Paul S. Graham

PAUL GRAHAM:  Owen Schalk is a writer of short stories, novels, political analyses, and essays on film and literature. He is a columnist at Canadian Dimension, and has written for Alborada, Monthly Review, Protean Magazine, and many other publications. His most recent book is entitled Canada in Afghanistan: A story of military, diplomatic, political and media failure, 2003-2023. It’s published this year by Lorimer and available online in paperback and e-book formats and at better bookstores across Canada. Owen’s book and what it says about Canadian foreign policy more generally is the topic of our discussion today.

Owen, and I’d like to begin by telling you how much I enjoyed reading your book. It’s well written and comprehensive. You provide an historical context for Canada’s involvement in America’s so-called War on Terror and it’s a context that most Canadians are not aware of and you bring to light many facts about Canada’s actions that thoughtful Canadians would find disturbing. So welcome. I’m really glad to talk to you.

OWEN SCHALK: Yeah, likewise. Thank you for the invite and thanks for that introduction.

PAUL GRAHAM:  Let’s begin by talking about the scope of Canada’s involvement in the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan that began in 2003. What specifically did we do? Why did we do it, and what impact did our actions have in Afghanistan and for that matter, on Canada.

OWEN SCHALK:  Yeah so in the book, I divide the military mission itself into four sections, and each section is represented by a major Canadian operation in Afghanistan. So I go through Operation Apollo – that’s from 2001 to 2003, then Operation Athena, Phase One, Athena Phase Two and then ending with Operation Attention. That brings us to 2014 and the withdrawal, and each of these operations had different tactics and aims, but taken together, they paint a picture of Canadian involvement that’s very wide-ranging. I mean, by the end, this mission cost us at least $18.5 billions. It involved ground, naval and air troops, special forces operations, psychological operations, development initiatives, domestic propaganda and more. These operations were embedded in a geopolitical context that saw Canada work with the US and work with NATO in Washington’s pursuit of a certain regional and global order.

So just running very briefly through these four operations that I used to structure the book, we begin with Operation Apollo which was Canada’s contribution to Operation Enduring Freedom – the actual invasion of Afghanistan. And that involved about 7000 Canadian troops working hand in glove with U.S. forces, and it ultimately involved almost every single part of the Department of National Defence. It was very, very comprehensive mission. And that that brings us to 2003, where we inaugurate the first phase of Operation Athena, which is based in Kabul.

And Athena Phase One is meant to support the goals of the ISAF in the capital. That’s the International Security Assistance Force and provide security for the new authorities as they organize elections for Parliament and President.

And so CIDA sets up offices during this time. The Canadian ambassador is welcomed back in a splashy ceremony. Thousands of Canadian soldiers are deployed to help set up this new this new constitution, the new elections, all of which, of course, excludes the Taliban and does not empower the true democrats in the country or those fighting for gender equality or economic equality. It’s designed to empower the Northern Alliance, which is this alliance of Northern warlords and militias, Tajiks, Uzbeks and Hazaras, who are for a lot of reasons opposed to the Taliban, which is Pashtun organization.

And Athena, in this phase involved police patrols, Canadian planners becoming tight with the new President, Hamid Karzai, influencing the new government’s economic policies toward a neoliberal orientation.

And it must be said, too, that the elections that Canada provided security for here were not exactly “free and fair” – to use the term that’s bandied about a lot today. The warlords were never disarmed, despite the population wanting that, knowing that intimidation would follow if they were not. There were reports of multiple voting and of course, foreign money, like US money, flowing to the winning presidential candidate, Hamid Karzai.

And that brings us to 2005, with the second phase of Athena, in which Canadian forces moved to Kandahar with the provincial reconstruction team.

And that’s really Canada most significant investment in the war. Once Karzai is entrenched in the capital, the Canadian forces relieve the US military from Kandahar, and they bring in what’s called a 3D approach, the defence development and diplomacy, but practically that means that the defence, the military component really, really dominates, and Canadian actions in Kandahar could be very heavy-handed, and they sowed a lot of distrust amongst the Afghan people there. It was really in Kandahar, where you see, like the big military operations – Operation Mountain Thrust, Operation Medusa. The development programs really get going with schools, health, education, the Dahla Dam, polio eradication: you know, very well advertised initiatives that were, in the end not successful if they were ever meant to be, but they did serve one important purpose, which was obscuring the fact that Canada was involved in this counterinsurgency war and not, as it was branded, a humanitarian peacekeeping mission. And that goes until 2011, when Canadian troops moved back to Kabul with Operation Attention, which is mainly a training mission that lasts to 2014 and then they withdraw.

