According to media reports,
Canadian government officials are currently negotiating a long-term agreement
with the United Arab Emirates (UAE) which will enable Canadian troops to remain
in the country for years in support of the Canadian Forces currently deployed
in
The report underscores the
Liberal government’s commitment to assisting the Bush administration in its
occupation of Afghanistan despite Canadian public opinion to the contrary. Opposition to the deployment of Canadian
forces in
By creating a permanent
support base in the UAE (Camp Mirage), Canada is essentially committing
Canadian forces in Afghanistan for several more years. There are currently around 700 Canadian
forces in Kabul as part of a NATO stabilization force. They are supposed to be returning to Canada
within months. Another 240 Canadian
troops are scheduled to be deployed to Kandahar in southeastern Afghanistan
before the end of the year to serve with the 1,000 mainly American soldiers in
a U.S.-led combat operation. There are
another 250 Canadian troops stationed in the Persian Gulf for deployment to
Afghanistan.
When the Chretien government
failed to broker a deal between the U.S. and the United Nations in the run up
to the American-led invasion of Iraq, and then refused to participate in the
invasion, some people had illusions that the Liberal government was opposing
U.S. imperialism. In fact, first
Chretien and then Martin have bent over backwards to accommodate every other
U.S. request for Canadian troops, including deploying forces to occupy Haiti after
a coup organized by the Americans ousted the democratically elected Haitian
president, Jean Bertrand Aristide.
Establishing Canadian forces as a permanent part of the occupation of
Afghanistan only underscores this.