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.
