Crossposted at
The Next Agenda
This is a story that will make very few waves.
Chances are no one will hear of it in the US who doesn't read this diary. And if they don't catch the news tonight in Canada, they probably won't hear about it either.
But I heard about it and I am pissed.
The headline of the story in the Globe and Mail which caught my eye said
"Vancouver humanitarian killed in Afghanistan".
They're talking about Mike Frastacky, 56, a boatbuilder and carpenter and avid trekker.
But he wasn't just killed, he was murdered. Three shots to the head.
Rumour is there is a bounty on Western heads of $10,000. Can you imagine the tempation that sort of money would pose in Afghanistan, if this is true?
So why was he there?
Four years ago Mike Frastacky started building a school.
Not just any school, this one was in a village in Afghanistan called Nahrin.
As I said, Frastacky loved trekking. When he found this place, he fell in love with it and then decided to what he could to help the people of the area. He decided to build a school. He found some property and paid for it out of his own pocket and fund raised for the place on his own.
He was just one guy trying to make a little difference in the world.
Every year since, Frastacky had gone back to improve on his work on the school. At the time of his death there were almost 600 kids, boys and girls, attending.
He wrote to the Afghan ambassador to Canada,
Omar Samad:
He told the ambassador that it taught Grades 1-6 to nearly 600 children from nine villages in the region with and had 12 classrooms, a library, an office, a playground and a sports field, with its 15 teachers.
He told the embassy wanted to continue his project into the adjacent Badakhshan province, and provide further training for the teachers.
"Everyday we hear bad news, but this is something we didn't expect," a shaken Mr. Samad said. "I'm going to be asking our government to look into this, we need to find the people or persons is responsible for this."
He was always planning on improvements. His sister, Luba Frastacky explained:
This year, he wanted to get a patch of ground to create a playground for the girls in the school. He installed the wall, put in a gate and was able to get the school upgraded to a secondary-school level, just this summer.
The other day I wrote a diary about Canada's former ambassador to Afghanistan's view on the state of things in that country.
Basically he felt things were at a critical point. The levels of violence were rising and more soldiers were getting killed, because the coalition failed to defeat the Taliban.
The Taliban and Al Qaeda have safe havens across the border in Pakistan and can launch strikes incountry and then retreat to safety behind the border. The Coalition forces cannot follow without creating more international havoc.
Recently the Canadian government has been stepping up to the plate offered by Bush to take over command in Afghanistan. After all, Bush thinks this war was won 5 years ago.
A snap vote in Parliament this spring committed Canadian troops to Afghanistan until 2009. Two Liberal Leadership candidates also support the government in this path. Almost half of Canadians polled recently think we should get out immediately.
Four Canadian troops have died in Afghanistan in recent weeks, including Canada's first female soldier to die in combat.
So are things going better or worse?
Canada's government has issued travel advisory of the highest level warning:
"Foreign Affairs and International Trade Canada advises against all travel to this country. Canadians in this country should leave.
"The threat to foreign nationals, including Canadians, from terrorist and criminal violence in Afghanistan is high and insurgency attacks are not expected to diminish in the near future. There is also a significant risk of foreign nationals being kidnapped in Afghanistan."
Frastacky had also noted the changes.
For three years, [Frastacky's sister] said, he had felt safe and happy with his work, but on this trip his optimism for the country's future - and his own personal safety - faded.
Citing an increased presence of Taliban in the area and the awareness that his school taught boys and girls together (strictly forbidden under the previous regime), he had cut short his planned stay and was to leave for Kabul on Aug. 9 and be back in Canada in time for his sister's birthday on Aug. 20.
Emphasis mine
This year he hoped that the villagers would provide a kind of early warning system if things got too hot for him, so he could get out safe. That hope cost him his life.
So why am I so pissed?
It's not just that whoever could have helped this man did not.
It's not just that fundaments in that country don't think girls should be educated.
It's not just that we seem to be transforming our forces into "Peacemakers" instead of "Peacekeepers".
It's not just that Harper seems to think like Bush that war is peace.
It's not just that this is going to get a whole hell of a lot worse before it gets better.
It's not just that this family is also suffering, as so many others are tonight, at the death of a loved one in a war zone.
What really pisses me off is that this seems to be becoming the forgotten war, at least for America.
While the media focuses the new sexy war in Lebanon and even goes so far as to spin it into something good for Bush's ratings because it will allow him to show the world again that he's such a Peacemaker, people are dying. In Lebanon and Israel [sorry, I left left Israel out in the original but I could hardly see straight by the time I finished this], yes, but also in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Dying in higher numbers.
Dying at a faster rate.
As Jon Stewart asked John McCain last night, how much more of Bush's peace can the world take?
Update [2006-7-26 0:45:26 by Bionic]: I found this article about him.
From 2002 Vancouver Sun.
But he has this philosophy: "You have a drop in the bucket. Many drops make a cup. Many cups make a bucket."
He intends to provide that first drop.
He knows it will take a long time to pull together the materials he needs in the capital, Kabul. When the snow melts in the spring, he will move them in an armed convoy the 700 kilometres north to Faizabad.
With the patience of a carpenter, he will have to negotiate not only with suppliers but also with government and United Nations officials.
Then there are the widows and orphans themselves. He has to draw them into the project, to make them a part of it.
He has this idea. He will buy four treadle sewing machines in Kabul and move them up to the orphanage so the women can be taught to sew mattresses. But that is only if they want to. "Maybe they will say they would rather herd cows."
Having studied Afghanistan and trekked through it a number of times, Frastacky is sure the fractured country is on the road to redemption, that it is about to put 20 years of lost time behind it. He want to be part of it.
He wants to be that one first drop.