TORONTO – Perfect timing. At 8 am today, the head of the Canadian Armed Forces, General Wayne Eyre, announced that “Canada’s evacuation efforts in Afghanistan have ended”: Canadian personnel left Kabul “eight hours ago”. Less than three hours later, at the Kabul airport a suicide bomber (two, according to American and Russian sources) blows himself up: forty dead (including children) and dozens of wounded. Among the victims, also US Marines, as confirmed on Twitter by John Kirby from the Pentagon Press Secretary.

Just in time, one might say, despite the “push and pull” of recent days, in which on the one hand Prime Minister Justin Trudeau affirmed that Canada would remain in Afghanistan after the date set by the Taliban with their ultimatum (“everyone out by August 31”) and on the other “his” ministers denied him by stating that the Canadian evacuation operations would be completed before the end of the month,”as the United States decided”, as underlined by the Defense Minister Harjit Sajjan in the press conference two days ago, the same one in which the Minister of Women, Maryam Monsef, called the Taliban “our brothers”. (more…)