Jobs Not War! Troops out of Afghanistan

The war in Afghanistan remains an open wound in Canadian politics. The Harper government, aided and abetted by the Liberals, are pursuing an unwinnable war for profit and power. At the same time as the government is endangering thousands of lives and wasting billions of dollars in Afghanistan, hundreds of thousands of Canadian manufacturing jobs […]

  • Alex Grant
  • Thu, Mar 13, 2008
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The war in Afghanistan remains an open wound in Canadian politics. The Harper government, aided and abetted by the Liberals, are pursuing an unwinnable war for profit and power. At the same time as the government is endangering thousands of lives and wasting billions of dollars in Afghanistan, hundreds of thousands of Canadian manufacturing jobs are being destroyed. Industrial workers are walking into unemployment without support, but there is no shortage of money for imperialist adventures.

Opposition to the war in Afghanistan runs at 2:1 in the country, rising to 4:1 in Québec. And yet, in so-called democratic Canada, the Harper government continues the Afghan war. Working people have a gut understanding that this war is not in their interests despite all of the media propaganda. The conditions of women and the general Afghan population are used cynically by Western nations to justify the war. Where was the concern for women when the imperialists backed the Taliban during the war against the Soviets? Where was the concern for women when Western corporations initiated oil pipeline deals with the Taliban? After September 11th 2001, where was NATO’s concern for women when they backed the Northern Alliance warlords, who have a human rights record just as bad as the Taliban? And finally, why would a government that eliminates funding for women’s centres and opposes pay equity in Canada care about women in another country?

The War in Afghanistan

Just as before, the Afghan people are suffering under another puppet regime of a foreign power – but just as before, the Afghan people will not accept this domination. The war in Afghanistan is clearly unwinnable. 2007 was the most violent year since the 2001 invasion. More than 6,500 were killed in fighting last year, which includes 222 Western troops. Recently, US National Intelligence Director Michael McConnell explained that the Hamid Karzai government controls no more than 30% of the country. The Taliban control about 10% while the remaining area is governed by local tribes. It is no accident that Karzai is known as the mayor of Kabul.

Karzai and his backers have been incapable of controlling the poppy crop, which is Afghanistan’s main industry and main export. It is estimated that over 40% of heroin profits goes to the insurgency; this figure alone shows that the imperialists are in trouble.

It is possible that Afghanistan will be the straw that breaks NATO’s back. There are deep divisions between the US, Britain, Canada, and Netherlands, who are doing the majority of the fighting and dying in Southern Afghanistan, while France, Italy, and Germany are restricting their troops to the North with caveats to avoid fighting. The Canadian government’s demand that they will pull out unless they get 1000 extra troops was not a serious threat on behalf of Harper and Co. – but even this has heightened tensions within NATO. Mark Sedra, in the Globe and Mail on 21st February 2008, commented that, “The reality is that Canada cannot win the war alone – but it could lose it. If we withdraw now, it could trigger a domino effect of troop withdrawals among other NATO contributors. That is how much Canada matters to the mission, to NATO and to Afghanistan.”

The pressure to withdraw will not be ended by parliamentary tricks by the Conservatives and Liberals. Even if Harper gets his 1000 extra troops, this will not make a fundamental difference on the ground. More soldiers will die each year, and the insurgents have time on their side. Even the 2011 end date is way too soon to make any difference in Afghanistan. To protect their troops, the US resorts to high level bombing – this massively increases the level of civilian casualties. Increasingly, the local population are getting tired of the corruption of the Karzai regime and the imperialist occupation. This can only mean a heightening of the insurgency and more bloodshed on all sides.

… and the war in Canada

Afghanistan is a test for a new, more aggressive Canadian foreign policy. Canadian corporations have considerable investments, especially in the fields of oil and mineral extraction, and they need to have those investments protected and expanded. For the imperialists, war is an expensive business and not a sport. There is no point making such a large outlay unless you can get a healthy return. When you cut through all the rhetoric and propaganda, cold hard cash is all that remains.

The real reason for the war also explains the capitulation of the Liberals on the Afghan mission. Purely for reasons of electoral expediency, the Liberals attempted to hold a position of ending the mission in 2009. That was thrown out of the window as soon as the interests of corporate Canada came on the line. Anybody foolish enough to believe that the Liberals are in any way “progressive” should take note – at the end of the day, they always follow the interests of big business.

Canadian military spending has ballooned to its highest real level since the Second World War. From less than $15-billion a year at the end of the last century, military spending has increased to approximately $20-billion. The Department of National Defence has stated its desire to increase this to between $26.9 and $36.6 billion by 2025. To date, a conservative estimate of the cost of the Afghan mission is $7.2-billion and rising. All of this has to be paid for by cuts and attacks on the standard of living of Canadian workers.

