Badriyya Yusuf, Queen's University, Ontario

Few people would consider airports to be arenas of power plays among nations.

But the reality is that airlines and border control agents are often a country’s first line of defence. Airports can be where foreign policy decisions are subjected to experiments and where, according to Kenyan political analyst Nanjala Nyabola, “the realities of privilege and race in travel are laid bare.”

I discovered this recently during my travel back to Canada from an Omicron-related red-listed country. In retrospect, the journey was a cross between a scene from Steven Spielberg’s 2004 film The Terminal and a chapter from Nyabola’s book, Travelling While Black.

Both works draw on the intersections between race, gender and class in international travel.

Policy aimed only at African countries

My personal experience involves the Canadian government travel policy — designed to address the COVID-19 Omicron variant — that targeted several African countries. It went into effect on Nov. 26, 2021, and by Dec. 18, 2021, was deemed to have “served its purpose and no longer necessary” given Omicron was present in countries around the world.

Nonetheless, the policy is still worth analyzing because such measures don’t occur in a vacuum — they reflect historical precedents and shape future policies. There is a need to examine whether the policy ever truly served the interests of Canadian citizens.

I was in Nigeria on Nov. 26, 2021, when the government of Canada “enhanced” its border measures to “reduce the risk of the importation and transmission of COVID-19 and its variants.”

This was done by placing additional requirements on Canadian citizens and permanent residents returning from red-listed countries, defined as having a particularly high risk for new and emerging strains of COVID-19. The only countries on the list were African, even though other nations had higher COVID-19 numbers and the variant was present in those nations at the time.

Dubious claim

Dr. Theresa Tam, Canada’s chief public health officer, justified the ban on African countries on the basis of low vaccine coverage rates and uncertainty of “their ability to detect and respond [to the variant].” This claim and other African travel bans have been criticized as not being based on scientific evidence.

The Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) has repeatedly failed to provide data to support the policy.

An editorial published in the medical journal The Lancet established that the Omicron variant was identified as a result of complex sequencing work done in South Africa when some of the most technologically advanced western countries were unable to conduct the same genome sequencing tests required. Furthermore, it highlighted that unless borders are sealed to travellers from all nations, selective travel bans don’t work.

On Nov. 30, 2021, Canada added Nigeria to the red list. Additional measures required of travellers included enhanced testing, screening and being placed in a designated quarantine facility upon arrival in Canada — regardless of vaccination status or previous test results.

Canada also added an unusual requirement for a valid negative test from a third country within 72 hours of departure to Canada. This measure has received the most criticism from many Canadians, scientists and experts. It meant additional expense and inconveniences for Canadian travellers, including having to travel through insecure and conflict-ridden environments.

Tug of war between airlines, authorities

Despite having been tested in Nigeria, I decided to have my third-country testing done in the United Kingdom.

I assumed PHAC would not have problems with a non-African lab’s test. However, the COVID-19 testing centres at Heathrow Airport are not inside the airport itself, but required entry into the U.K.

This became a problem, as the country no longer allowed entry for non-residents travelling from red-listed countries. My attempts to get a COVID-19 test became a tug-of-war between British Airways and the UK Border Agency. There was much confusion about what the rules were and how to humanely enforce them. I was initially refused entry, which was devastating after more than six hours flying with a toddler.

Ironically, neither my fully vaccinated status nor multiple negative tests mattered to PHAC upon arrival at Toronto’s Pearson International Airport. I was tested at the airport and we were taken to a designated quarantine facility.

The sub-standard conditions in these facilities — especially the lengthy wait times for test results and for authorization to leave from PHAC — have received a lot of media coverage.

More testing centres needed most of all

How exactly did any of these measures serve their supposed purpose? Canadian COVID-19 testing centres were backlogged because the focus was on requiring hundreds of travellers to get re-tested and quarantined, instead of taking more proactive domestic measures to ensure Canadians had easy access to testing centres.

Although not all African countries were placed on the red list, Dr. Howard Njoo, Canada’s deputy chief medical officer of health, admitted to factors other than science influencing cabinet decisions.

He said:

“We work … to put together the best advice we can based on the science. Decision-makers take that into account but we recognize there are other considerations at play as well, beyond just strictly sort of technical public health advice that we may be giving to ministers.”

The African travel bans highlight underlying issues in global justice, from vaccine diplomacy and intellectual property barriers to the systemic refusal to recognize African competencies and agency.

