Open Letter to the Taliban

Taliban issues "open letter" to Canadians

On August 15, the Taliban issued an open letter to Canadians urging them to pressure their government to withdraw troops from Afghanistan.

In the letter, the Taliban promises more attacks on Canadians:

"Afghanistan has to try to have good relations with you, but if your government continues a reversed policy, the Afghans will be obliged to kill your nationals, in revenge for their brothers, their sisters, and their children. Events such as Logar will happen again, because occupied Afghanistan looks at all actors that are established in the interest of America with an eye of hostility.

Therefore, you have to convince your government to put an end to the occupation of Afghanistan, so that the Afghans are not killed with your hands and so that you are not killed with the hands of the Afghans.

The Canadian people have to realize if their sisters, their brothers, and their children are being killed in Afghanistan, it is because of the wrong policy of the government of Canada and their falling under the influence of others when they sent occupation soldiers to Afghanistan.

The Canadian people, when they express condolences for the death of two Canadian women in Logar in Afghanistan, and consider themselves grieved, they have to know that the Canadian forces, under American command, handicap tens among the Afghan people every day to this kind of condolence, and they kill, in addition to men, numbers of women and children, as well.

The Afghans did not go to Canada to kill the Canadians. Rather, it is the Canadians who came to Afghanistan to kill and torture the Afghan, to please the fascist regime of America. Your government did not take into account the national interests of Canada, and did not follow a neutral policy. It sacrificed its national and international respect and standing in service of the interests of America.”

The letter mentions the deplorable Logar incident in which three female aid workers were ambushed and brutally executed by Taliban fighters.

It was rather "thoughtful" of the Taliban to send us this letter. Frankly, it would be rude not to write them back.

As such, here is the Nexus' response to the Taliban letter:

Dear Taliban,

Thank you so much for your thoughtful letter of 15 August.

But upon reviewing the contents of said letter, many Canadians simply have no choice but to say "thank you, but no thank you" to your "generous" advice.

If anything could demonstrate precisely why you cannot be allowed to return to power in Afghanistan, your letter has certainly done so.

First off, given the history of your regime, one has to question your definition of "good relations". Are we to believe that you were maintaining good relations with Canada when you allowed Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaeda to plot the 9/11 attacks which, along with 2,974 other people, took the lives of 24 Canadians?

At best, that was an act of astounding irresponsibility on your part. At worst, it was purely an act of passive-aggression.

Either way, Canadians cannot trust a Taliban regime, and certainly not to maintain "good relations" with us.

We also sincerely appreciated your disingenuous envokation of the Logar incident. If Canadians needed any more proof of what the Taliban thinks of both women and the Afghan people, it would be hard to imagine how. After all, not only do you apparently not understand the difference between aid workers and combatants, not only do you not seem to differentiate between men and women, but you also don't seem to feel any compunctions about assassinating people who have come to Afghanistan in order to help your fellow Afghans.

Not only did you not make an honest effort to fight poverty within your own country, but you're now apparently willing to kill those who've come to help them.

Which, believe it or not, is actually a step down from killing them your yourselves.

Few Canadians will pretend that no civilians have ever been killed in the course of the Afghanistan conflict. But we also recognize that there's a huge difference between accidentally killing Afghan civilians in the course of pursuing the Taliban (or when they fail to respect the rules established to ensure the mutual safety of Afghan civilians and NATO troops) and deliberately targetting them for terrorist attacks.

In fact, if the brothers, sisters, parents and children of those killed in Spin Boldak ever decide they want to take revenge for the deaths of their loved ones, odds are they're going to come after you.

You might want to stop and think about that.

Many Canadians will also remind you that our brothers, sisters and children whom you are killing in Afghanistan volunteered for that job and overwhelmingly support it. The families of our service men and women have also tended to overwhelmingly support the mission.

In short, Canadians are willing to pay the price for ensuring your brutal regime never returns to power in Afghanistan. Appealing to our grief for the loss of those you kill as a motive for capitulation is a poor gamble indeed.

We Canadians who support the mission will honour the sacrifice of our service men and women by continuing to support the cause they believed in -- namely, ensuring that you cannot return to power so you can continue to brutalize, terrorize and denigrate the Afghan population.

Canadians did not go into Afghanistan in order to kowtow to the American regime. Rather, Canadians have gone into Afghanistan because we have recognized a severe threat to global peace and security in your previous regime, and in the potential reestablishment of another.

We do not intent do withdraw from Afghanistan until we've assured that you cannot return to power there.

But we appreciate you taking time out of your busy schedule -- spent devising new ways to kill Canadian troops as well as Afghan civilians -- to talk to us.

But there really isn't much to talk to you about.

In the meantime, you may want to spend your time wondering how many of your allies you can really trust. After all, should NATO forces withdraw from Afghanistan tomorrow, who do you think Gulbuddin Hekmatyar is going to look at next?

Just think about that.

Sincerely,
-Patrick Ross