Clueless in Afghanistan

While fighting the war in Afghanistan, the Harper government also claims we are doing good humanitarian and infrastructure work in the country, winning hearts and minds away from the Taliban - part of their justification for wanting to stay beyond next year's deadline.

This would be a bit more believable if we had more Canadians who spoke the local languages: six years after going to Afghanistan, the Department of National Defense has only a handful of people that can speak Dari or Pashto - a year and half ago the DND hired 'about 15' Afghan-Canadians (they said the exact number was not being revealed for 'security reasons'). If you've ever traveled in such places, the idea of winning hearts and minds while working through hired local translators seems like a bit of a long shot.

And now we find that the 25,000 Afghans in Canada have hardly been consulted about how development work might proceed in Afghanistan.

http://canadianpress.google.com/article/ALeqM5jrH2...

How can we spend 1.3 billion dollars on tanks, and not bother to hire the Canadians who are in the best position to be effective in actually helping Afghanistan?