Ottawa Citizen - February 1, 2008
By Colin Kenny
Given the minefield of complexities and uncertainties the Manley panel had to wade through to make recommendations on Canada’s future role in Afghanistan, the panel did an admirable job.
The panelists pulled no punches in tweaking Steven Harper’s nose for poor public communications and lack of leadership on the Kandahar mission, a one-two punch that both Mr. Harper and former Prime Minister Paul Martin had coming.
How will the Prime Minister respond? He did affect a less confrontational, less political stance on Afghanistan in the Commons Monday. But if the panel is expecting better communications on the war, good luck. Not only did Mr. Harper say his government would “never” answer questions about how many prisoners Canadian troops take or what is done with them, he “misspoke” by saying vital pieces of equipment are on order when they are not.
The Prime Minister is making a show of embracing the Manley panel report, but actions will speak louder than words. As chair of the Senate Committee on National Security and Defence, I have made criticisms similar to those the panel made over the past year.
But Mr. Harper doesn’t like criticism, so the response I got wasn’t improved communications and leadership. Instead the response the committee got was pure revenge: the Prime Minister’s Office yanked all Conservative members off the Committee for three months and our knowledgeable Conservative vice-chairman got demoted because he was too bipartisan.
So, good luck to John Manley in getting better communications, better leadership or better funding for the Afghanistan mission.
The Chrétien and Martin Liberals badly underfunded the Department of National Defence, but when our committee criticized their short-sightedness, they at least swallowed hard and took their lumps. They didn’t try to neuter the committee.
Indeed, the only major flaws I can find in the Manley report are first that the 1,000 additional troops it deems to be needed in Afghanistan aren’t nearly enough, and second, it doesn’t go far enough in connecting Canada’s precarious situation in Kandahar to inadequate political will and defence funding in Ottawa.
The report blames Canada’s European NATO allies for not being willing to fight in Kandahar. It even suggests that Canada should pull out in February 2009 if countries like Germany don’t come through with troops.
That recommendation is bald-faced bluff. Earlier in its report the panel detailed how disastrous it would be for both Afghanistan and Canada if we were to pull out before the Afghanistan government is strong enough to ward off the Taliban. There is no way it is going to have that kind of strength just 13 months from now.
Secondly, the United States is sending in 3,000 marines to bolster Canadians, Dutch and British troops in the most dangerous parts of Afghanistan. Is Canada going to walk out while the Americans are walking in? Is that going to happen when one of the main reasons Canada is in Afghanistan (curiously not mentioned as one of the panel’s five main reasons) is to mollify Washington in the wake of Mr. Chrétien saying no to Iraq?
Not bloody likely.
Rather than blaming our European allies for non-support, the panel might better have taken a hard look at why Canada’s military capacity isn’t sufficient to succeed in Kandahar, where Canada insisted on playing the lead role right from the get-go.
Why aren’t we doing better in Kandahar? Because a succession of Canadian governments have failed to recognize that militaries must be funded to overcome inevitable surprises. Warfare is all about surprises, and
Canada got badly surprised In Kandahar. Our military simply hasn’t been given the resources to deal with the unexpected.
In 2005, Chief of Defence Staff Rick Hillier made a three-pronged commitment: first, to send Canadian troops to Kandahar as replacements for American troops (who appeared to have chased the Taliban out of their home province); second, to develop backup capacity in the Canadian Forces to allow them to deploy to more than one overseas theatre at any given time; and third, to reinvent the Canadian Forces.
Three years later, the Kandahar mission is wobbly at best, we have no capacity to deploy significantly in any other theatre, and the promised growth and transformation of the Canadian Forces has been set back on its heels. That’s partially because we bit off more than we could chew in Kandahar, and partially because the government hasn’t provided the funds to succeed at even one of these commitments – let alone all three.
In Kandahar, it turned out that the Americans had not defeated the Taliban. They were in strategic retreat. Rebuilt with funds from the poppy fields and young recruits from radical religious schools in Pakistan, the Taliban is coming on strong. “Nobody predicted the resurgence of the Taliban,” Gen. Hillier has publicly acknowledged. “It came as a surprise.”
The Manley panel notes that Canada lacks helicopters and modern Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) for reconnaissance. It criticizes the Europeans for not giving us the helicopters. Well, we had helicopters, but the Mulroney government sold them to the Dutch in the early 1990s to save money. The current government says it wants to buy more, but months have gone by with no sign of a contract, and we probably couldn’t get them until late 2011 if a contract were signed today.
The Prime Minister told the Commons that the helicopters and UAVs are “on order.” That simply isn’t true. Yes, the government is talking to Boeing about a potential contract. That isn’t the same as “on order.”
As for the UAVs, the military pleaded with the Prime Minister’s Office to buy modern models – like Predators – off the shelf. Predators would be a huge improvement over the unreliable Sperwers now being used. But the Prime Minister over-ruled Chief of the Defence Staff Rick Hillier, and mired their acquisition by insisting upon a politically-correct bidding process.
Meanwhile, Canada’s casualty count rises.
This government’s obfuscation about what Canada is doing in Afghanistan is bad. But it is committing a far greater sin by disguising parsimonious military spending with tough-guy verbiage.
The NATO target for member countries’ defence spending is 2 percent of GDP. Canada’s current defence spending is 1.2 percent of GDP. There are no plans to close that huge gap.
Let’s get real about why we’re not doing better in Afghanistan.
It’s the money, stupid.
Senator Kenny is Chair of the National Security and Defence Committee. He can be reached via email at kennyco@sen.parl.gc.ca