Is it time to go? TheStar.com - News - Is it time to go? In a week when Canada lost eight soldiers and cautiously began discussing an exit strategy with its allies, it's become clear the mission in Afghanistan, as currently constructed, is not winnable
April 14, 2007 Thomas Walkom National Affairs Writer http://www.thestar.com/News/article/202978 Canada's current fighting role in Afghanistan cannot be sustained. The reasons are not military. They are political. The death of eight soldiers this week underlies this stark fact. First, we are losing. This is not a popular thing to say. Nor is it a reflection on the skill and bravery of Canadian and other allied troops. But it is a hard fact that has to be faced. The Taliban don't have to beat NATO to win. All they have to do is stay in the game, which is what they are doing. But for NATO, a military victory requires much more. It requires that the insurgency be crushed. For a variety of reasons – including the fact that to many in Afghanistan's south, the Taliban are the home team – that is not happening. This is the fearful asymmetry of guerrilla warfare. We might be able to succeed militarily if we stayed in Afghanistan indefinitely and were willing to accept hundreds of additional Canadian casualties. But we are not. Every death, every televised commemoration ceremony, further erodes public support for a war that was never widely popular. This is the second reason why this war cannot be sustained. Support at home is limited and dwindling. In principle, Canadians like the idea of helping Afghans rebuild their country. As long as some progress is being made, a good many are willing to see their fellow Canadians die in the effort – particularly if those who die are enthusiastic volunteers. But in this war, there is little evidence of progress. Indeed, there is significant evidence – detailed in reports like that of the Senate defence committee or the independent, London-based Senlis Council – that NATO military efforts are serving only to further alienate the people we are supposed to be helping. When Canadian officers refer to this war as one that will take generations to win – as did Task Force Afghanistan's deputy commander Col. Mike Cessford this week – the country viscerally recoils in horror. Generations? The Afghan campaign has already lasted longer than the three-year Korean War, longer even than World War I. True, the casualties in Afghanistan so far – 53 killed soldiers (plus diplomat Glyn Berry) and 205 wounded in action – don't come close to those that Canada endured in either Korea or the bloody 1914-1918 conflict. But generations? No Canadian government can survive politically if it accepts this prognosis. The New Democrats understand this, which is why they are calling for the troops to come home. So do the Liberals, who now want the Kandahar portion of the mission (which they created) to end in 2009. Even the Conservatives, who like to slam the opposition parties as unpatriotic, are coming to realize that Kandahar is a no-win. That's why Defence Minister Gordon O'Connor quietly invited his counterparts from seven other allied countries fighting in Afghanistan to meet in Quebec City this week and begin work on a common exit strategy. The only question remaining is how many more Canadians will have to die before that strategy takes effect. The third reason why this war cannot be sustained is that the idea behind it is fundamentally unsound. The war on terror could never work and is not working. As a response to the 9/11 attacks on the U.S, it was understandable. No country likes to be attacked without lashing back. But like many hasty actions grounded in revenge, it was not well thought out. The gravest mistake made by U.S. President George W. Bush and his allies was to define the response to these terror attacks in purely military terms. Terror is a complex phenomenon. Terrorists who lack broad-based support, such as Germany's Baader-Meinhof Gang and Italy's Red Brigades in the '60s and '70s, can be suppressed with relative ease. But terrorists who manage to articulate real political grievances are harder to deal with. In such cases, military action alone rarely works. As the French found in Algeria and the British in Northern Ireland, some kind of political accommodation is eventually required. History also demonstrates that war, once unleashed by countries seeking to battle terrorism, can have perverse and unpredictable consequences. In 1914, Austria-Hungary invaded Serbia to avenge a terrorist outrage. The result was World War 1, which Austria-Hungary lost. In the 1970s, the U.S. bombed Cambodia in an effort to battle Vietnamese insurgents there. The result was the Khmer Rouge regime, which massacred hundreds of thousands of Cambodians. Last year, Israel invaded Lebanon to crush Hezbollah. The result was an emboldened Hezbollah. Bush's ill-fated Iraq war may provide the clearest example of how a military action, ostensibly designed to curb terror, can end up creating more terrorists. But there are others. Late last year, for instance, the U.S. facilitated and encouraged Ethiopia's invasion of Somalia in an effort to oust that country's Islamic government. The result has been a return to all-out civil war in Somalia and a boost for Al Qaeda throughout North Africa. In the end, backfire is also the story of Afghanistan. It was the first target of the war on terror. It was also the first place where that war went wrong. Washington's aim in that 2001 invasion was to capture Osama bin Laden and, by deposing Kabul's Taliban government, neutralize Afghanistan as a terror staging ground. Yet, some five years later, bin Laden is still at large, while the Taliban control large swaths of both Pakistan and Afghanistan. Meanwhile, London and Madrid have been hit by terror attacks. The war didn't eliminate Al Qaeda. It did throw Afghanistan back into full-blown civil strife, reinvigorate the narco-economy and make the West, rather than Russia, a focus of tribal hatred in the country's south. Initially, the Taliban were willing to negotiate with Washington. But in those early, heady days, the U.S. wasn't interested. In one noteworthy instance, it refused to let the man it had chosen to lead Afghanistan's new government, Hamid Karzai, accept an arrangement that would have allowed Taliban leader Mullah Omar to live undisturbed in Kandahar in return for abandoning armed struggle. In the war on terror, no quarter was to be given. Now, as the U.S. and other NATO countries try to figure a way to extricate themselves from southern Afghanistan, Mullah Omar dictates the insurgency from the safety of neighbouring Pakistan. Karzai is once again trying to negotiate backdoor deals with the Taliban leadership, this time it seems, with Washington's tacit blessing. Only now the Taliban is less interested in negotiation. After all, now it is winning. -- ***************************************************************** Montreal Muslim News Network - http://www.montrealmuslimnews.net Send us your feeback at: [EMAIL PROTECTED] *************************************************************************** {Invite (mankind, O Muhammad ) to the Way of your Lord (i.e. Islam) with wisdom (i.e. with the Divine Inspiration and the Qur'an) and fair preaching, and argue with them in a way that is better. 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