According to her intervention at a recent conference sponsored by the Canadian Institute of International Affairs and the University of Ottawa’s new Graduate School of Public and International Affairs, Astri Suhrke, a senior research fellow at Norway’s Christian Michelsen Institute, noted that “a UN source estimated that of the 249 newly elected deputies, 40 were commanders still associated with armed groups, 24 members belonged to criminal gangs, 17 were drug traffickers and 19 faced serious allegations of war crimes.” Suhrke also observed that Afghanistan depends almost totally upon foreign funding, with around 90 percent of the national budget being predicated on foreign transfers, and that foreign donors exercise effective control over key funding decisions. Specifically, Afghans have little say over the management and development of their security forces, and even less say over the mission of foreign forces in their country.
This has been made ever more clear of late through President Hamid Karzai’s poignant pleading with those forces to limit the “collateral damage” by NATO and Operation Enduring Freedom’s air attacks. Indeed, Laura King of the Los Angeles Times reported in July 2007 that, “after more than five years of increasingly intense warfare, the conflict in Afghanistan reached a grim milestone in the first half of this year: U.S. troops and their NATO allies killed more civilians than insurgents did, according to several independent tallies.”
The essential question is whether the essence of the NATO mission is still, or is likely to remain, viable. Are we in fact supporting a legitimate, worthy, effective and democratic government in Kabul, one that is capable of exercising control and extending its authority over the country, so that we can leave? And is this a likely enough scenario to warrant further massive investments, risk more Canadian lives and hazard NATO’s future?
In more politically charged terms, are we indeed prevailing? Hard information is difficult to come by, but most observers seem prepared to admit that violence is on the increase. An Afghan official interviewed by Stein and Lang says violence is once again encroaching on the capital. “The noose around Kabul ... is tightening,” said the official. “The roads in and out of the city are no longer secure.” Furthermore, both the military planning and coordination efforts of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force and the development effort seem to be in total disarray.
Arthur Kent, quoted in the book, reports on the all-important project to rebuild the Afghan National Army, sine qua non to our going home. In the November 2007 issue of Policy Options, he notes that “incompetence, conflict of interest, nepotism and corruption have led to chronic shortfalls in troop training targets. Instead of tackling the problems, US and NATO officials have concealed it by padding statistics.” Following an endless array of bogus numbers on the state of the ANA, Kent says, “in February 2007, it was widely agreed that the Afghan National Army numbered at most 22,000 men. Six years on, Hamid Karzai has less than a third of the force he and his allies regard as minimally capable of defending his regime ... Unfortunately, it is still the case that the best Afghan militias are the private ones.” Those private militias total some 120,000 gunmen, “many [of which] enforce goods smuggling, land grabs and drug trafficking. None battle the Taliban and al-Qaeda.”
For its part, our current government is either as ignorant of geopolitical realities as its predecessors or similarly ignoring advice being proffered or—and I genuinely regret suggesting this could might be a possibility—is, in fact, being improperly briefed by intimidated bureaucrats seeking to please their stern and ever suspicious masters. Anecdotal evidence is building to suggest that, just like Bush on Iraq, Harper on Afghanistan is being told only what he wants to hear. One can only hope that the panel led by John Manley will speak truth to power.
The final chapter of The Unexpected War is worth the price of the book and much more. It is lucid, strong and forthright in its discussions of what we are and are not achieving in Afghanistan, and in its clear articulation of the reason that ought to have taken us there in the first instance and ought to have attracted allied support, but has not: “Canada is fighting in Afghanistan because an Afghan government supported those who planned and executed an attack against the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.”
On the vexing matter of “how long” western governments, afflicted as they are by short attention spans, are expected to endure the pain and tribulations of the Afghan battlefield and the “nation building” challenge, Jim Travers of the Toronto Star notes: “There will be no decisive military victories. Victory will go to those with strategic patience and endurance.” Unless he is measuring endurance as the difference between 2009 and 2011, I suspect we will not know victory in Afghanistan. ... "
From 'Alice in Afghanistan, a review of The Unexpected War: Canada in Kandahar'
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