So why did we do it? Why were we there from 2001 to 2014? And what impact did these actions have? I would say the reasons we were there have been very obscured by media censorship, on the one hand, and also propaganda. The military journalist David Pugliese says that this was the most extensive propaganda campaign designed to convince the Canadian public about the need for this war since World War Two and it was massive in scale. And the narrative that was forwarded at that time was that we were there to support human rights, to plant the seed of democracy and gender equality and the Real geopolitical interests, things like regional investment, the arms industry, the geopolitics: all of these things were not included in this narrative.

And what was the impact? I mean, all the major development initiatives failed. The Dahla Dam was never repaired, polio wasn’t eradicated. Canadian built schools often had few or no students. There were in some areas of the country for sure, life got easier for women, but Canada’s promotion of gender equality conflicted with the views of a lot of people Canada was supporting in the Karzai government. Like in 2009, Hamid Karzai endorsed a law legalizing rape within marriage and banning women from leaving their home without their husband’s permission. And this was Canada’s guy.

So, I guess to sum up this question, Canada dedicated a lot of resources to the occupation, but they did so out of material self-interest, the material self-interest of the state and they did not achieve much for the people of Afghanistan.

PAUL GRAHAM:  When most Canadians think about Afghanistan, if in fact they think about it at all, they do tend to remember the military operations, the losses of life, of Canadians. Perhaps they even think about the many Afghan citizens who died in that conflict. But Canada’s role and you alluded to this a few minutes ago, was much broader than strictly a military one. They were participants in government in a fairly significant way. I wonder if you could talk a b it about that.

OWEN SCHALK:  Yeah, of course. So, other than the military role, I think the most important aspect to consider is the economic one.

So at the time of the mission we were in that end of history moment as it was called after the Cold War, when Western leaders were telling the world that free enterprise and Western style democracy were the future. These models would inevitably spread, and that this was the end of any ideological conflict over economics. It would only be over culture from now on.

So the economic model that Canada supported in Afghanistan and around the world was a free market model, very neoliberal that reduced the power of the state and increased the power of foreign actors and international investors, including Canadian investors.

So I mentioned that during Athena Phase One, Canadian officials became very involved in the Afghan Government’s economic policy. There was actually a team of Canadian forces personnel called the Strategic Advisory Team – Afghanistan, the SAT-A, who were installed at the highest levels of the Afghan Government to advise on economic policy.

And they even helped write the Afghan national development strategy, which affirmed that privatization and the free market would be the guiding principles of the new Afghan economy.

So Canadian officers, they advised the economics team, they advised electoral officers, the president himself and the SATA was highly influential, like out of all proportion to their size. As part of this new economic model imposed on Afghanistan, we saw a lot of Canadian companies invest and secure lucrative, lucrative contracts.

In the country we saw mining companies pour in, engineering firms, consultants and more.

We can also say more about the development side of things – like the these aid initiatives that were so well publicized and celebrated. In reality, they were mainly photogenic, not concerned with the actual development of the Afghan economy. And at the same time that we had these development initiatives furthering a certain narrative about the mission, we also had Canadian companies coming in and  they were the ones who were doing well off of this occupation. It wasn’t the Afghan people themselves, by and large.

So yeah, the military component was the most visible. It was the most talked about, but the economic dimension and foreign aid – those are also useful lenses through which to examine the mission and to understand the actual mechanisms by which it operated.

PAUL GRAHAM:  Canadians have gone to war in faraway lands many, many times since Confederation, either as part of the British Armed Forces or as allies of American empires throughout the 20th century. And despite that, most Canadians tend to view our role of the world to be that of peacekeepers. In your book, you talk quite a lot about the gap between the myth of Canadian foreign policy and the reality. I wonder if you can expand on that a bit.

