Thank you.
Thank you for inviting me to speak to you tonight.
I think we are among the last to speak and I'm pretty pleased about that. I don't usually like being last, but in the last few days, we have managed to see evidence, very clear evidence, that the Taliban have not moderated. They are the same hateful, misogynist, mostly illiterate thugs that they were when I first met them soon after they took over in 1996.
I am a journalist. I covered them then, and I have covered Afghanistan ever since, so I'm very pleased to have this opportunity to address your committee tonight to bring facts as I know them that you can deliberate.
I have three points to make: the Taliban, the Afghans and the Canadians.
First, we have the Taliban. They were born out of a system that was created by misery and poverty. They were educated at madrasahs in Pakistan, where they learned hatred and misogyny. They couldn't govern then, when they took over in 1996, and then cannot govern now, but this time, they sold themselves as “moderated” and they did that to a world that had been coached by former president of the United States Donald Trump and his gang to begin to overlook Afghanistan.
I can tell you that from mid-August, when they strutted into Kabul, my social media platforms, my WhatsApp and and my Messenger have been filled with mind-jarring videos of what the Taliban are doing: whipping young women and handing the whip from man to man to man around a circle while the women scream for mercy and suffer the pain of the whipping. Besides that, the Taliban, as they took each village, demanded a list of all the girls over the age of 14 and all the widows under the age of 44 to give to their soldiers because, according to them, they're allowed four each that God told them they had the right to have.
These are the miscreants that former American president Donald Trump negotiated with, and his actions in ignoring the Afghan government—which certainly had problems of its own—and elevating these thugs as conquerors whipped them into a frenzy to make demands such as releasing hardened criminals, murderers, into the community. Also, they kept saying they had moderated their views, although whenever they were asked, “How do you now view sharia law?”, they wouldn't answer the question.
Pundits refer to the Taliban as a rigid version of sharia law. That's not so. There's not a word in the Quran to support what the Taliban have done. Then and now, what they've done is that they've hijacked their own religion for political opportunism. They got away with it then, and they're getting away with it now. What do they do with it? They thrash girls to show they're serving God. The only difference today is that they've been joined by discontented jihadis from around the world, men who couldn't give a fig about the Geneva Conventions or military codes of conduct.
Let's talk about the Afghans. Imagine saying that the Afghans couldn't defend themselves. It makes me think that in one year the scientists found a vaccine to save all the people in the whole world, but in 20 years, their politicians and the politicians from the countries that came, presumably, to help them could not find the path to peace. How can anyone blame those innocent people, who were totally sold out by their warlords, by their tribal leaders, by their own government and, frankly, by all of us?
Now let's talk about the Canadians—the true north. As you know, it has been said that our 20 years there were a failure. Well, I can tell you something about those 20 years. I can tell you that while your tax dollars were at work, the life expectancy in Afghanistan went from 47 years to 63 years. That's not a failure. That's a miracle.
Then, when they were in trouble and we all went away and said, “You're on your own now”, Canada said, “We'll take the vulnerable ones, we'll take them fast, and over time we'll take 40,000.” That didn't happen. It didn't happen because IRCC either was incompetent in doing its job or chose not to do its job. There are so many excuses. One of them said to me, “Well, we're not digitalized, you know.” In 2022? That's pretty shameful. Or it's “We're overworked” or “We're overwhelmed.” None of these are excuses.