Afghanistan: Should We Stay Or Should We Go?

Ottawa might extend the Afghan mission beyond 2011. And it's all Denmark's fault.

Defence Minister Peter Mackay said yesterday Ottawa is strongly considering bowing to pressure from its NATO allies and extending our military presence in Afghanistan beyond 2011, albeit in a training capacity. According to the National Post’s John Ivison, it was not Washington that finally wore Stephen Harper down, but a much smaller country. “The apparent change of heart by the Harper government came after Gitte Lillelund Bech, the Danish Defence Minister, visited Ottawa last week,” he writes. And why are we suddenly taking orders from Copenhagen? Because they’ve suffered 28 casualties in the war, “more, as a proportion of the country’s population, than any other contributor” to the mission. And yet there isn’t even a debate in Denmark about prolonging their stay. Bech says they’re there “until the end.”

Also in the Post, Senator Pamela Wallin declares the Afghan war “winnable.” She notes that Canada has hit its targets for training Afghan soldiers and building schools, and that Afghan society is normalizing. “In spite of the good news,” she writes, “some armchair critics think the Taliban will ultimately win because all they have to do is hide in Pakistan until NATO forces depart.” This view is misguided, she says, because nation-building efforts will eventually freeze out the Taliban if they remain inactive. Wallin paints a rosy picture, but fails to mention some key facts about the nation we’re building. Hamid Karzai’s ‘democracy’ is widely seen as deeply corrupt, and is taking money from Iran. He’s also in talks to bring the Taliban into government, which means they don’t even have to hide out in Pakistan, they can do it in the presidential palace in Kabul.

The Globe and Mail’s Norman Spector points out that, despite what Wallin says, U.S. generals remain skeptical and are waiting until fighting resumes next spring to see how much damage they’ve really done to the insurgents. He also takes issue with the PMO’s assertion that leaving troops in the country is consistent with Ottawa’s stated position saying “it’s clear to anyone who can read that it would be a major reversal.”