OWEN SCHALK:  Yeah. So the myth of Canadian foreign policy is something I think all listeners will be familiar with. It’s the myth of Canadian generosity in international affairs, the idea that Canada’s sole interest around the globe is promoting democracy and human rights. And this myth has helped to craft a national brand for Canada this benevolent brand I think you could reasonably call it Canadian exceptionalism.

But in the book I attempt a deep history of how this brand emerged, going back to 1945, when Canada really started to spread its influence around the globe. And then I also look at 1947 and the Gray Lecture of Louis St. Laurent, where he kind of founded this idea that Canadian foreign policy is first and foremost concerned with moral questions, not economic ones.

And this this discourse of morality still infuses conversations around Canadian foreign policy, and it certainly did during the war in Afghanistan as well. But throughout Canadian history, there’s always been another thread that gets neglected if we accept that moral framing. And that’s the material thread, the economic thread, the question of what the Canadian state’s actual material self-interest might be around the globe.

So, I argue in the book that it’s always been about access to markets and access to resources. Going back to the post World War 2 moment and to Canada’s first foreign aid program, which is called the Colombo Plan, we see it there too. The explicit goal of the Colombo Plan, which was centred around Southeast Asia, was to fight communism and to encourage those post colonial nations to adopt pro capitalist reforms rather than socialist or Communist ones.

And Keith Spicer, this longtime government insider, he said that the primary motivation behind this aid plan was to stop these countries from replicating the Chinese revolution of 1949, which was a revolution that deprived Western nations of access to China’s resources on the West’s terms.

So that’s the reality of Canadian foreign policy, I would argue. Canada, like other nations, is motivated by economic self-interest and as a capitalist state, that means that Canada’s interests are capitalist interests: the spread of open markets, the ability of Canadian companies to invest on favorable terms to extract enough profit to make those investments worthwhile.

And frankly, I think it should be common sense that Canada has these selfish motives in its engagement with the world.

And yeah, we can go back to more recent wars that Canada participated in with Korea, Vietnam. That was mainly through arms production, not so much boots on the ground. The former Yugoslavia. There’s always a self-interest there. Material and economic self-interest. The fight against communism or, you know, the arms industry interests, the promotion of Western Power. It’s always there.

But self-interest runs counter to those myths of Canadian history, so it’s usually ignored in mainstream discussions of our foreign policy, including with Afghanistan.

PAUL GRAHAM:  Can we dive a little bit deeper on some of these economic and commercial interests, particularly as they pertain to Afghanistan. Are there companies or industries that benefited in particular from that particular war?

OWEN SCHALK:  I mean, yeah, totally. So we could talk about like the mining companies, there’s the major mining concession, the Hajigak mining concession in Afghanistan, which was the largest iron mine in the country and supposedly one of the largest untapped iron ore deposits in Asia.

And after the invasion, a Canadian company got part of that. There were, you know, many other companies, financial companies that were advising the Afghan government on their policy. There were engineering firms that benefited from contracts including SNC Lavalin and then arms companies, of course, in Canada that I detail in the book. These economic and commercial interests were very real and they were there for anyone to see.

And really, you could you could pick any area of the world, and if you do your research, you’ll see how Canadian corporate interests play a huge role there in shaping our government’s foreign policy. It could be the Caribbean, Latin America, Africa, Asia.

And absolutely the same was true of the Afghanistan mission.

And once you accept that that’s the logic that governs our states decision making, it becomes clear why Canada would involve itself in this war and to the extent that it did. You know, much like the Colombo plan, the war in Afghanistan and the War on Terror more broadly, as it was called, was about spreading a certain economic model around the world for the benefit of Canadian companies, and it goes without saying that these companies are deeply entwined with the state, with the major political party.

And undoubtedly that influences Canada’s international positions as well. But yeah, you could look at all these different sectors. I mainly focus on mining in my work outside of this book.

But I was able to find many examples of Canadian companies in various industries profiting from this invasion of this occupation.

PAUL GRAHAM:  Former Prime Minister Jean Chretien had a particular interest in Afghanistan, did he not?

OWEN SCHALK:  Yes. Jean Chretien flew multiple times to Turkmenistan to meet with the Turkmen President, President Niyazov, and he was there accompanied by Canadian oil companies.

And the Turkmen oil, was it played a huge role in the Afghanistan invasion and the geopolitics around it. You know, it was in US interests, Western interests generally, to see a pipeline of Turkmen oil flow through Afghanistan and into Pakistan and India. This was the TAPI pipeline.

