Photo: Master Corporal Angela Abbey, Canadian Forces Combat Camera
Matthew Fisher, Afghan war journalist for Canwest, writes that one of the primary reasons that Canada ended up in the situation it’s in is because the Paul Martin government “dithered” [a very unsubtle reference to his monicker] for so long about what to do. By the time 2005 rolled around, all the “soft” spots in the North and West were grabbed by European allies who have no trouble staying the course. Canada, meanwhile, wound up in Kandahar, the heartland of the Taliban, and because of that they incurred much higher casualties.
Because of more dithering, as Terry Glavin explains in an article that must be read to truly understand the Afghan situation properly, Canada faces the same pending problem with our future role in the country. As we are bogged down in a pointless debate about the ancient history of Afghan detainees from 2006-07, European allies are quietly volunteering for relatively safe, non-combat positions in the mentoring program that will allow them to carry on a role after the 2011 Afghan Compact.
Thanks in part to an opposition that only brings up Afghanistan in conjunction with the words “war crimes”, and thanks to the lack of planning by the Harper government, Canada’s future commitments to the country look rather barren. Whereas we could have eased into a non-combat role that would have rotated out our military from the hot zone, and into a greater participation in the things we’ve already done fairly well – reconstruction, engineering, mentoring, and humanitarian aid – instead it looks like we’ll be on the outside looking in.
The saddest part of Canada’s mission is that it’s been bogged down in the extraneous noise of the treatment of prisoner’s of war and the lack of progress in the fight against the Taliban. And because the war against the Taliban seemed to stagnate for so long, with the numbers of NATO casualties increasing even as they waned in Iraq, many critics of Canada’s participation have pointed to the fruitless results. But they stopped paying attention.
The recent Afghan surge that brought the total of U.S. troops in the country to 48,000, has had the effect of pushing the Taliban back from territories they controlled, while the new operational protocol of “clear, hold, build” has kept newly captured towns from being retaken by the Taliban as they sweep toward the long Pakistani border. On the other sider of the border, meanwhile, Pakistan has been highly successful in rounding up the Taliban all of a sudden, and high-value prisoner Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar has been, according to reports, “singing like a male canary” on his fellow insurgents. While the west can’t guarantee that Mullah Baradar has been treated to the standards expected of those transferred from Canadian custody to the Afghans, there’s not really any way that critics can pin the blame on them either.
Perhaps most frustrating for Canada’s noble legacy in Afghanistan, is that so much could be lost by our awkward retreat. Because the Paul Martin government – sent into Afghanistan in the first place by the Liberals under Jean Chretien – failed to put Canada in a zone of conflict that would have been more amenable to the weak stomachs of the Canadian electorate, we face levels of opposition to Canada’s participation in the war usually only seen in Quebec. And because the same Paul Martin government, with the same level of lazy oversight, signed a detainee agreement with the Afghan government in December of 2005, just before the Liberals were finally and unceremoniously booted from the halls of power they had roved in for 13 years, we now face daily scandal-watch pieces in the Canadian newspapers.
We sleepwalked into Afghanistan, and for that we can blame the Martin government. But now we’re sleepwalking out, and although the current Liberal version is busy wasting time in the House of Commons, instead of working on Canada’s future, or final role in Afghanistan, we can hardly pin all the blame on the Liberals. The fact is that the “Special Committee on the Canadian Mission in Afghanistan” was established to make recommendations on the conduct of our soldiers and the progress in the field. It was supposed to travel the country and make recommendations and reports on our future role. Instead it has become little more than a sounding board for the opposition to look into allegations of torture, and the media has since rebranded it the “Afghan detainee abuse committee”.
Perhaps that is appropriate. It is, after all, the only place for the country’s attention right now.
If aid workers can’t exist in a country without being shot at, and the locals do nothing concrete to defend them, then how much is the aid appreciated? Not enough for us to spend billions on it, that’s for sure. Get everyone out in 2011 or earlier.
Great post. Our media forgets to keep the facts front and centre. The opposition never voted in favour of the war. In fact about ten liberals broke rank from Dion and voted for the Manley Report and extension.
Since than the Liberals have been effective in working along the bloc, ndp in undermining the good work being done.
Our media has no interest in reporting the facts. The Tiger Woods, Bubble Boy. War Crimes headlines are more sensational.
