Mr. Speaker, I move that the third report of the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade, a report expressing concern over the situation in Afghanistan, presented to the House on Wednesday, May 30, 2001, be concurred in.
At the time that this report was tabled in May, the tragic situation in Afghanistan was a matter for concern and compassion, but few Canadians, and in fact few people anywhere, would have thought at that time that Afghanistan would loom so large in world politics and certainly in Canadian politics just a few months later. However the world is a much smaller place than it was before September 11, 2001, and events occurring half a world away are now matters of vital public concern which may directly affect the safety and security of Canadians.
The report was spearheaded by one of the members of the Canadian Alliance caucus, the hon. member for Calgary East, who is our CIDA critic and deeply concerned with human rights and international security, as all of us are. At his initiative the committee tabled this report, expressing its concern over the repressive policies of the Taliban regime. In particular, the hon. member was shocked at the edict of the Taliban requiring that members of Afghanistan's Hindu and Sikh communities, the minority communities, wear a yellow patch on their clothing to publicly identify themselves.
Afghanistan's Hindus and Sikhs are a beleaguered minority whose numbers have fallen from about 50,000 in the 1970s to around 500 today after decades of civil war. The Taliban claims that this measure is to allow police to protect the Hindu and Sikh minority, but this repressive measure is eerily reminiscent of the Nuremberg laws and other repressive Nazi laws against the Jews, which in 1939 required all Polish Jews to wear a yellow Star of David on their clothing.
Not surprisingly, at the time this repressive edict was released, spokespeople for the Canadian Jewish community reacted strongly. Canadian Jewish Congress national president, Keith Landy, said the following:
This is an edict that should be condemned by all who support religious freedom and the rights of minorities. The Taliban regime has demonstrated its lack of respect for human rights in the past. This is but one more gesture to return Afghanistan to the Middle Ages.
He went on to say that Jews and other minorities have often been subject to such discriminatory dress edicts, most recently during the Nazi domination of Europe. This is a chilling reminder of those times and the fact that such laws are never passed for the benefit of the minority affected. This is the kind of so-called protection that minorities have to be protected from and serves mainly to make them targets either of the authorities or of populations incited to hatred. We must stand against this.
Mr. Landy went on to say:
We urge the Canadian government to convey to the Taliban rulers of Afghanistan the horror of all Canadians at such clear discrimination against religious minority and to call for this odious measure to be rescinded immediately... We must also continue to press for UN action against a regime which has shown a blatant disregard for all international human rights norms.
This edict of May 22, 2001, against the Hindus and Sikhs was simply one of a number of repressive measures the Taliban has taken which have drawn worldwide attention and worldwide condemnation. In March of this year, the Taliban destroyed two historic statues of the Buddha at Bamiyan. These statues were respectively 38 and 53 metres tall and had stood there for 2,000 years.
In August, eight American, Australian and German aid workers with the Christian charity called Shelter Now were arrested and accused of proselytizing in favour of Christianity, a crime which can carry the death penalty in Afghanistan. The whereabouts of those young aid workers are now unknown.
Of course most horrifically of all, on September 11 terrorists linked to Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda terrorist organization, whom the Taliban have given shelter and support, murdered some 7,000 people in the ruthless attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
Many Canadians who have paid little attention to the events and the problems in a far-off land are now wondering how such a murderous and barbarous regime could have possibly come about.
Afghanistan's traditional monarchy was overthrown in 1973 and was eventually replaced with a pro-Soviet government. This led to the 1979 Soviet invasion which was heavily resisted by tribal militia known as the Mujaheddin. In 1989 the Soviet invaders withdrew. In 1992 the Mujaheddin finally took over Kabul and ousted the Soviet backed regime. The different factions within the movement could not work together and quickly fell to infighting and corruption. In the midst of all of this chaos, a group of young, reform minded Sunni Muslim students, or Taliban, arose in southern Afghanistan and in religious schools in Pakistan.
They swept to power by 1996 and put in place a radical Islamic regime. While there was initially hope from the people that the young and so-called idealistic Taliban would bring about economic and political reform, these hopes were quickly dashed as the government brought in more and more repressive measures, such as killing minority Shiite Muslims and banning women from all work and education.
One of the forces driving the Taliban into adopting ever more radical and extremist interpretations of the law was Osama bin Laden. Bin Laden, a Saudi multimillionaire, helped support and fought with the Mujaheddin against the Soviets in the 1980s. He returned to Saudi Arabia where he quickly turned against his own government when it accepted American and western military assistance, including Canadian, in the gulf war against Iraq.
