POPPIES BEHIND AFGHAN WAR

Canada has now flown 36 soldiers and one diplomat out of Afghanistan
in caskets.

There doubtless will be more bodies to be transported home in weeks
and months to come, a notion that may carry heavy political
ramifications for the Harper government as an election inevitably approaches.

Conservatives, as a result of the mid-May vote they engineered in the
Commons, bear full responsibility for extending the Canadian mission
in Kandahar for an additional two years, to 2009.

Most Canadians haven't access to the necessary information for a
thorough analysis of the strategic imperatives behind the Afghan mission.

The nightly news offers differing messages about what is being achieved.

Sometimes it sounds as though there are successes -- such as young
girls getting to go to school. Other times it sounds as though we're
fighting a senseless, losing battle -- as when it was learned a while
back that an Afghan who'd converted to Christianity faced a death
sentence (a penalty not carried out, thanks to international pressure.

We've been advised Canada will shortly be boosting its troop strength
from 2,200 to 2,500, mostly in Kandahar province.

And, at the United Nations last Thursday, Prime Minister Harper --
who received Afghan President Hamid Karzai late last week in Ottawa
- -- reaffirmed Canada's commitment: "The success of the UN-supported
mission in Afghanistan, in providing both security and development,
is vital to the Afghan people."

Foreign Affairs' website notes that Canada intends to maintain its
Canadian International Development Agency funding at $100 million for
the current fiscal year. Our contribution from 2001 to 2009 will
total $650 million to $1 billion, depending on which report coming
out of Ottawa you read.

"With help from Canada and other donors, Afghanistan is making
significant progress," the website claims.

Is It Progress?

Is that true?

Not if you believe warnings emanating from the Senlis Council, a
respected international policy think-tank with offices in Kabul,
London, Paris and Brussels.

The council, with field researchers on the ground in the cities of
Kandahar, Lashkar Gah and Herat, asserts that Canada is making a
major error in following the American-British approach toward
reconstruction in Afghanistan.

The council is urging Canada and its European allies to turn their
backs on a failing U.S. approach encompassed by that nation's
so-called Operation Enduring Freedom, an approach that is all about
"aggressive and inflammatory" counterterrorism.

The rebuilding of Afghanistan has to start with poverty eradication,
Senlis argues. And that requires an entirely different approach to
Afghanistan's pervasive poppy production.

While roads and bridges are indeed getting rebuilt, people in the
south of the country lack such basics as food and water.

Poverty relief must be the priority and, currently, poppy production
is the only means of economic survival for many. Switching to
alternative crops takes time and cash.

Reports the Senlis Council: "Many Afghan farmers have turned to the
Taliban, who are offering protection to farmers from forced poppy
eradication. In this way, support for the Taliban has increased. The
Taliban now have de facto control of the southern half of Afghanistan."

The council further argues that Turkey offers a model for
transitioning poppy production -- now feeding an opium black market
- -- into a viable, legal and licensed industry in Afghanistan that
would produce morphine-type painkillers for an international market
currently short of such products.

Certainly this would be difficult to achieve in today's Afghanistan,
where the governance and legal infrastructure remain so rudimentary.

But should Canada's efforts be reconsidered, to ensure this country
isn't inadvertently augmenting support for the Taliban, to ensure
Canadian troops aren't presenting themselves as warriors rather than
peacekeepers focusing on genuine reconstruction?

New Insights

Is the Senlis Council right? Is Canada becoming too associated in
Afghan minds with the U.S. counterterrorism effort, which features
aggressive pursuit of Taliban wackos and the inevitable collateral
civilian damage that goes along with it?

The least that ought to occur as a result of this new insight offered
by Senlis is for the Harperites to start a frank dialogue with
Canadians about our Afghan commitment -- so the public can make an
informed opinion on what it is we're aiming to accomplish over there.

That surely is the minimum called for in any democracy.