Mr. Speaker, the war has not substantially improved the plight of the people of Afghanistan.
When the allies, including Canada, let the warlords, including the Northern Alliance, form the new Afghani government, they gave power to rapists.
Between 1992 and 1996, the Northern Alliance gratuitously killed and massacred, sowing terror in Kabul. They forced women in Afghanistan to wear the veil. They also hold the record for the most rapes of girls and women aged seven to seventy in that country.
There is a long list of massacres. They deserve to be judged by the international court. Canada, as an ally, turned power over to them. The Minister for International Cooperation announced last week that Canada would provide an additional $250 million in assistance to Afghanistan.
The money will fund four priorities established by the government of Afghanistan: community development, natural resource management, heightened security and improved legislation, and support for the current government.
While Canadian reports, including those from Rights & Democracy and from Afghan-Canadian women, are condemning the Afghan government in power and urging donor countries to suspend all financial and military assistance to warlords and find practical ways of helping the Afghan people, the Canadian government is announcing millions of dollars in funding for that government.
Granted, the United Nations reported that the situation of Afghan women has improved since our allies went in, but one might wonder what was the basis for this statement. Is the fact that women are no longer required to wear the burka indicative of a real change in attitude? They have seen their access to education, health care and employment improve, but they are still living in an unsafe environment.
These women are no fools. They know who is in power. They live every day in the fear of a return of the terror of the 1990s. They continue to wear the burka for their protection. The ruling Northern Alliance is destroying any chance of change. Human Rights Watch reported that the situation of women has even deteriorated in some regions of Afghanistan. They are now allowed to study, but their schools are being burned down. Moreover, women are the victims of organized abuse by local governments. The rules put in place by the Taliban are still in force in some parts of the country.
We know that Iraq is a country that does not respect human rights, even less so when it comes to women. On a daily basis, women and men in Iraq must live under a reign of terror that is not unlike the one that used to exist in Afghanistan. As we know, any woman who exercises the right to freedom of expression runs the risk of having her tongue cut out.
Women who oppose the regime and the wives of men who oppose it are killed. This situation—and I will conclude on this—has been known for a very long time, but until now it has seldom been condemned.
Again, I ask the government: Will it ensure that the humanitarian relief it provides when the Iraq war is over will be used exclusively to help the people, and not the government, as in Afghanistan?