Ottawa Citizen - December 28, 2006
By Colin Kenny
Can Canada’s involvement in the current NATO incursion in Afghanistan save that country from failing? Not a chance.
Can Canada’s contribution give the Afghans a chance to save themselves from failing? Following months of listening closely to all kinds of analysis, then spending four days there last week, I’d say there’s a fair chance.
Certainly the more than 300 young men and women that I and four other senators from the Committee on National Security and Defence talked to last week think there’s a chance. I was encouraged by both their optimism and their lack of naiveté about the enormity of what needs to be done beyond firing bullets.
This is the essence of what we were hearing from a lot of them: As long as Canadians have no illusions about a quick fix, we may well be able to help the Afghans nudge themselves out of the Middle Ages in whichever ways they want to do that. Afghans may not want to do that in every way that westerners would recommend. But if we want to be realistic about what is doable, Canadians will have to accept that.
Our committee is going to issue a statement on our Afghanistan visit early in the New Year. But two days after our return, here are some personal thoughts:
After a long history of bloodshed, foreign and homemade oppression, helping give Afghans a sense of security is critical to getting the nudging process underway. So far, all the brave efforts of all the Canadians and their allies haven’t produced that kind of security. In fact, at this stage the NATO presence in Kandahar has given southern Afghans more to worry about in terms of sheer survival, not less.
Quite bluntly, there is a war going on that wouldn’t be happening if we weren’t there. If you couple that with the Afghans’ long-standing hatred of uninvited foreigners occupying their lands, it doesn’t take long to figure out that at this point we’re not exactly seen as the best thing to come along since either sliced bread or the local variety.
The problem is that we haven’t been able to accomplish any of the three ends that Canada defines as essential to forays into troubled states: defeat would-be oppressors militarily; facilitate the creation of the kind of infrastructure and institutions that noble concepts like freedom and justice depend upon for survival; and do basic development projects that improve the lives of ordinary people.
Some critics in Canada complain that our military should spend less time chasing the Taliban and more time on development. That’s a very romantic concept, and in the long run, a worthy one. Everyone over there knows that Canada’s mission to Afghanistan will have been meaningless if we don’t get involved in development. They also know that it will have to be development largely defined by the Afghans – not western textbook definitions of what constitutes emancipation and progress.
But nobody can get started down that road unless we can provide the security that development workers need to do their job. We kept being told that Canada is already involved in development projects, even in the Kandahar region. But the descriptions we got were hazy, and if these projects are taking place, their security is so up in the air that the military said it was too dangerous to take us to any of them.
Nope, military progress has to be the first imperative, or nothing else is going to fall into place. There are problems here. First, we only have 2,500 Canadians on the ground, and it takes 2,000 of them to support the 500 doing the fighting. NATO does not have enough fighters, and we will be hard pressed to offer any more.
But all the NATO troops in the world won’t suffice. Eventually the Afghans are going to have to do their own fighting. Foreign armies will always have a problem in Afghanistan. A strong national army would have far more popular support. But such an army needs training, and trainers who are willing to go to the battlefield with a national army until Afghan officers and senior NCMs have developed the expertise to lead their troops.
Who will provide the extra troops NATO needs now, and who will step in and provide the extra NATO personnel needed to train an effective Afghan military and police force. Currently, the Dutch are there with us. The Americans are there. The British are there. But there are a lot of NATO members that simply won’t go into this kind of dangerous territory.
If these countries end up sticking to their (lack of) guns, and don’t buy into the NATO common approach to defence in the Afghanistan context, then there’s not much Canada can do. We are trying to redefine and rebuild our whole military, and we can’t do that if we continue to over-commit troops that are scarce after more than two decades of military neglect.
If these other NATO countries don’t come through, there is little hope for sustainable military success. There are reports that the Taliban is regrouping in Pakistan in preparation for a massive offensive that would far outstrip anything our Canadian kids have seen to date – and they’ve seen plenty.
Does that mean that Canada should pull out? No. We’ve committed ourselves until at least 2009. Unlike Iraq, the end is worthy here, and some degree of progress is attainable. But there will be no significant development without military success, and there’s not much hope of military success if more countries don’t pitch in.
Other than our obvious interest in international peace and stability, Canada doesn’t have an overriding interest in Afghanistan. We’re there because it’s right to be there, the way it would be right to be in Darfur (if we had the additional resources) and the way it was right to be there to help free Europe more than sixty years ago.
There are some European countries that need to remember how important it is to stand up for what is right. NATO is currently trying to figure out how best it can play a relevant role in the modern world. If NATO doesn’t hurry up, the word relevant is going to pass it by.
And while that is happening, Afghanistan will probably slip away. Pity, because the soldiers we talked to know what many Canadians and Europeans are so doubtful about: if we team up and give these people some help, they still have a fighting chance. After what the outside world has done to Afghanistan over the years, we owe them that.