International

On Monday evening SP Member of Parliament Farshad Bashir met with Malalai Joya, a suspended Afghan parliamentarian. Bashir told her that the SP was following her situation closely and attempting to bring it to the attention of the Dutch government.

This week saw the parliamentary debate on progress in Afghanistan. Or, to put it more accurately, retrogression in that country. According to reports from the UN and other organisations, 2007 was the least safe year for Afghanistan since 2001, and 2008 threatens to be still worse. The production of drugs in 2007 broke world records. With scores like these, you have to ask what we're actually doing there.

SP Member of Parliament Harry van Bommel has spoken out against the condemning to death of a journalist in Afghanistan. The journalist in question had downloaded material from the Internet on the position of women in Islamic societies. "The Netherlands should make cooperation with Afghanistan dependent on whether the country is prepared to respect human rights," said the SP's and foreign affairs spokesman.

SP Member of Parliament Harry van Bommel will use Tuesday's parliamentary question time to demand answers from Defence Minister Eimert van Middelkoop regarding Dutch involvement in military operations outside of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) territory. The unauthorised involvement was revealed by a German military officer in a newly-published book, Endstation Kabul.

The Netherlands must help Afghanistan, but you don't do that by dropping bombs, said SP leader Jan Marijnissen in this evening's concluding session of the parliamentary debate on the prolongation of the military presence in the troubled province of Uruzgan.

Stop the war, open negotiations with the Taliban and concentrate reconstruction on the north and west of Afghanistan. That was the kernel of the argument presented by SP Member of Parliament and foreign affairs spokesman Harry van Bommel in Monday's debate on the prolongation of the Dutch military mission in the southern Afghan province of Uruzgan.

Under the slogan “Support Afghanistan, Stop the War”, the organisation “Five to Twelve” organised this morning a demonstration in front of the parliament building in The Hague. The action was timed to precede today's parliamentary debate on the prolongation of the Netherlands' military presence in the troubled Afghan province of Uruzgan.

Today saw the organisation by the parliamentary groups of the SP and the Green Left, in cooperation with the Troops Out of Afghanistan Committee, of a hearing on Uruzgan, the troubled Afghan province where Dutch armed forces are currently engaged. The event preceded a major official hearing of the Standing Parliamentary Committees on Defence and on Foreign Affairs, planned for the following day, at which critics of the recently decided prolongation of the Dutch military mission have been excluded from the roster of speakers.

Prolongation of the Dutch military mission in Uruzgan can do nothing further to help Afghanistan and is primarily a move to prevent NATO from suffering the loss of face it fears it would undergo should the mission be discontinued. So argues SP foreign affairs spokesman Harry van Bommel in reaction to the government's decision to extend the Netherlands' military presence in the country until at least 2010. “This decision means that we are once again investing a billion euros in an impossible armed mission, while we would be doing a lot more to help the Afghan people if we were to invest instead in the reconstruction of education, health care and infrastructure in the more stable, peaceful areas,” Van Bommel said.