldier, dies, there is a problem, but 500 of ours have died. And then, yet they are blaming us. Isn't 500 important? … And yet Pakistan is blamed for not doing enough.”

Gen. Musharraf's confident assertiveness during the interview is at odds with the mood in Pakistan, where growing protests after his suspension of the nation's top judge and riots in the country's largest city present him with the greatest challenge of his nearly eight-year run as president and army chief.

Critics have assailed Pakistan over a controversial 2006 peace deal with pro-Taliban militants aimed at ending five years of violent unrest in the semi-autonomous North Waziristan region bordering Afghanistan. The accords brokered between the government and the pro-Taliban political party, the Jamiat-e-Ulema-e-Islam, after which the government released militants, were seen by many as a setback for the government and a victory for extremist forces.

But Gen. Musharraf defended the approach of reaching out to local power brokers as a way of breaking the cycle of violence. “These are the tribal maliks [leaders] and elders. Locate them. Identify them, deal with them, wean them away. That's the strategy that should have been adopted a long time back, but we left the field open for the Taliban, so every one is now suppressed and they are scared. Either they have joined them or they are lying low.”

Although Pakistan's intelligence agency has been accused of helping establish the Taliban movement, Gen. Musharraf insists his country played no role, although he acknowledges it gave the extremists legitimacy by being among the only countries to establish diplomatic relations when Taliban mullahs took over the government of Afghanistan.

“I know for sure – 200 per cent – that they were not a creation of Pakistan. They were a creation of circumstances in Afghanistan,” he said. “They [Afghan warlords] were ravaging and killing and butchering each other. That gave rise to this.”

While admitting he was concerned about the growing domestic opposition to his government, Gen. Musharraf emphasized the achievements made by his administration during the interview.

The Pakistani economy has been growing at a rate of 7 per cent in recent years and foreign investment has risen substantially under his rule as the government's deregulation, liberalization and privatization strategy has seen an inflow of investment and capital funds into the economy.

Nonetheless, politically the General is still struggling to contain the fallout from his March 9 firing of the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Pakistan, recent violence in Karachi and an on-going stand-off between the government and hard-line Islamists holed up in an Islamabad mosque.

A rolling series of protests and strikes have been led primarily by legal bodies and supported by opposition parties. The Islamist coalition that allowed the General to stay in uniform, has become very vocal in its opposition to him.

Despite that, the President won't concede mishandling the issue and sees himself as a victim of a larger conspiracy. “The issue is that the judicial crisis has been politicized. … It has been publicized by the opposition. And all these people who have converted this judicial case into a political issue. Now when you politicize this. It is an election year also. All political parties want to show their turf.”

Special to The Globe and Mail



 
The article by the CBC has me a tad annoyed with their implied references to the troops leaving the PM's address and the need of the CBC to "have to report it". 

http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2007/05/23/harper-troops-070523.html
 
That's typical of most forces....once the pontificating is over, make an early exit....to do, something else....
 
niner domestic said:
Too bad the CBC doesn't know that. 

Yep. Perhaps they forget that the war doesn't stop just because the PM happens to be in town.

I can see it now....some poor troop who really did have something better to do, like pack up the ammo to get it out to the boys who matter in the FOBs, makes a comment like "what a waste of a morning"...(added in his head...when I have things that have to get done to work on....).
 
http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/War_Terror/2007/05/23/4200714-cp.html

"But there were visible signs his audience, which crowded around the podium and sat atop armoured vehicles parked behind Harper for the benefit of the cameras, was decidedly non-partisan.

Scores of soldiers began filing out the moment the prime minister finished speaking. An officer stopped them and said: "The prime minister is still here - so that means we're still here. Get back inside." "

Although I find this article pretty unbiased, I am appaled that the reporter didn't ask the troops why they were leaving so quickly and then drawing his own conclusions.

I can not speak for everyone, but I am a pretty big fan of Harper the man and his policies. The reason I left so quickly was: I allready had been standing there for 45 minutes when the whole thing started, due to the vagarities of military planning, by 0830 it was time to go. It was getting hot, and lo and behold, we had work to do.

From my perspective, more than half of the reported 300 people stayed and schmoozed with the PM and the minister of defence. Considering everything, I call that a good day.

If James McCarten and Alexander Panetta would have asked me, I would have told them why I was leaving quickly. Now, they are just two more reporters I won't bother talking to.

Edit: I'm glad to see you guys figured out why the early exit. Too bad the reporters couldn't bother.
 
And that's exactly the point Dissident.

Every soldier always has better (and more important) things to do in an operational theatre/war zone...and the CBC has neglected that fact.

