Canada in Afghanistan
In Kabul, Washington, Brussels, London, Paris, and Amsterdam, the debate over NATO’s role in Afghanistan is building. President Obama is not only considering the possibility of General McChrystal’s recommended troop surge and tactical shift towards far greater civilian protection, but more importantly, he is reconsidering the broader strategic objectives of the mission. Is the goal to protect America from a resurgent al-Qaeda, to build an Afghan state that can hold the Taliban at bay, or to reconfigure both Afghanistan and Pakistan? The answer will drive his decision in the coming weeks. As the president deliberates, the U.S. media and public are increasingly engaged.
In Canada, while there is a similar conversation occurring behind the closed doors of government – our mandarins must decide what we will do after the 2011 deadline set by parliament in March 2008 – there has been an astonishing silence in the public domain. What should Canada be doing in Afghanistan post-2011?
The government of Canada has skirted this issue in public with various opaque statements by the prime minister, the minister of Defence and other members of the Conservative cabinet. They have confirmed our withdrawal but have given hardly any indication as to what this will look like, whether a military presence will remain to carry out the development and training tasks they assert will continue or whether the U.S. will fill the void. Meanwhile Lt. General Andrew Leslie, the head of the Canadian army, has stated that they “currently do not have any plans, or even any line diagrams on a blank sheet of paper for post-2011.”
Motivated by the belief that decisions need to be taken long before 2011, that we can’t just up and pull out – that there are substantial strategic, ethical, and financial considerations – last week we convened a roundtable at the University of British Columbia in order to discuss these critical issues. We started with our own “blank sheet” and to fill it in, several seasoned Canadian experts who have lived and breathed Afghanistan over the last eight years, including Gordon Smith, Chris Alexander, and Graeme Smith. We posed a series of guiding questions that we hoped would incite debate. They were as follows:
1) Public support for the Afghan mission stands at 37 per cent in Canada and roughly half of Canadians are in support of a civilian mission post-2011. How are domestic politics likely to influence the shape of Canada's involvement? And what influence should they have?
2) The Canadian government has committed itself to a set of tasks for the benefit of the Afghan people. At the same time, the fighting has killed 131 Canadian soldiers and one diplomat. The war has cost between $11-12 billion. What responsibilities and obligations have we incurred? To the Afghan people? To NATO and the UN? To Canadians?
3) The Government has been unclear as to whether a contingent of Canadian forces will remain to protect delivery of assistance, or whether the ensuing void post-withdrawal will be covered by our U.S. and NATO allies. Moreover, does the withdrawal of a “mere” 2800 Canadians, compared with the U.S. 80,000, really mean a “gap”? What would assistance look like without military support? Can we “do” development without the military? What are the implications of a withdrawal for NATO and U.S. relations?
4) What are the options for our involvement? What are the costs and benefits of different options? What are the standards of evaluation? What is desirable? What is doable? How do we avoid what Gen. Hillier recently called “pie in the sky” ideas about Afghanistan? How do we avoid such ideas and ensure success in whatever it is that we commit ourselves to post-2011.
It is a tall order, we know, but we hope that this web forum, based on last week’s roundtable meeting, will be, at the very least, the start of a much needed discussion on these important issues.
Defining the Mission
by Michael Petrou
Foreign correspondent, Maclean's.
- First Posted: Nov 12 2009 17:35 PM
- Updated: 7 months ago
VIDEO: There will be no victory in Afghanistan until Canada is clear on what it wants to accomplish there.
Canada’s mission in Afghanistan post-2011 deserves clarity and focus. I believe three basic questions will help us frame the debate: What do we want to accomplish? What can we accomplish? How do we do achieve our goals?
There are three broad answers to the first question, all of which should differently shape Canada’s involvement in Afghanistan: defence against terrorism, counter-insurgency, and nation-building.
If our goals are only to deny Afghanistan as a safe-haven for terrorists with international reach, and to destroy any such terrorists that are in Afghanistan, an argument can and has been made that we can afford a much lighter footprint. If our enemy is al-Qaeda and affiliated groups that might directly threaten Canada, it shouldn’t matter to us how much territory the Taliban take over, or what abuses they inflict on local populations, unless territory under their control is used to shelter and support terrorist groups with global reach.
The degree of cooperation between the Taliban and al-Qaeda is debatable. I recently spoke with a knowledgeable Western diplomat who said al-Qaeda’s involvement in the Afghan insurgency is minimal. On the other hand, analysts such as Ahmed Rashid point with justification to past cooperation between the two organizations as a sign of what might happen if Afghanistan were ceded to the Taliban, and there is evidence of interaction between local Taliban and international jihadists in Waziristan, Pakistan. It may be that targeting al-Qaeda cannot be separated from targeting the Taliban. But we should clearly define our objective.
If our goal is counter-insurgency – defeating the Taliban and supporting the government of Hamid Karzai – this too will shape our presence on the ground. Speaking very broadly, there are two main schools of thought regarding counter-insurgency. One holds that small numbers of special forces, operating largely out of sight of local populations, can train an indigenous military force, which then carries out the fighting on its own. Proponents of this model argue that it is effective because it doesn’t feel like a foreign occupation. It has the added bonus of fewer foreign casualties. The second model, favoured by Gen. David Patreaus in Iraq and now by Gen. Stanley McChrystal in Afghanistan, holds that foreign troops must protect the local population at all costs. This requires many, many boots on the ground.
Finally, if our goal is nation-building in Afghanistan, an even bigger footprint will be needed. Nighttime raids by special forces and air strikes won’t build hospitals. To be done with any measure of success in a hostile environment, nation-building requires a massive investment in money and, it must be said, blood. Friendly villages must be protected; schoolteachers need to feel safe.
As for the question about what we can accomplish, while I think our goals should be modest – Afghanistan will not be a stable, Western-style democracy in the near future – I personally don’t think the distinct objectives I outlined above can be effectively isolated. I believe that preventing Taliban from becoming a safe-haven for terrorists with international reach necessitates confronting the Taliban through counter-insurgency. Effective counter-insurgency requires nation-building. And nation-building requires protecting the bits of the nation that have been rebuilt, which in turn will require the use of soldiers who, when necessary, shoot and kill people.
Even if our goals in Afghanistan are as narrow as we can afford to make them – self-defence against future terrorist attacks – I believe our engagement in the country needs to be comprehensive and involve targeted counter-terrorist operations, a broader counter-insurgency, and nation-building. I don’t think it is helpful or even honest to speak of combat and non-combat missions in Afghanistan. Our success there will depend on both.
Comments
Re:Marks
“ Nice analysis of the underlying problem - wrong conclusion. The "fighting them over there so we won't have to fight them over here" paradigm is a failure. It must be remembered that while the heads of Al Qaeda were in Afghanistan, tollereated by the Taliban, the planning was largely done by a separate group/cell in Pakistan. The leader of that cell - Khalid Sheikh Mohammed - is about to go on trial. Attacks on the west can be mounted from anywhere - even from within the country in the case of Britain and Spain. Fighting them over there is in fact increasing the danger that extremist elements over here will resort to violence. Prolonging the war over there is increasing the danger over here. Stopping the war in Afghanistan and then offering help in reconstruction - paying for it and letting the locals do it themselves - is the only way to decrease the danger over here. Money now spent on war must be diverted to redevelopment, intelligence gathering and keeping the peace.
Brent Beach