BRIAN LAGHI From Thursday's Globe and Mail POSTED AT 2:49 AM EDT ON 20/07/06
OTTAWA — Opposition to the Canadian presence in Afghanistan is intensifying, as almost half of voters surveyed say they want Prime Minister Stephen Harper to immediately withdraw troops from a conflict that is becoming a potential voting issue.
The results are found in a new national poll conducted after Corporal Anthony Boneca became the 17th Canadian killed in Afghanistan and on a weekend when eight Canadians were killed in an Israeli air strike in Lebanon.
“There's a feeling that it's gotten much worse, ‘so get them out now, it's becoming a quagmire,' “ said pollster Timothy Woolstencroft of the Strategic Counsel, which conducted the poll for The Globe and Mail/CTV News.
“We think that we're peacekeepers, not peacemakers, and in many ways Canadians haven't really come to understand that we have a combat role. As they see evidence of body bags and Canadians getting killed and maimed, their sense of well-being about the purpose of the war is eroded.”
Concern about Afghanistan and the environment both registered high in the poll, although they appear to be the only real vulnerabilities facing Mr. Harper as his government enjoys an 11-percentage-point lead over the Liberals. Indeed, Mr. Woolstencroft said Mr. Harper might start considering the possibility of calling an election if he can stickhandle the environment and the war.
The poll found that 41 per cent of those surveyed — including 54 per cent in Quebec — believe Canadian troops should be brought home now, while 34 per cent say Canadians should remain in Afghanistan for a limited period of two years or more. Twenty-one per cent say Canadians should stay for as long as it takes to stabilize the country.
Similarly, 48 per cent said the effort in Afghanistan was going worse than expected. Only 12 per cent said it was better, while 35 per cent said things were about the same. A declining number of Canadians said they support sending the troops. Of those surveyed, 39 per cent backed the idea, down from 55 per cent in March, around the time Mr. Harper visited the country. Fifty-six per cent now oppose the mission, up 15 percentage points from March.
Mr. Woolstencroft said the dropping support for the Afghanistan mission may be tied in with the recent deaths of Canadians in Lebanon.
“Afghanistan, Iraq and the Middle East — they're very far away and Canadians probably aren't making a lot of distinction,” he said.
The poll of 1,000 Canadians was taken July 13-16, days after Cpl. Boneca's death July 9 in Afghanistan and just as the conflagration in Lebanon was set off. The poll is accurate to within 3.1 percentage points, 95 per cent of the time.
The survey also found that 7 per cent of Canadians believe the war on terrorism is the most important issue facing Canada today, tied for third with government leadership, but behind health care and the environment. Only 1 per cent of voters listed it as their major concern in January.
“If you look at a year ago, we had Gomery and health care,” Mr. Woolstencroft said, referring to the inquiry under Mr. Justice John Gomery into the Liberal government's sponsorship program. “Now Gomery's disappeared ... and terrorism has moved in.”
The terrorism issue and the increasing importance of the environment suggest Mr. Harper could be vulnerable in Quebec in an election. The Conservatives' popularity has remained relatively static in the province, as it has in the rest of the country. The major difference in the political landscape comes in the support for the Liberals, which is hovering at 26 per cent, down four percentage points from the Jan. 23 election. The Tories are up one point to 37 per cent, while the New Democrats are stationary at 18 per cent.
More significantly for Mr. Harper, 61 per cent of Canadians surveyed believe that his government is on the right track, while 38 per cent say the Conservatives are performing better than expected and only 12 per cent saying they are doing worse.
“It looks like they might be wise to go for an early election,” before opposition to Afghanistan really starts to gel, Mr. Woolstencroft said.
Meanwhile, ongoing drought may drive Afghans to join the Taliban.
By Tom Regan | csmonitor.com posted July 18, 2006 at 12:00 p.m.
Afghan troops were preparing Tuesday to retake a town in the country's dangerous Helmand province that one official said had been "technically and temporarily" left to Taliban insurgents and Pakistani militants.
The Associated Press reports that between 300 and 400 Afghan soldiers [ http://www.forbes.com/business/energy/feeds/ap/2006/07/18/ap2885610.html ] were heading to the southern town of Garmser. "Our soldiers are going to Garmser with the support of the coalition to take it back from the Taliban," said Amir Mohammed Akhunzada, the deputy governor of Helmand province.
In Kabul, AP reports that government officials accused the outlawed Pakistan-based militant Islamic group Lashkar-e-Tayyaba and the pro-Taliban political party Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam of taking over Garmser. Afghan police battled with the insurgents for 16 days before the police were forced to withdraw.
[Deputy Interior Minister Abdul Malik Sidiqi] said a second Helmand town that had been overrun by militants - Naway-i-Barakzayi - was reclaimed by government forces late Monday. "They burned the Afghan flag and raised the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam flag in the district."
While Taliban militants have long operated freely in former southern stronghold provinces, their capture of a town highlights the weakness of Afghanistan's police forces in remote areas and the challenge ahead of US-coalition troops to restore order in the country.
Across the border in Pakistan, police arrested former Taliban commander Mullah Hamdullah and 140 illegal Afghan migrants over the past 48 hours. The Press Trust of India reports that the migrants will be sent back to Afghanistan [ http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/7598_1746833,000500020000.htm ].
"We will arrest Afghans entering illegally into Pakistan and the Afghan refugees would be confined to their camps, as investigators have found involvement of Afghans in three bomb blasts in the city," he said.
He did not say whether the detained Afghans were directly suspected of militant activity.
Reuters reports that 40 other people, including men who held official positions [ http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/SP230692.htm ] when the Taliban ruled Afghanistan, were also arrested in Pakistan Monday.
Meanwhile, the BBC reports that the country is now facing another problem [ http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/5189052.stm ] - massive drought. And the drought is worse in the areas where the Taliban have the most "influence," reports show.
Much of the country's wheat crop has failed this year because of lower than expected snowfall during the winter and poor spring rains. Families are already reported to be going hungry in provinces as far Badakshan in the north-east and Josjan in the west.
Thousands of people in Zabul province have left their villages to search for food, but the World Food Programme says it does not have the resources to help them.
"There are many villages where, because development agencies can't operate normally in conditions of insurgency, people don't have enough to eat," a diplomat said.
"If the Taliban arrive with a little cash, that can be enough to induce people to join."
"It is sometimes easier to see the progress made from a distance," Rumsfeld said in the letter posted today on the Web site of the Combined Forces Command - Afghanistan. "It is clear to most outside observers that Afghanistan has come far since its liberation in 2001."
Rumsfeld, who visited Afghanistan last week, said the US remains committed to the country's success. His letter was sent to Afghan newspaper editors, the military command said.
Experts can quibble over how much of a stronghold Taliban fighters have established in the main city, Kabul. But there's little disagreement about the amount of damage the Taliban has done to Afghan girls since trying to regain power. The Taliban banned girls' education when it controlled the country. Girls poured back into Afghanistan's single-sex schools after the successful US invasion. But now, IRIN, a United Nations news agency, confirms, "Over the past months, girls' schools in Kandahar, Sar-e Pol, Zabol, Lowgar, and Vardak provinces have been attacked. Most followed written threats posted overnight in towns and villages in these regions, ordering residents not to send their girls to school."
Ms. Erbe adds that a Human Rights Watch report on education in Afghanistan [ http://www.hrw.org/reports/2006/afghanistan0706/index.htm ] found "some areas where the majority of primary-school-age girls do not attend school at all and only 5 percent of girls compared with 20 percent of boys attend secondary schools."
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