I sure didn't see them running a story on the Taliban and Al-Qaeda cease-fire that was implemented for the Canadian PMs visit, so the facts are...if the enemy is working...so are we; and as long as the enemy is working and we aren't ...we're bitching. It's what soldiers do. We've got brethren to support and look after outside that wire, and that's always more important. I say, let the bitching continue...that's a good sign.



 
+1 Vern, well said in defence of soldiers.
I'd like to add some comments about other things that were added from the papers. 
"Greasy eggs and greasy bacon"?  I hope the K.O. of Kandahar didn't read that!  Because I'm sure that Robert Fife WILL get some greasy eggs and bacon.  I can't believe that Robert said such drivel.  Unless he was trying to make it look good for the folks back home..."and after I finish my report, I have to go put on a heavy helmet and sleep in a trench with three other people who haven't washed in about a week"  Cry for me, mother.  I've never had either while on tour.  Rats, now I'm hungry for bacon and eggs.  There's goes my cholestoral for the day.
Why is that CBC has to run a story about what one little MCPL said on his way out the door?  Most of us have said something like it as we've come off parade or had to stand and listen to the Comd speil off about how good we are and what a wonderful job we're doing.. {??} I find that the liberal backed CBC lacks better things to do and / or it must have been a slow news day and they wanted to scoop the competition by pooping all over a Troop.  Well, phewy on CBC, I never watched you anyway.
I think it looks good on the PM and MND [again!] to go visit the troops and support them in person.  Wish we could all do that.  Plus the PM was pushing the fact that we are doing good over there for the people.  Not our fault that the Taliban like to blow up what our guys just built.  Hamid Karsai wants his country to be a strong democracy.  Good luck and here's some Canadian help. 
Kudos to the PM.
:p to CBC. 

:salute:
:army:
 
There is no doubt in my mind that some people in KAF did have "better things to do", but don't you think by now that we should have learned to contuct ourselves with a little more tact and grace than uttering a comment like "what a waste of a morning", especially in front of the media?
And as far as people leaving early goes, who defined what early is? Maybe this is a point that the leadership should have brought up prior to the event taking place, after all the PM has supported us and our families more that any PM in recent memory, the least we can do is show some support for him, ultimately, that is who our paycheques are coming from!
 
FatwogCpl said:
And as far as people leaving early goes, who defined what early is?
That's a very good point.  After all, in one sentence, they are described as "leaving early" and in the very next "after the PM had finished".  Much ado about nothing, I'm afraid.

 
FatwogCpl said:
There is no doubt in my mind that some people in KAF did have "better things to do", but don't you think by now that we should have learned to contuct ourselves with a little more tact and grace than uttering a comment like "what a waste of a morning", especially in front of the media?
And as far as people leaving early goes, who defined what early is? Maybe this is a point that the leadership should have brought up prior to the event taking place, after all the PM has supported us and our families more that any PM in recent memory, the least we can do is show some support for him, ultimately, that is who our paycheques are coming from!

If the media thought the soldiers comment was anything more than an aside...they'd have been all over him looking for details to add to his soundbite. Who's to say his comment wasn't  followed by a "when I have real work that needs to happen," after all the only context the CBC has choosen to give us here is their very own "the troops left early spin" which obviously did not occur. No, the troops began to leave when the PMs speach was over. They contradict even themselves. Once again, it's the media spin...and based upon their own contradictory "setting" and "context" of troops leaving early/after the speach... I'm willing to give the soldier the benefit of the doubt...because I am one and understand where he's coming from.

By the way, leaving the PMs speach after it's over, in no way insinuates that one doesn't support him. I think your last sentence reflects the fact you bought the media spin the CBC has thrown into the mix on this one.

 
I understand, i get it but, is that a comment you would make? I put nothing past the obviously liberal influenced media. With cameras present, i usually subscribe to the theory "it is better to keep your mouth closed and be thought a fool than to open your mouth and prove it". As far as the leaving early thing goes, maybe i did not make myself clear. Apperently the media decided what early was after hearing the whole " where do you think you are going" thing. Like i said i don't put anything past them. They make as many assumptions if not more than we do, the only difference is the rest of the world gets to hear about them, without context.
 
I'm a civvy so my read on it is a bit different.

The muttering can be taken as proof that the reporter
was "in contact" with the army.
In short he was creating atmosphere.

Yes, the whole thing could have been more flattering for Harper.

But when the press is going to be used( as is the PMs prerogative )
the press is not going to be uniformly supportive.

So ,what? By tomorrow It's gone.
Along with the message that there's some good going on.

In the TV segment last night I recall hearing "these pins ( on a map )represent that
Canada is everywhere"  meaning reconsruction.

Better than nothing............
What if the PM gave a party and no one came?






 
If it was purely the journos speculating on the troops departure I'd be happy to assume they had other duties - but an officer told them to get back in which seems like they were bunking off to me I'm afraid.
 
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