And Chretien took an interest in that after he left the Premiership and yeah, he flew to Turkmenistan. He met with Niyazov, he was with these companies and yeah, Canada was very aware of this pipeline plan. They backed it in numerous meetings. The Defence Minister, Peter Mackay, said that Canada would defend the pipeline from Taliban attacks if needed. So yeah, absolutely oil. Another another key sector here.

PAUL GRAHAM:  So, the shooting has stopped. The United States finally withdrew. The Taliban have regained control of the country, and presumably peace has come to Afghanistan, but the misery continues. Can you talk about how Canada and the United States and perhaps other countries continue to make life difficult for the Afghan people?

OWEN SCHALK:  Yeah. So, in in early 2022, after the US had withdrawn from Afghanistan, the Biden administration chose to seize the new Afghan government’s central bank reserves, which were valued at a total of $7 billion, which is in a huge amount for any country, but especially in underdeveloped country like Afghanistan. And the situation worsened immediately, to the point that 95% of Afghans are not getting enough to eat. And meanwhile, Biden ignored calls to return that money to Afghanistan, leaving international charities and organizations trying to pick up the slack and bring the Afghan people some much needed assistance.

And Canada is implicated in this as well. And in a really shameful way. So while the Afghan people were struggling to eat, you know, also last year there were reports of hospitals filling up, soaring child malnutrition, people selling organs on the black market to survive. While all this was going on, the Canadian government policy was actually blocking aid from being allowed into Afghanistan.

And in August last year, World Vision had to cancel a shipment of food that would have fed almost 2000 Afghan children because of a federal law that bans Canadians from doing business with the Taliban, and that extends to aid in Ottawa’s mind.

There were reports of Canadian officials warning aid groups not to pay drivers to deliver food around Afghanistan, because that might give taxes to the Taliban, and this was as these groups were telling Western governments that they had warehouses full of food sitting inside Afghanistan that they couldn’t deliver because they might be penalized for it.

In the situation now, I haven’t been following it as closely. I know that earlier this year that Trudeau government said that they were going to reform these laws to allow an aid loophole. I haven’t seen much follow-up reporting on that. I was contacted earlier this year by a woman from Whistler who said that she donated to a charity that builds playgrounds in Afghanistan.

She had spoken with the people who run it. She was confident that they would be able to work there.

So it’s possible that Canadian government is loosening some restrictions a little bit.

But as for the situation improving anytime soon, I’m not hopeful. I mean, basically the entire population has been pushed into poverty and precarity, and it seems like the Western powers are keen on keeping Afghanistan frozen in that crisis. I don’t know if it’s indifference or if it’s vindictiveness over losing the war, but it’s hard for me to see that situation improving in the near future.

PAUL GRAHAM:  Well, I guess geopolitically what one of the one of the reasons – and you go into this in the book – one of the reasons for the American invasion and the occupation had to do with controlling that part of the world and controlling energy resources – the transit of natural gas and oil, and depriving Russia and China of influence over the area. Is it possible that this continues to be part of the motivation for making life difficult for the Afghans?

OWEN SCHALK:  Absolutely, that’s possible. I know that China has expressed interest in investing more in Afghanistan. You know, as part of this BRI [Belt and Road Initiative] project – to try to bring Afghanistan into that which would certainly bring more money into the country, [and] potentially alleviate some of the suffering there.

But yeah, I mean you mentioned kind of the geopolitics of this invasion and that that was a huge part of it. There’s a big concern in the US government at this time about any other country ascending to the point that it could rival US power. And in that region, Central Asia, South Asia, the main concerns were Russia and China rivaling US interests there, and Iran more of a regional power, but a lot of concern about Iran, especially because they were forwarding this plan of building a pipeline to Pakistan and India.

And of course, as I mentioned before, the US and Canada, they wanted Turkmen gas to go to Pakistan and India because Turkmenistan is a lot more friendly to the West than Iran is and they wanted to keep Pakistan and India friendly to the West because of this larger geopolitical game that I alluded to between the US and China and Russia. A lot of geopolitics involved here. And Afghanistan. Yeah, it has won its war against its occupiers, but it remains ensnared in this global game.