Clausewitz explained that war is the continuation of politics by other means. A more aggressive foreign policy aimed at extracting profits from workers overseas is the mirror image of a more aggressive domestic policy aimed at extracting greater profits from Canadian workers. In this way, the war in Afghanistan is linked intimately with the crisis facing workers in Canada’s manufacturing sector.

Canadian manufacturing is amongst the most productive on the planet. However, Canadian plants are being shut down because more profit can be made elsewhere. Over the last three years, more than 1 in 8 manufacturing workers in Canada lost their jobs. The figures from Statistics Canada show the rapid decline of the sector as corporations move production overseas. Between January 2005 and January 2008, almost 300,000 manufacturing jobs were lost. From employing 14.3% of Canadian workers, the sector now employs only 11.7%, or about 2 million people. This is a steady annual trend over the period. These losses are concentrated in Ontario and Québec which have lost 171,700 and 98,900 manufacturing jobs, respectively. These jobs are currently being replaced with low wage non-union work – but how long will even this option last after the US recession spreads north of the border?

The decline of manufacturing hits at the heart of the Canadian labour movement. Militant struggles such as the GM Oshawa strike of 1937 and the Ford Windsor strike of 1945 laid the basis of the post-war increase in union density and wages for a section of the working class. The manufacturing workers, with the auto-workers at their head, were able to gain significant concessions in the post-war period. They formed the backbone of the labour movement and, by extension, aided the increase in living standards for workers generally. But now the big industrial corporations are attempting to fracture of this backbone by moving production overseas to China, India, and other low-wage countries.

In response to appeals for aid to the manufacturing sector, Prime Minister Stephen Harper made it perfectly clear that while there was billions for war, there is nothing for defending quality union jobs. Corporate Canada is waging a war for profit against workers at home and abroad. We need a movement to save jobs and working class communities from becoming an industrial wasteland, united with a movement to save the Afghan people from a military wasteland.

Socialist Solutions

The cause of the war in Afghanistan and the destruction of working class communities are one and the same – capitalism. Workers are starting to realize this. The rank-and-file of the NDP forced the party to adopt an anti-war position at the 2006 NDP convention. Unfortunately, the NDP bureaucracy has attempted to water down the clear “troops out” resolution and have replaced it with a more confused position of UN mediation and negotiations with the Taliban. The Taliban are the oppressors of the Afghan people and the former puppets of the imperialists – there will be no enthusiasm for this “solution” in Canada or in Afghanistan.

Workers are also trying to find a way out from the manufacturing crisis. A movement of factory occupations to save jobs has begun. This is the only tactic worth using when the factory is being closed down and production is being moved to low wage non-union plants. But also in this sphere, the workers are facing the confusion of a leadership that does not have the ideas to win. Instead of a clear demand to save these productive plants through nationalization, the union leaders just come up with corporate welfare, protectionism, and economic nationalism. Generalizing the factories occupation movement would have a massive response amongst workers, and would push back the corporate agenda. The 40,000 strong demo last year in Windsor is just one example. Workers won’t be inspired to fight just for better severance before they start work at MacDonald’s – but workers will fight if they believe that their jobs in these productive industries can be saved.

We need the organizations of the working class, the unions and the NDP, to start a mass movement against war and to save jobs through nationalization. We need a movement with socialist ideas. Such a movement would also save the NDP and the unions from growing marginalization. Anti-war opinion is running at three or four times the support for the NDP. The inability of the party leadership to capitalize on this sentiment is due to their reluctance to get their hands dirty building a mass movement. They are much happier playing parliamentary tricks. Ironically, the party bureaucracy is aided in this by the “lefts” who control the anti-war movement. There is a gentleman’s agreement between the leadership of the anti-war “coalitions” and the NDP that neither side will interfere with the other while the unions stand passively on the sidelines.

The only way to build a mass anti-war movement that could bring down the government and end the imperialist occupation is for the mass organizations to take their rightful place at the head of the movement. Such a success by Canadian workers would destabilize the imperialist NATO occupation and give the Afghan people the confidence to fight for their independence, united with the workers of the region. The liberation of the Afghan people, for centuries under foreign domination, will come through a united struggle with the workers of the region. The working class of Pakistan and Iran hold the key to victory against imperialism and fundamentalist barbarism. We must link up the struggle for freedom in Afghanistan with the struggle for socialist revolution in Pakistan and Iran. We must link the struggle to free Afghanistan to the struggle to save jobs in Canada. No more wasting billions on imperialist wars. For workers rights and socialism at home and abroad. For international working class solidarity.

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