I do blame the opposition. For all the reasons you said.
I also blame the Conservatives. They stonewalled on the documents issue for no good reason. As I’ve said before, they are only recently discovering that a retired Supreme Court judge might be trusted to render judgement on releasing the documents or portions of them. Great idea, but the I completely blame the Conservatives for not doing this MONTHS ago and thus fueling the opposition’s obsession with the documents to the exclusion of anything else.
Meanwhile, Saskboy urges us to “cut and run” as some might phrase it.
Well, Saskboy is one of those people who have stopped paying attention that I alluded to earlier.
I’ll say it again: If Canada had gone to Iraq instead of Afghanistan we would have 1)done more good for more people 2)received more credit for our service from our allies and media and 3) would have been home by now.
It has been strangely quite on the Hill since the Olympics started. That is other than a few attempts at “show-boating” by the Opposition indicating they were working despite prorogation.
I have not read any new commentary on the detainee issue. Could it be that the facts about who did what and when had been forgotten by the Opposition? Have they come to the realization that there are issues more pressing to the electorate?
I don’t think going to Afghanistan was a bad idea at all, despite the casualties and criticism. The recent rousting of the Taliban on a couple of fronts and the sandwich being created by Pakistan appears to have put a serious dent in the Taliban’s hold on a number of key areas.
Other than the foiled terrorist attempt at Christmas, which seems to have originated in Yemen, there have been no major incidents on allied soil that I am aware of. Perhaps efforts in both Iraq and Afghanistan are beginning to pay off.
I enjoyed this article. Thank you
Cynical Joe,
That might be true, but that would be self-interest. We don’t carry out wars so we “get credit”. Furthermore, whatever the benefits of Hussein’s removal, the justifications for the war, (WMD’s and an imminent threat), turned out to be completely incorrect.
It was Afghanistan that harbored and protected those who attacked a NATO treaty member.
Isch: As Clausewitz said, “war is just politics by other means”. The primary reason Canada went to Afghanistan is because we had to save face for NOT going to Iraq. I definitely think the rationale for not going to Iraq was solid (suspicion of the lack of WMD). But if Chretien made the decision to not go to Iraq on quantifiable facts, what did he use to decide to go to Afghanistan? I’d argue it was ALWAYS a political decision to go to Afghanistan. I’m not opposed to that kind of political rationale and I certainly supported and still support the mission. I just think we should all be clear about why Canadian forces are there. Getting ‘credit’ was always a part of the decision.
Saving face for not going to Iraq might have been the political motivation for Jean Chretien, but it’s definitely not why Canadians went to war.
I would never have supported going to Iraq. There was nothing to go there for, other than deposing a dictator. Which is fine, but not under false pretenses.
I did favour going to Iraq at the time. Like many people I believed that they were developing WMD’s. It turns out I was wrong, but I would argue that it’s incorrect to say that they were false pretenses.
I don’t believe for one moment that Colin Powell was lying when he presented the evidence of Iraq’s programme. He was mistaken. I also do not believe that Colin Powell could be fooled by others in the administration who lied to him. He’s just not that naive.
What we had was a nasty dictator who was actually trying to convince the world that he had WMD’s, presumably so that the world would fear and respect him. Unfortunately for him, the US (and the French intelligence service I believe) fell for it and rather than fear and respect him they choose to fight a war. The US administration were not lying, they were just completely and utterly wrong. One could make a strong case that mistakes of that magnitude require a willful ignorance, but that’s another argument.
In any case, the war wasn’t waged under false pretenses, it was waged under seriously mistaken pretenses. We shouldn’t go to war for mistaken pretenses either of course, but the deed is done.
Hardly Adrian, I’ve heard both the Ambassador of Afghanistan, and Terry Glavin speak on this issue, in person.
“Whereas we could have eased into a non-combat role that would have rotated out our military from the hot zone, ”
So basically, wuss out, is what you want Canada to do? To take the easy roles rather than what is asked of us by the UN or Afghanistan’s people?
I don’t really think rotating out of combat roles is wussing out, but you can’t have it both ways, claiming the Liberals dithered by not invading with a conquering force, and then say the Conservatives are screwing up now by retreating because they are continuing the Liberal’s war in the same manner.