“Canada is my country, too”

Abdul Rahim Parwani, 42, lives in Vancouver with his wife Sami, and daughters Soraya, Maryam, and Asma. He’s the director of the weekly Ariana television program on Vancouver’s M Channel. He was the editor of the Kabul literary journal Tarjuma, which published its last issue just as the theocratic fascists known as the Taliban seized power in Afghanistan in 1996.

Parwani fled to India, and except for a short stint working back in New Delhi for the Afghan embassy there he has lived in Canada for six years. He loves this country, but he is worried. He’s worried about the incoherence of the public debate in Canada about our role in Afghanistan – an incoherence I attribute as much to certain sections of the so-called “anti-war” left as to the American spin our new Conservative government is putting on everything.

“I’m very afraid that we are going to make the same mistake again,” Parwani says, “like when everyone forgot about Afghanistan until 9/11. Now, in some areas, the security situation is already worsening, and the Taliban is reorganizing.”

Canada has a greater contribution to make to Afghanistan than just killing fascists, no matter how necessary that work may be. In my Chronicles column today, I try to make the case that a robust, internationalist, progressive and humanitarian perspective on Afghanistan may yet emerge from Canada’s “left.” I’m optimistic because of people like her, and people like him, but mainly because of people like the guy in the photograph above.

Pte. Robert Costall was “a gentle kid” from a place just across the water from the island where I live. He graduated from the Sunshine Coast Alternative School. Robert was a guy who wanted to “make a difference” for the people of Afghanistan. He was a kid who “cared about what was right and wrong.”