Canada’s war on terror has a Catch-22 absurdity: Walkom

Ottawa’s decision to force a former charity into a classic Catch-22 double bind is the latest absurdity in Canada’s war on terror.

It is not the only one.

Certainly, the tale of the International Relief Fund for the Afflicted and Needy (Canada) is rich in the kind of irony explored by Joseph Heller in his novel, Catch-22.

In April, Public Safety Minister Steven Blaney officially listed the fund, called IRFAN, as a terrorist entity.

The reason given was that relief slated for Gaza had gone to organizations connected with the Islamic group Hamas. Hamas governs the Palestinian enclave and is also on Canada’s terror list.

One of the organizations IRFAN funded was Gaza’s health ministry.

The relief fund can appeal this terrorist designation and is trying to do so. But to mount a successful legal action it must raise money.

Yet as a proscribed terrorist organization it cannot raise money without putting donors at risk of being labelled terrorists.

That’s because, as the public safety department website explains, it is illegal to fund “any activity of a listed entity for the purpose of enhancing the ability of the entity to facilitate and carry out a terrorist activity” — a clause the government apparently interprets quite broadly

Put simply, if an organization is labelled terrorist by the government, any attempt to dispute that label is itself terrorism.

Catch-22.

As The Canadian Press reported Thursday, the relief organization is going to federal court in an effort to win the right to raise money to mount a defence.

To avoid running afoul of anti-terror laws, the lawyer in this particular case is working for free.

In fact, it is quite possible that IRFAN is a dodgy organization. The Canadian Revenue Agency lifted the fund’s charitable status in 2011, in part because of what tax auditors called “deceptive fundraising.”

But the hoops IRFAN must leap through to prove its innocence are pure theatre of the absurd — as is so much about terrorism.

Take the most basic question: Who are the terrorists? Until Wednesday, Cuba was listed by the United States as a state sponsor of terrorism. Now U.S. President Barack Obama says it is not.

Why? It’s not because Cuba has changed. It’s the same old place. Raul and Fidel Castro are still in charge.

Rather it is because American domestic politics have changed. Now it’s politically useful for Washington to bury the hatchet.

Is Hamas itself terrorist? Canada says yes. The European Union’s second highest court says maybe not. The General Court said the EU used improper methods to place Hamas on its terror list.

For more absurdities, look at Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s air war against the Islamic State. According to Ottawa, it is part of an epic battle for the future of civilization. Yet in almost 50 days of warfare, Canadian fighter jets have released their bombs only nine times.

In part, this is because the U.S.-led coalition can’t find enough enemies of civilization to bomb.

But in part, it results from the disjunction between the rhetoric surrounding this conflict and a more mundane reality — which is that Harper needs a war to win the next election, but he needs it to be a war with few Canadian casualties.

Finally, Omar Khadr. Could anyone be more Catch-22?

Khadr is the Canadian sent by his father to fight for the Taliban. At the age of 15, he was captured by the Americans. At Guantanamo Bay, a U.S. military court convicted him of war crimes.

Why was it a war crime for Khadr to shoot at U.S. soldiers and not a war crime for them to shoot at him? Answer: Catch-22.

The U.S. government ruled that any soldier fighting for the Taliban was, by definition, a war criminal.

The Harper government is keeping Khadr in prison in Canada because it is politically convenient to do so. He is going blind.

In 20 years, it will be the common wisdom that Khadr was badly mistreated. He will receive a public apology and a large cash settlement. The war on terror will be deemed a time of collective madness.

But now he — and we — are caught in that madness. Little makes sense.

Thomas Walkom’s column appears Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday.