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.
Lessons Learned
by Robert Muggah
Principal, SecDev Group; associate, International Relations Institute.
- First Posted: Nov 12 2009 17:41 PM
- Updated: almost 2 years ago
VIDEO: To move forward, we need to reflect on what more than eight years of fighting in Afghanistan has taught us.
After almost a decade of painful engagement in Afghanistan it is worth reflecting on key lessons emerging for Canada and its partners. What is by now patently clear is that a business-as-usual approach to security promotion and institution-building in fragmented and war-wracked tribal societies is untenable. There are no silver bullets in Afghanistan: there are only difficult trade-offs. But what, if any, practical recommendations flow from this insight? In this piece, I will set out seven that stand out.
- A first recommendation is to recalibrate expectations and plan for the long term. Canadians are doing much more than war-fighting and peace-keeping in Afghanistan. Whether we like it or not, Canada is in the business of "state-" and "nation-building." This requires adopting a measure of humility concerning what can be realistically achieved. Engineering functional institutions in peaceful circumstances is difficult enough. Consolidating effective governance institutions in a fragile state seized by a full-scale insurrection is challenging to the extreme. Provided Canadians are prepared to sustain their support to Afghanistan, Canadians need to adjust their outlook and think in decades, not years. Moreover, we must advance a bottom-up approach that begins with communities.
- The second recommendation is to recognize regional geopolitics and rethink our approach to counter-narcotics. The good news is that our diplomatic, defence, and development mandarins recognize full well that Afghanistan's trajectory is intimately tied to that of its neighbours, particularly Pakistan, India, China, and Iran. They understand that counter-terrorism efforts in Pakistan will generate negative externalities in Afghanistan. They are also conscious of the signal role of heroin production and trade in fueling collective violence. Stability in Afghanistan is unthinkable without neighbourhood security guarantees and a dramatic rethinking of narcotics control strategies. At the very least, counter-insurgency and counter-narcotics efforts will need to be pursued regionally and with care.
- A third recommendation relates to the fundamental importance of realistic security promotion in the short and medium-term. Following the rapid defeat of the Taliban in 2001, the U.S. abruptly drew down its presence in 2002 while it prepared for the invasion of Iraq. In the early years "formal" security was overseen by the international security assistance force (ISAF). In practice, ISAF was confined to Kabul while the actual provision of security to most other areas was rapidly substituted with local strong men and warlords. Even after the U.S., NATO and other forces ramped-up their presence, the damage was done. It is still not clear whether the expected "surge" to 120,000 international troops will be adequate (some claim that as many as 650,000 troops are required). Any successful strategy will be based on the principle that stability in Afghanistan is contingent on Afghan ownership and leadership.
- The fourth recommendation is to invest in meaningful police reform and promote development in rural areas. To be sustainable, security promotion must adopt a "local face" ideally in the form of routine public police presence. In the meantime, the Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs) should be gradually drawn down with resources channeled instead toward core budgetary support. Likewise, to be effective, police and aid should be targeted outside of Afghanistan’s major cities to the rural areas where almost three quarters of the population resides. The provinces are in desperate need of investment and capacity-building in agriculture and power generation. Investment in community development committees and agriculture must be extended and expanded exponentially. The donor community should recognize the importance of the Ministry of Rural Development in relation to counterinsurgency efforts.
- The fifth recommendation is to back up security promotion with institution-building, particularly at the community and rural level. Put starkly, the U.S. spends about $100 million (U.S.) per day on its military campaign, while daily spending by all the other international agencies on development is in the range of $7 million. According to one estimate, the U.S. spent about $130 billion since 2002 on the military, while the international community disbursed roughly $15 billion on “development” over the same period. While health and education receive attention, road-building, irrigation systems, and civil service reform are comparatively neglected. What is more, the lion's share of development assistance is directed to external actors and does not contribute to the development of Afghan institutions. This was justified in the early days on the grounds of over-riding security priorities and a sense of urgency in addressing decades of underdevelopment, but is no longer tenable.
- A sixth recommendation is to recognize the value of quick wins but to focus on the long-term objectives. The emphasis among donors on short-term expediency has contributed to a sense among ordinary Afghans that overseas development assistance is a vector for exercising patronage at all levels of society. Currently, roughly two thirds of all overseas assistance to Afghanistan bypasses public institutions such as the Ministry of Finance. The figure rises higher still if one calculates the amount disbursed directly by U.S. commanders through discretionary development spending mechanisms. Likewise, the formation of "parallel administrations" of donors and international agencies artificially distorts/inflates salaries and literally empties public institutions of qualified staff. These activities unintentionally weaken and undermine the credibility of fledgling public institutions and deepen corruption and nepotism.
- The final recommendation is for the international donor community to take a hard look at themselves and enhance their own coordination and coherence. Attempts to align international donors is tantamount to herding cats. This is not unique to Afghanistan and is a challenge that accompanies the development community all over the world. Despite commitments to better coordinate and maximize aid efficiency set by members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, about half of all aid dollars are still tied. Aggressive donor coordination is a *sine qua* non of any meaningful engagement in Afghanistan. In addition to promoting transparency and more coherence, it is critical that respected donors such as Canada channel resources through public entities once their capacity is adequate, encourage sector-wide planning and programming, invest in multi-donor funding and strengthen budgeting mechanisms. Efforts in this area cannot afford to stumble again.
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