From Occupied Afghanistan: Fact-Finding Mission - Part I

We set out to see what Afghans thought of outside intervention. www.indiescribe.com/afghanistan/

We occasionally hear about some of the worst cases of civilian deaths in the Canadian media, but most of the damage our military is doing remains undocumented.

By Citizen Correspondent Kabir Joshi-Vijayan

Date Posted: 09/18/07

Reader Rating:

Mike Skinner and Hamayon Ragstar spent one and three months, respectively, in Afghanistan in the late spring/summer of 2007 on a fact-finding trip investigating how the Canadian and International "mission" is affecting Afghan civilian life.

Mike Skinner is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of political science at York University and a Researcher at the York Centre for International and Security Studies (YCISS). Hamayon is an Afghan-Canadian who grew up in his country of origin and experienced a foreign occupation under the Soviet Union firsthand. He is finishing his last year as a political science student at York University, and has a thorough understanding of Afghan politics and history. They have, along with fellow-researcher Angela Joya, recently formed the Afghanistan-Canadian Research Group, of which the trip represents the first phase of the work.

Below is the edited transcript of an hour-long interview conducted in Toronto by Kabir Joshi-Vijayan about their reflections and conclusions coming out of the fact-finding mission.

Question: To begin, what was the objective of this trip you undertook to Afghanistan, what were you hoping to investigate?

Mike Skinner: The principal objective was to do an activist documentary film that asks Afghans what they think of the international intervention. We really wanted to listen to Afghans who don't get heard in the West - workers, people on the street, students, shopkeepers and teachers. That was really the intent, to hear Afghans who don't get heard.

Question: And what parts of Afghanistan were you able to visit?

Hamayon Ragstar: We spent lots of time in Kabul city and walked around the neighbourhoods. We went to Kabul University a few times. Mike and I went to Bamiyan, where we spent about a week.

From Bamiyan, we also went to Yakaolang, which is a few hours away from the Bamiyan valley, and we went back to Kabul from there. We spent one day in Ghazni, and before Mike's arrival I went to Ghazni and Jaghori. Later I also went to Mazar and Kundus and I spent about four to five hours in Khandahar.

Question: What did you see of the international occupation force? Did you have any direct interaction with any of the foreign forces present (ISAF, NATO, the US-coalition), and were you able to speak particularly with any Canadian soldiers or commanders?

MS: Our most direct personal experience is when we almost got killed at one point.

We were in a taxicab in downtown Kabul, and our cabdriver wasn't looking as he pulled out into an intersection and almost ran into an ISAF (International Security Assistance Force) convoy. As he said, fortunately they were Turks. If they had been Canadians or Americans, they would have shot us if we had gotten as close to a convoy as we did.