Bin Laden began to orchestrate terrorist acts against American soldiers in Saudi Arabia and other American assets abroad. Eventually he left Saudi Arabia for the Sudan to help that country's new radical regime. When in 1996, under Saudi and American pressure, the Sudanese expelled bin Laden, the new Taliban regime in Afghanistan offered bin Laden refuge.
Welcoming bin Laden turned out to be a deal with the devil for the Taliban. Bin Laden provided funding and military advice to the Taliban which unfortunately it gratefully accepted, but he also used Afghanistan as a base for his al-Qaeda organization which became a university for terror groups from around the world.
Terrorists from dozens of countries, including some who came from Canada, have gone to Afghanistan to train in the al-Qaeda camps. They have done this with the full knowledge of and support from the Taliban. Meanwhile bin Laden and al-Qaeda have driven the Taliban into ever more extremist and radical interpretations of the law, including such barbaric measures as the destruction of the Buddhist temples, as I have referred to, or forcing the Hindus and Sikhs to wear yellow tags on their clothing, as I have already mentioned. These measures instigated by bin Laden and his global band of extremists and implemented by the Taliban regime have turned Afghanistan into an international pariah state.
At the time of the third report of the standing committee, the members called for increased Canadian action against the Taliban through the United Nations. While we should continue to use the United Nations process to condemn the brutal acts of bin Laden and his Taliban supporters, the events of September 11 must force us to consider more direct responses to the threat of terrorism.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair said only yesterday that the Taliban is “a regime founded on fear, and funded largely by drugs and crime”. He said clearly and unequivocally that the Taliban must surrender bin Laden and his associates or face the military wrath of the civilized world.
Prime Minister Blair said:
--if they stand in the way of bringing bin Laden and those associated with him to account, then they are every bit as much our enemy as bin Laden himself...they will be treated as an enemy and their regime will be treated as an enemy.
He also stated:
--military conflict there will be unless the Taliban change and respond to the ultimatum that has been so clearly delivered to them.
In a speech to the United States congress last Thursday, President Bush spoke in similarly forceful terms. He said:
In Afghanistan, we see al-Qaeda's vision for the world.
Afghanistan's people have been brutalized--many are starving and many have fled. Women are not allowed to attend school. You can be jailed for owning a television. Religion can be practised only as their leaders dictate. A man can be jailed in Afghanistan if his beard is not long enough.
He went on to state:
The United States respects the people of Afghanistan--after all, we are currently its largest source of humanitarian aid--but we condemn the Taliban regime. It is not only repressing its own people, it is threatening people everywhere by sponsoring and sheltering and supplying terrorists. By aiding and abetting murder, the Taliban regime is committing murder.
That night he went on to say:
--tonight, the United States of America makes the following demands on the Taliban: Deliver to authorities all of the leaders of al Qaeda who hide in your land. Release all foreign nationals, including American citizens, you have unjustly imprisoned. Protect foreign journalists, diplomats and aid workers in your country. Close immediately and permanently every terrorist training camp in Afghanistan, and hand over every terrorist, and every person in their support structure, to appropriate authorities. Give the United States full access to terrorist training camps, so we can make sure they are no longer operating...These demands are not open to negotiation or discussion. The Taliban must act, and act immediately. They will hand over the terrorists, or they will share in their fate.
The Government of Canada and members of the House such as the member for Calgary East have indeed condemned the outrages against human rights and the international order that have been perpetrated by the Taliban. However, as the words of Prime Minister Blair and President Bush illustrate, the time for UN resolutions is quickly giving way to the need for a military solution to the problem of the Taliban regime and increased domestic security measures to prevent terrorist groups, whether Taliban backed or not, from jeopardizing the safety and security of Canadian citizens at home.
We have not heard words as strong condemning the Taliban from our own Prime Minister or the Minister of Foreign Affairs. We are simply asking the question why. Unlike the United States and the United Kingdom we cannot credibly threaten the Taliban regime with the military response which it so richly deserves and which is justified, incidentally, under article 51 of the United Nations charter granting nations the right to individual and collective self-defence.
The lesson for Canadians from September 11, 2001, is that we cannot take our safety and security for granted. We cannot assume that in a post-cold war world all threats to our national security have vanished. They have not vanished and we cannot afford to run our military into the ground.