First Afghan minister born in Iran
MINISTER BORN IN IRAN, NOT AFGHANISTAN
Federal cabinet minister Maryam Monsef says she was shocked to find out she was born in Iran — not Afghanistan — but political opponents in her riding are challenging her claim and alleging her true birth country has “been known for quite awhile.”
Yet, one of Monsef’s first cousins said Thursday that he and his immediate family members weren’t aware that she was born in Iran, and while a “shock” to them, it “is not a big deal.”
Monsef is also facing calls from a Conservative leadership contender to consider stepping aside from cabinet while an investigation can be completed.
Monsef, the 31-year-old federal Minister of Democratic Institutions, was forced on the defensive Thursday after acknowledging she was born in Iran and that the narrative she has built of being the first Afghan-born member of Parliament — something trumpeted by the Liberals — isn’t true.
The Peterborough, Ont.-area MP said she learned only last week from her mother that she was born in Mashhad, Iran, and not in Herat, Afghanistan, like she has been led to believe her entire life.
Monsef said she also learned that she spent most of the early years of her life in Iran with her mother and two younger sisters before they arrived in Canada as refugees.
The Liberal minister said Thursday the first she heard of her birthplace being questioned was last week when the Globe and Mail phoned her office to ask where she was born.
Monsef said in an interview with Postmedia that she then left a phone message with her mother, Soriya Basir. The minister was in a car en route from Kitchener to Toronto, as part of her cross-country tour on electoral reform, when her mother reached her by cellphone.
That’s when her mother told her she was actually born in Iran and spent most of her early childhood there. Monsef said she was shocked. “It was a lot to take in, all at once,” she told Postmedia. “It took me a few hours to get back in that car.”
The Prime Minister’s Office, which was caught off guard, did not comment Thursday and directed reporters to a statement Monsef released early in the day.
Monsef said she has learned her family lived in Herat, Afghanistan, for three months in 1987-88, and again for 21/2 years from 1993 to 1996.
When Herat fell to the Taliban in September 1995, the widowed Basir fled to Canada with her three daughters.
But Monsef said she was born an Afghan citizen by dint of her parents being Afghan.
It doesn’t make her Iranian that she was born on Iranian soil, she said — that’s not how it works there. It’s the parents’ nationality that counts, she said.
And her mother never told her the truth about her birthplace because she didn’t think it mattered much.
“Because in her mind, in her culture, legally, I was born an Afghan citizen,” Monsef said.
“Our family is Afghan, our clothes are Afghan, our rugs are Afghan — to her, it didn’t make a difference.”
Yet Monsef’s story of fleeing her native Afghanistan was a central part of her campaign when she ran unsuccessfully for mayor of Peterborough, Ont., in 2014.
Mayor Daryl Bennett said he recalls one debate during the campaign, where Monsef described herself as a person “of Persian descent” — not Afghan. It gave Bennett pause that she didn’t mention Afghanistan.
“But in Canada, it truly shouldn’t matter where you are born,” he said.
The story was also a big part of her campaign when she won in the 2015 federal election.
Monsef’s political opponents in Peterborough, however, question her claims that she found out only last week.
Michael Skinner, who ran as a Conservative against Monsef in the general election in 2015, said he was told during the campaign, by former classmates, that Monsef was in fact born in Iran.
“We definitely heard rumours,” Skinner told Postmedia. “But at no point in time did the campaign have any evidence — it was rumour. So we decided to ignore it.”
Dean Del Mastro, the former Conservative MP who was convicted of overspending on his campaign in 2008, said people who run political campaigns in Peterborough all knew that Monsef wasn’t born in Afghanistan.
“That’s been known for quite a while,” he said.
Meanwhile, Conservative MP and leadership contender Tony Clement said Thursday an investigation is required to confirm Monsef’s explanation of events, how the birthplace mix-up was missed by the federal security vetting and whether citizenship laws were violated.
He also said Monsef “should consider seriously stepping aside if there is going to be an investigation.”
Incoming cabinet ministers go through a “rigorous vetting process,” the Privy Council Office (PCO) said in a statement Thursday.
It includes criminal background checks by the RCMP and by the Canada Revenue Agency for bankruptcies or financial insolvencies.
The Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) does automated record checks of its databases for what’s called “adverse intelligence traces” related to non-criminal matters from espionage to terrorism and subversion. The service will typically ask allied security intelligence agencies to check names against their databases, as well.
But CSIS can only go so far, especially in such places as Afghanistan and Iran, where there are either no government records or reliable government agencies on which to rely and where the fog of war lingers.