Thirty years ago in 1980, Canada joined the U.S. in a 64-country boycott of the Moscow Olympics to protest the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. On Feb. 15, under cover of wall-to-wall Olympics news, Canada joined 15,000 coalition troops in Obama’s assault on the town of Marjah in Helmand province, the biggest offensive since the U.S.-led invasion of Afganistan in 2001. Nine hundred families have fled ahead of their arrival.

On Feb. 14, 12 civilians including six children were killed when two NATO-fired rockets missed their intended target by 300 meters. Gen Stanley McChrystal sent along his regrets. The next day five more civilians were killed in a NATO airstrike in Kandahar.

The photo above shows women university students in Kabul in 1995. Prior to the CIA-backed civil war in Afghanistan and the beginning of the Taliban rule in the mid 90′s, 50% of the students and 60% of the teachers at Kabul University were women. 70% of school teachers, 50% of civilian government workers, and 40% of doctors in Kabul were women.