I don’t see the situation improving a whole lot anytime soon.

PAUL GRAHAM:  You’ve co-authored another book that’s going to be coming out in 2024 with Yves Engler. Can you tell us a little bit more about that?

OWEN SCHALK:  Yeah. So that book is called Canada’s long fight against democracy, published by Baraka Books. It’ll be out in February of next year. And that book is a history of military coups that Canada has supported. I believe it’s from 1951 to the present, and we found over 20 coups or coup attempts that Canada has either passively or actively supported. And there are also examples of Canada disregarding internationally monitored elections that don’t serve the state’s geopolitical interests. We have a chapter on the 2006 elections in Gaza, which obviously is very relevant to this moment.

And there are many examples that illustrate the capitalist and the pro corporate logic that determines Canada’s foreign policy decisions. One of the clearest to me is one of the actually the least known, which was a coup in the 1950s in Colombia that brought General Rojas Pinilla to power. Lester B Pearson was a big ally of Rojas Pinilla because he was saying, oh, he’s gonna buy Canadian fighter jets, so we should recognize him. He didn’t care what he was gonna do with those fighter jets. He just said, oh, this guy was a military dictator who came to power in a coup. We like him because he’s gonna help Canadian companies.

And we found evidence of this again and again. Guatemala, Congo, Chile, Uganda, Russia, Bolivia. Venezuela – so many examples and so much data that backs up our argument about the nature of Canadian foreign policy.

And I think it complements my Afghanistan book well too. You know, these are both books that have as a goal kind of the demystification of Canadian foreign policy, an effort to squint through the fog of nationalism and propaganda and censorship to glimpse the real inner workings of the state.

And Yves is one of the best people to read on Canadian foreign policy. I still can’t really believe that I wrote a book with him, but I think anyone who enjoyed my book on Afghanistan, they’ll get a lot out of this book too.

PAUL GRAHAM:  Well, I could hardly wait until it comes out and maybe we can have you and Yves on.

So, you are a keen observer of Canadian foreign policy. In your view, what should we expect from the Trudeau government between now and the coming election?

OWEN SCHALK:  More of the same, I would guess. I mean, watching events in Gaza right now has been truly sickening and disheartening to me to see the conduct of the Trudeau government there – supporting this genocide that we’re all watching unfold.

There’s another event of relevance going on right now that also kind of exposes how Trudeau views the world, and that’s happening in Panama. It’s not very well known, but in Panama right now, there’s a wide range of social movements rising up against a Canadian mine owned by First Quantum Minerals.

And that mine has been a focal point of social tension for years, and Ottawa has always backed the company against this range of protesters coming out to demand greater equality and more economic security for the country’s people and Trudeau has said nothing.

So I wouldn’t expect too much of a change. I think we might see – and I may be wrong – we might see a drift toward a less warlike stance in Ukraine, but if that happens, that will be a byproduct of the US losing interest in prolonging that war. I mean, there’s a recent article on I think NBC about how the US is urging Zelensky to maybe start considering peace negotiations or a compromise of some kind. But that’s of course in the context of what’s going on in the Middle East. So we might see a change there, but I could be wrong. Overall, I think the character of his foreign policy will remain the same as it has throughout Canadian history – that very pro corporate, self interested stance.

PAUL GRAHAM:  Any final thoughts about your book or anything else?

OWEN SCHALK:  I just encourage everyone to keep reading about Canadian history, about foreign affairs and Canada’s role in the world. There are many scholars who work hard to demystify this national brand around Canada and to get to the heart of foreign policy.

And I hope everyone keeps reading and I hope that my book can contribute in some small way to that growing catalog of really critical work on our foreign policy decisions.

PAUL GRAHAM:  Well, thanks very much, Owen. Listeners, who want to find out where to purchase this book can go online to Amazon or to Indigo books or for a more complete list can go to Lorimer books at https://formaclorimerbooks.ca/product/canada-in-afghanistan.

And I guess we’re going to be continuing our conversation later on this week at McNally Robinson booksellers in Winnipeg, and I’m looking very looking forward to that very much. (November 10, 2023 at 7:00 pm)

OWEN SCHALK:  Absolutely. Me too. And thanks again for the invite, Paul.

PAUL GRAHAM:  And thank you. We’ll see you soon.