It all clearly boils down to what the PHAC agent at Pearson told me: “What matters is not your test result, but where you’ve been.”

Badriyya Yusuf, PhD Candidate/Researcher in International Relations, Queen's University, Ontario

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

F. Haider Alvi, Athabasca University

Last August, the world watched the chaotic and painful American departure from Afghanistan. It led to a profound reckoning: how could two decades of war end in such humiliating defeat at the hands of Taliban militants?

In Afghanistan, the list of imperial powers that have tried and failed to exercise control includes the British in the 19th century, the Soviets in the 20th century — and now the Americans in the 21st century.

Afghanistan’s history of occupation suggests a deviation from the standard colonial playbook of using military control to extract wealth elsewhere in the Global South. All this has given rise to the erroneous trope that Afghanistan is a “graveyard of empires.”

Complex legacy of colonialism

The reality is more complex. Global South nations struggling with the effects of colonialism are ticking time bombs. Global North control creates simmering resentments and resistance.

My research into entrepreneurship amid post-colonial upheaval finds that colonial interference alters the natural progress of development for these occupied countries. Traumatic political, military and social events create deficits that are not easily fixed. Yet I’ve also found that powerful identities around empowerment and self-determination can survive the extremes of colonialism and occupation.

The 20-year Afghanistan war was not just a military exercise — it was also a moralizing attempt by the Global North to construct institutions in their own image.

The cost? Almost 160 Canadians died, 2,448 American service members were killed and, astonishingly, 363,000 Afghan civilians perished. Billions of dollars were spent, and another superpower was left humiliated.

Post-colonialism is still very much in play in Afghanistan. The Mujahideen drove out the Soviets in 1989, and the cult-like Taliban surprised everyone, and possibly themselves, with how quickly they took control in the wake of the clumsy U.S. withdrawal.

Post-colonial theory at play

The resurgence of the Taliban was consistent with post-colonial theory on identity construction, understood to happen in three steps.

First, there was the Eurocentric expectation of mimicry: when confronted by the world’s most powerful military, Afghans were expected to adopt the norms of their occupiers. America and its allies saw themselves as having a superior form of civilization worthy of emulation, doing a favour for Afghans by liberating them from the Taliban.

Second, a hybrid identity was created. Afghanistan became neither Afghan nor American. A puppet government was installed to force an identity onto Afghanistan by their foreign occupier that would be palatable to the Global North.

Third, there was a space of transition. In this space, people reflect on ongoing uncertainties and their history, and reimagine the future; it is here that the colonized resist and push back against occupying forces.

A monster of their own creation

For 20 years, the U.S. was trying to destroy its own flawed, hybrid creation: the Mujahideen. These guerrilla fighters had been trained and armed by Americans to fight in a “death for country,” suicide-bombing style.

This was not the Afghan way. Rather than blowing themselves up, Afghans had preferred to put down their weapons for tea time, hang out with their adversaries and then go back to fighting them the next day.

By installing a corrupt puppet government, the Americans pursued nation-building based on their own western model. This thwarted the natural evolution of Afghan institutions and hung on the country like an ill-fitting suit, with deadly consequences.

The speed with which U.S.-backed president Ashraf Ghani fled, and the occupation government collapsed, heralded a significant transition in Afghanistan. The Taliban stepped into that space of transition with surprising ease.

A majority of Afghans, like any occupied people, want to create their own solutions. For this, they often need help. But that help should not be guns pointed at them by a foreign military.

After two decades of fighting that left so many of their citizens dead, Afghans faced the unpalatable choice between the tyranny of the occupiers or the tyranny of their own people — meaning the Taliban.

Restructuring the narrative

This does not mean Afghans are happy with the Taliban. But the current narrative that the Global North is trying to “save” Afghans is an attempt at damage control over a misadventure that cost so many lives.

Afghanistan has been taken back to the same place it was 20 years ago. That requires reconstructing the narrative, because it’s hard to say you’re promoting human rights when hundreds of thousands have been killed.

The post-colonial situation suggests that, with Afghanistan’s occupiers gone, Taliban rule is a flawed but authentic first step in a long process of transition. This process is more authentic than the one imposed by occupiers, because it allows Afghan society to evolve on its own terms.

Colonialism changes the trajectory of a nation. The political, economic and social structures that normally evolve are interrupted. To prosper, Afghanistan needs partnerships and business investment, not bullets and bombs.

F. Haider Alvi, Assistant Professor of Innovation Finance, Athabasca University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.